Jackal Drifting in Infinite Warfare

The SetDef A-Jak is pretty fast at turning, so after you get behind them it can be difficult to stay behind them, at least without boosting. When I boost behind them, I release the movement keys and start drifting past the engines. I use this opportunity for a fly-by attack on them, but it'd be even better if I could stop drifting and stay behind the engines to get a more stable aim.

After doing some analysis of drifting, it seems that when I stop accelerating/decelerating, the Jackal drifts, but when I'm accelerating forward/backward all drift is immediately suspended. By that I mean the Jackal immediately goes in the direction it's pointing, and the drift starts decaying in the background: if I accelerate only for a short amount of time and then stop, the drift in the original direction (not where I'm pointing anymore) continues, and if I continue accelerating for longer than it takes for the original drift to decay, when I stop accelerating I'm not drifting in the old direction.

Accelerating towards/away from the engines of an A-Jak seems to keep me behind them instead of drifting away, but I'd like to know whether there are any other factors that affect drifting so that I can use them to my advantage as well -- IW has other hidden functionality (e.g. tapping boost while moving left/right causes the Jackal to do a quick dodge to the left/right), so I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.