Interesting read, thanks R!
I think Cosworth may be looking at manufacturing in India initially rather than a market for their performance parts. I think they are still looking to sell mainly to OEM but I could be wrong!
Regarding your question on high quality track tyres on drift cars, well here goes...
When people are learning to drift they get through a great many tyres. Many choose to use tyres from srapyards / tyre bins outside garages etc etc. This way they don't have to pay anything to get them and have tyres that may well last a good few laps on their beginner circuits.
As their skill level progresses they will be able to tell the difference between the better tyres and the ones that are rubbish.
People will always try and put the best possible pair of tyres they have on the front wheels. This helps reduce understeer and makes for an easier car to control. In an ideal world you want the car to break away from traction smoothly and for that reason tyres with a similar grip level is desirable (we are starting to move away from the beginner zone now where any tyre was considered fine, or crap tyres with high pressures were used in low powered cars).
A nice set of tyres with similar or the same chariteristics front to back will transform the way the car drifts. It will feel much more controllable!
Now start upping the speeds and you need more turn in grip at higher speeds and in turn the rear has to remain balanced with the front. You can see why perormance tyres ar starting to et used more and more.
If we start to look at what a tyre needs to be able to do at this intermediate to advanced stage of drifting we will understand tyre choice a little better, so...
Tyres need to be firstly available in the size we need. Sounds obvious but its harder than you might think! I prefer 215/40/16 on my chosen wheel which is a Escort Cosworth 8 inch rim. This is not the most common size around! Others may prefer to use a 18 or 19 inch wheel on their drift car. Other guys may be using 14 or 15 inch wheels. I often recomemend for new drifters that 185/60/14 seems to be the most commone second hand tyre that you will find so it makes sense to use these for easy avilability of rubber! When you start increaseing sizes to larger and lower profiles you will find that the choices reduce and they tend to be higher performance tyres.
We want good grip, both front and rear ( even though the cars sliding its still gripping to an extent of we would have no control over it!). Add to this that we need something with a firm tyre wall to stop it deflecting on turn in and slides. We also want a tyre than generates maximum smoke, this tends to be the softer compounds. All these again push us towards the track day tyre market. When twin drifting you want good grip away off the line so again a good tyre is desirable.
A tyre can tick all the right boxes but there is one more key thing to look at now. Delamination.
Many tyes have problems when they are subjected to the extreme temperatures from drifting and will delaminate or the tyre traed will come off in chunks. These tyres are avoided!!
So we now start to look at whats available. The trackday tyres in the UK have several price ranges but i'd say that the £40 - £50 is the cheaper end of the market. You'll get Federal 595's here which are a great choice, also some Maxis tyres and of course the new kids on the block that are getting good feedback the Neuton tyres.
I usually go for Eagle F1's for my tyres if I can, a little more expensive at around £75 to £80 a corner but great tyres and I can pick them up locally secondhand cheap of free to I can practise on the same tyres as much as I want.
The range extends up towards and well over the £100 mark. Some people choose the better tyres from the Federal range here or even Toyos R888's for the front.
The real top end of the tyre market, eg the Dunlop track slicks etc are not commonly used in the drift championships as far as I know or have seen.
In general people will use whatever tyres that they have to use. Those with deep pockets or sponsors will usually have better tyres but they will still be wiling to go drifting on cheap tyres if they are free! Its all about what you have at the time available in budget, but ask any drifter and they would like to have a set of decent tyres.
Regarding breaking traction.... When most drift cars at competition use in the UK are going to be pushing at least 150 bhp in a featherweight shell, more commonly 200-300 bhp and in some cases up to 700bhp. Breaking traction is not an issue but maintaining control may well be!
This is not to say that big power is always required. The Sierra 5 door in the above pictures has only 91bhp at the rear wheels. By going in very fast, using weight transfer teqniques and never lifting off the accelrator you can still drift at fairly high speeds, although slightly less gripy tyres at the rear or higher tyre pressures may be desirable.
Heres one of the short videos we used for promoting our trackdays at Autosport International show last year. We borrowed Santa Pods demo Skyline to use for the day, you can see it starting the drift on the handbrake going into Gerrards corner at around 130 mph. Needless to say we used good tyres on that!
Any questions you may have just ask! I hope this helps!
And seeing as this is my introduction you'll all get to see me on the video if you watch it
Heres another video, this time with me driving the Cossy at Santa Pod on a little figure 8 track..
nice.flv video by SierraDoughnutter - Photobucket
And a few of the cars I used to work with and how we built / reproduced them...