It helps you power out of corners, so it does help you when you lose grip to some extent (and in a way that no traction control or driving god could ever do), just not when you're already 90 degrees to the road.

Go learn your lessons on an airfield, not on the internet.

 

Oversteer with S2000?
this can be fun:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apVepGHjU3c[/media]

but honestly due to steering limitations it's not the best car for drifting.
(powerwise it has anought grunt)

 

Load transfer is the fundamental thing to always consider with regard to adjusting the car.

Classic example as has already been stated is lifting off - which transfers load off the rear onto the front. So less grip at the rear, more at the front... often resulting in the rear being overpowered and the car spinning away merrily.

Now different LSD designs and setup give different behaviour in the transition areas where one or both of the rear wheel slip angles is near breakaway. So they affect the transition areas (as do dampers).

You'll hear people say a 'better' LSD makes it easier to steer with the throttle. What is actually happening is that the LSD is smoothing the transition area with the slip on the rear tyres giving a larger window within which the driver can tranfser load to adjust the car.

Conversely you'll hear some people hit understeer after fitting better LSD. In that case more load is on the front tyres - if before the rear was near it's limit it'll respond to the slightest sideways slip angle as you turn in. Now if the LSD has the rears operating at a lower overall slip angle at that point the rear will actually require more to turn. Or to put it another way - the rear could tolerate less load to behave the same as before... less rear load meaning more front loading so potentially more front grip. Of course that means the driver transferring more load forward.

So changes to the setup of the car change the limit of what you can do with each individual tire depending on what load it has on it. But to find the limit it always comes down to the driver moving the available load between the tires.

When you're making throttle changes to adjust the car, you're really adjusting the load transfer. It's the same with the brakes and the steering - brakes being easy to grasp, but steering moves the load side to side... and to a degree front to back depending on the relative compliance of the springing (which includes the anti roll bars).

Learn to understand driving thinking of the load transfer (spending at least a day burning rubber with Don Palmer being one of the good routes), then you'll be able to react and adapt to whatever the car is doing under you. Then you've far more chance of deciding whether the steady state and transitional behaviour suits what you want... and perhaps changing things on the car to make it suit you.

Whatever you do don't expect to learn this by reading on a forum then experimenting on public roads. Insurance rates are high enough on the S2000 already without increasing the accident rate.

-Brian.

 

Belgian S2K owner having some fun at a roundabout

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A_03ISh7ow

 

Lifting when a slide starts is often a bad idea, for the exact reason Brian states.
Back off a little, catch it with the steering, and get back ON the power SLIGHTLY to get weight on the driven wheels