Nearly all road vehicles are front heavy, but FWD has been dominant in the passenger market for 30 years. PIT works fine on FWD, so the drive wheels aren’t important. Static vs dynamic friction is not the primary mechanic. In fact, the drag from the skidding rear tires is imparting greater force to the road than the rolling front tires because the front tires are nowhere near the limit of traction at straight, steady speed. Think about this: isn’t it hard to do a burnout in most cars? And even if you burn some rubber, it may only be one wheel, or it may only be up to 10 or 20, and it probably only happens in 1st gear. Very few cars can spin the wheels in 2nd, so 3rd-6th is, effectively, impossible. There’s plenty of grip left.
It’s entirely about the timing of the impact and placement of the steer wheels. A police sedan can PIT an SUV that has more weight on its rear axle than the cruiser’s front. A cruiser can pit a Porsche coupe with a rearward weight distribution. A Porsche can PIT another Porsche, as it’s effectively seen in GT racing. Losing front traction, as happens to the PITing vehicle, is very manageable because the steer wheels can be turned to regain and maintain control directly. Losing traction in the rear wheels becomes an inverted pendulum situation because the rears are not steerable. But, as you can practice by tapping your e-brake, a rear slide is self-recovering unless it’s slid past the tipping point where the vehicle is rotating faster than the sliding rear wheels can drag themselves rearward again. Crossing the tipping point is caused by the PITing car’s momentum. I specify tapping the e-brake because a skid in a PIT spin is not simple - the rear wheels are still spinning and are imparting a directional force. A locked rear wheel is a plain skid opposing the direction of travel. A rolling skid means the total force is pointing somewhere between opposite the directional of travel and opposite the direction of the wheel.
There’s plenty of failed PIT maneuver videos for taps that are too light (causing the runner to just wiggle), taps that are too brief (runner wiggles), and taps that are too far forward (runner laterally slides but maintains control). It’s tricky to pull off correctly and many cops do it wrong, which is another main reason it’s banned in many places.
A J-turn is caused by the same physics: imparting a rotational force that overcomes the wheels’ grip, past the tipping point. It doesn’t even start with a slide. By going fast in reverse and turning the wheel, the mass of the car is sent into a powerful rotation because the steer wheels are at the far end of the rotational center. The rear wheels sometimes don’t skid at all at lower speeds. But it still comes down to the same thing: a sideways force causing the “rear” wheels to overtake the “front” wheels
Nearly all road vehicles are front heavy, but FWD has been dominant in the passenger market for 30 years. PIT works fine on FWD, so the drive wheels aren’t important. Static vs dynamic friction is not the primary mechanic. In fact, the drag from the skidding rear tires is imparting greater force to the road than the rolling front tires because the front tires are nowhere near the limit of traction at straight, steady speed. Think about this: isn’t it hard to do a burnout in most cars? And even if you burn some rubber, it may only be one wheel, or it may only be up to 10 or 20, and it probably only happens in 1st gear. Very few cars can spin the wheels in 2nd, so 3rd-6th is, effectively, impossible. There’s plenty of grip left.
It’s entirely about the timing of the impact and placement of the steer wheels. A police sedan can PIT an SUV that has more weight on its rear axle than the cruiser’s front. A cruiser can pit a Porsche coupe with a rearward weight distribution. A Porsche can PIT another Porsche, as it’s effectively seen in GT racing. Losing front traction, as happens to the PITing vehicle, is very manageable because the steer wheels can be turned to regain and maintain control directly. Losing traction in the rear wheels becomes an inverted pendulum situation because the rears are not steerable. But, as you can practice by tapping your e-brake, a rear slide is self-recovering unless it’s slid past the tipping point where the vehicle is rotating faster than the sliding rear wheels can drag themselves rearward again. Crossing the tipping point is caused by the PITing car’s momentum. I specify tapping the e-brake because a skid in a PIT spin is not simple - the rear wheels are still spinning and are imparting a directional force. A locked rear wheel is a plain skid opposing the direction of travel. A rolling skid means the total force is pointing somewhere between opposite the directional of travel and opposite the direction of the wheel.
There’s plenty of failed PIT maneuver videos for taps that are too light (causing the runner to just wiggle), taps that are too brief (runner wiggles), and taps that are too far forward (runner laterally slides but maintains control). It’s tricky to pull off correctly and many cops do it wrong, which is another main reason it’s banned in many places.
A J-turn is caused by the same physics: imparting a rotational force that overcomes the wheels’ grip, past the tipping point. It doesn’t even start with a slide. By going fast in reverse and turning the wheel, the mass of the car is sent into a powerful rotation because the steer wheels are at the far end of the rotational center. The rear wheels sometimes don’t skid at all at lower speeds. But it still comes down to the same thing: a sideways force causing the “rear” wheels to overtake the “front” wheels