When the corners are very, very tight, and there’s hardly any straights, it’s often beneficial to maintain entry speed and get the car rotated in the right direction quickly, assuming you’re capable of recovering the slide at the appropriate time.
Especially downhill where the car needs more front brake bias to stop harder, and that means even more understeer coming into the turn. Snapping into oversteer so you’re pointing the right way, then ending drift when the car’s ready to put that high rpm back into traction, that’s one of the rare occasions where drifting will get through faster. And as you said, it certainly doesn’t make for big showy slides. Even in tarmac rally, they’re floating the car through the turn, not getting its ass way out the side for 20m.
Especially downhill where the car needs more front brake bias to stop harder, and that means even more understeer coming into the turn. Snapping into oversteer so you’re pointing the right way, then ending drift when the car’s ready to put that high rpm back into traction, that’s one of the rare occasions where drifting will get through faster. And as you said, it certainly doesn’t make for big showy slides. Even in tarmac rally, they’re floating the car through the turn, not getting its ass way out the side for 20m.