RE: How to drive a quattro?

[Glen Powell <gpowell@acacianet.com>]

Funny - when I punch it through a turn I can get 4-wheel drifts out of
it, but I have yet to experience either over- or understeer after
getting on the gas. I seem to remember somebody mentioning that,
contrary to convention, pouring on the gas on the way through a corner
would actually make a quattro tighten its line (or oversteer).

I kin git the 4-wheels drifts very nicely too on the track (diffs open - of course). As Scott said, I think the secret is getting the car 'light'. This is a combination of speed, traction, weight transfer, turn radius and steering input. If you watch the Pro-Rally films closely you will see that they often turn in the opposite direction initially and then snap the car back into the turn - this 'lightens' or 'unsettles' the car nicely and allows the car to pivot around the front wheels and to be 'steered' through the corner with the throttle - a drift - all very exaggerated due to the low traction conditions. On pavement it is much more subtle, speeds may be higher and turn radius larger, on average, and traction is much higher, so higher speeds and smaller steering inputs are needed to lighten the car. Brake straight, turn-in late & 'slow', on the power early and drift out 'fast'. As JMF once said "it is better to go into a corner slow and come out fast that to go in fast and come out dead." This applies very nicely to quattro. BTW, my previous comment about experimenting with the rear diff only locked was WRT the original poster that was talking about playing in the rain on the street and not high-speed track technique (CYA).

-glen