As you know from reading Oversteer, Understeer, and 4 Wheel Drift, Oversteer is what happens when your rear tires lose traction before the front tires while the car is turning. This causes the car to begin to spin and, if not corrected, the car will spin out completely.

Power Oversteer
When most people think of Oversteer, they think of a very powerful rear-wheel drive vehicles spinning the rear tires by the sheer power of the engine. This is known as Power Oversteer. This is a typical (and amusing) means to induce Oversteer, but it is only one way to get your car sideways.

Weight Shift and Traction Imbalance
The key to oversteer is an imbalance of traction between the front and rear wheels. When a car’s rear tires lose traction in a corner before the front tires, Oversteer will always result. Why the rear tires have lost traction is irrelevant - all they (and you) care about is that they no longer have the necessary grip to keep the car in line. In the example above of Power Oversteer, the rear tires have lost traction before the front tires because their available grip has been used up by acceleration force. By turning and trying to accelerate, you ask too much of the tires and they begin to slip.

The other way to induce Oversteer is through a weight transfer. When you turn, the weight of the car is shifted to the outside wheels. When you accelerate, the weight of the car shifts to the rear wheels. And when you brake, the weight of the car shifts to the front wheels. Tires gain grip when they have more force (e.g. weight) applied on them, and lose grip when they lose this force. When you brake, you transfer a tremendous amount of weight forward onto the front wheels. This makes the rear of the car very light, and the rear wheels consequently lose a lot of traction. The front tires, however, have now gained a significant amount of traction because of all the weight that has shifted forward (all of the traction that the rear tires lost, to be precise). This means that if you are turning after a forward weight shift, you’re front tires may have far more traction than your rear tires, and your car may begin to oversteer.

Lift Throttle Oversteer
One example of such a weight transfer is Lift Throttle Oversteer. Say you are going through a corner at neutral throttle at maximum cornering grip. Both your front and rear tires have equal traction, and the car is turning just fine. Now imagine that you suddenly lift off of the throttle completely. You have now removed the accelerating force pushing back on the rear tires, as well as caused the engine to start engine braking. Both of these phenomenon cause the weight of the car to shift forward dramatically. Now your front tires have a lot of traction, but your rear tires have lost a lot of traction. Since your rear tires were already at the limit of traction previously, they now no longer have the grip necessary to keep the car turning and your car will spin.

Brake Oversteer
Brake Oversteer works on exactly the same principles as Lift Throttle Oversteer, only the input is from the brake pedal, rather than the throttle. Say you are cornering aggressively and decide to slam on the brake pedal. Doing so transfers the weight of the car forward on to the front wheels, giving them traction, and off of the rear wheels, robbing them of traction. You now have an imbalance of grip between the front and rear tires. If the rear tires lose too much traction, they will no longer be able to keep the car turning and your car will spin.

Correcting Lift Throttle and Brake Oversteer
The techniques for correcting Lift Throttle and Brake Oversteer are identical. Both situations are the result of an improper weight transfer, so both must be corrected by transferring the weight back where it is needed.

The first thing to do in any Oversteer is to countersteer. This term should be familiar to you from Oversteer, Understeer, and 4 wheel drift [link]. If you don’t counter steer, any other actions will be useless.

The next step is to transfer the weight of the car back to the rear wheels. The best way to do this is with the throttle. Remember, when you are accelerating, the weight of the car shifts to the rear wheels. Though it may seem like an odd concept, this holds true even when the car is doing more erratic maneuvers like sliding sideways through a corner towards that wall you REALLY don’t want to hit. When tires slip, they have lost some traction that they would otherwise have if they were not slipping, but they have not lost all traction completely. Therefore, you can still apply forces through those wheels while they are slipping.

So, to transfer weight back to the rear wheels, you should give the car some throttle. The key word here is SOME throttle. As outlined above, too much gas will put you into Power Oversteer. Then you will have entered a downward spiral that will end in that wall you didn’t want to hit. This is a bad thing, so don’t give car too much gas. Instead, give it a little bit of gas. You want just enough gas to shift some of the weight back to the rear wheels to help them regain traction.

How much gas is a little bit of gas? This depends entirely on your car, your engine, your tires, and your car’s throttle response. Less powerful cars can get away with more gas in this situation, as it is harder to induce power oversteer (make no mistake, though, even the crappiest rear-wheel drive car will easily be able to induce power oversteer in this situation). For my Miata, I like to think in terms of pressure on the throttle, rather than any given throttle position. When I need to shift power rearward, and increase my pressure on the pedal. This moves the pedal just a little bit, but just enough. Your car may be different, so your best bet is to practice in an open space off of the road and away from any other cars or objects.