Burnouts are for most people a pointless yet exciting activity but unlike the simplicity of the procedure in an automatic car, turning your rear tires into smoke with a manual requires a more careful approach.

That’s why Engineering Explained created this video tutorial, showing how to safely destroy a set of rear tires without burning your clutch, damaging your beloved car or ending up on one of those YouTube Fail videos.

Burnouts are used by drag racers as a very effective way of bringing the tire temperatures up to the desired levels, in order to maximize grip during the launch.

Apart from the required coordination of your feet, a burnout in a manual car also demands your attention on what revs should you dump the clutch; too many of them and the clutch is gone, too little and you end up stalling the car.

Of course, having a car with lots of torque from low revs makes burnouts an easier task but that doesn’t mean that cars with smaller, revvier engines like this Honda S2000 can’t really do it as demonstrated on the videos linked below.

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