Oversteer and Understeer
Oversteer and Understeer are very recurrent terms you will hear when talking about car handling. Whether it’s on the track or the open roads, as long as speed and curves are involved, any car will be prone to one or the other. Certain modifications can be made to cars in order to make them less prone to oversteer and understeer, or deliberately push them to be more sensitive to either one, in order to suit your personal driving style. We will see here what do these terms imply, which type of cars and setups are more prone to which and what causes these handling trends, how to stay in control when either happen, and finally what you can do to your car to have a better control over these factors.
Oversteer:
Oversteer or “loose” happens when the rear tires lose grip slide around, trying to overtake the front wheels. When oversteering, the vehicle will feel like it’s about to spin, and will do so of the driver isn’t fast or skilled enough to “catch” it back.
A good example of oversteering is drifting, where drivers purposefully induce oversteer to set the rear sideways, and then maintain and control this state with counter-steering and accelerator control.
This Supra snaps into oversteer and the rear wheels overtake the front wheels, sending the car in a spin
Understeer:
Understeer, also known as “push” happens when the front tires lose grip in a turn, causing the vehicle to turn only slightly or not at all compared to the steering input. Turning the steering wheel further makes the front tires slip even more. An understeering vehicle will plow ahead instead of turning, usually sending you straight on to meet unfriendly obstacles, such as trees, fences, cliffs, or pedestrians.
This Civic goes into understeer and plows straight instead of turning
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Tags: control, drift, drifting, handling, over steer, oversteer, under steer, understeer |
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Very enlightening and beneficial to someone whose been out of the circuit for a long time.
- Kris
how many hours of Gran Turismo 3 did you clock before writing this article?
suggest you folks take this sorry excuse for an article offline, lest members of the international motorsport community chance upon this and send the impression of Singapore Motorsports further down the drain than it already is!
your graphic examples of Civic to understeer, Supra oversteer? “By nature, rear wheel drive cars will be prone to oversteer and front wheel drive cars will tend to understeer.”???
the general Singapore public is already misled as it is when it comes to driving, and this article continues to mislead the way to spawn another generation of Hamilton-wannabees and 86ers!
“Over- and understeer depend on a lot of factors such as weight distribution, whether the car is front or rear wheel drive, the presence or absence or anti-sway bars and the size and type of tires.” – you forgot the number one factor – driver input!
Understeer and Oversteer are states of traction during different phases in a corner – the drivetrain layout of a car is only a second order issue. Any car, FR, FF, MR or what have you, will understeer based on entry speed and trajectory… at the same time, almost any car will oversteer given the right (or wrong) driver inputs (and no, this does not mean yanking the handbrake!)
“As seen earlier, you will want to avoid slamming on the brakes when oversteering, but doing so when understeering will catch back the situation…” – you got to be jokin… this will cause snap oversteer in a marginal traction situation, which is likely so since the car is already out of balance!
“Without going in the details, putting a sway bar on the front axle will help decrease oversteer, and a rear sway bar will help reduce understeer.” – please show us how to put a rear sway bar on a Civic so that my girlfriend’s auntie’s neighbour’s son’s classmate can turn his run-of-the-mill saloon into the cornering monster of 99-bends, please…
The other sorry article of “Becoming a racecar driver” or something seems to be offline – that’s good, this one should follow suit.
Keep up the good work tracking COE results =>
Hi Cougar,
Thanks for the candid comment! We’ll take the advice to heart and update our content accordingly.
A side note: We’re thrilled to receive feedback! Keep it coming!