By I’m not Don Joewon Song or HokiHoshi for that matter… but I’ll be helping you in my own way to teach you how to drift in Forza, and get you sideways. With Forza, everyone knows that Forza only cares about AWD, and this is very apparent in drifting. AWD is stupid controllable and gets more drift points. In this tutorial, I’m not showing you directly how to get amazing drift points (Though if you can follow it, there’s no reason for not being able to!).
When it comes to drifting, all I care about is control. There’s no point in being amazing at one small section and then not being able to do anything else. So with that being said, we’ll be sticking to RWD cars. Let’s get right to it, shall we?
Step 1: The Car.
So you want a drift car. You’re probably being tempted to go over to the Formula Drift or Hoonigan section. Trust me, it’ll just end in spinouts and crashes. The next rookie mistake is to use someone else’s drift tune. While this may be amazing in the beginning, you’ll realise you want to change some things. Then you’ll realise that you can’t and you’re back to step one.
The car is very important… it has to be something you like! I highly recommend that you stay under 280hp for your stock car. For this, I will be using a Nissan Silvia S15 as the Silvias are regarded as one of the best beginner’s drift car in real life.
Step 2: Upgrades
Upgrades may take some time, you’ll realise you like somethings and not others. First things first, drift suspension is a must. While you’re there, why not chuck on race weight reduction and ARBs (Anti-roll bars). Just to give you a little bit more oomph. Get race brakes, it’s the tuning you’ll need. Now in the drivetrain section, you’ll practically want every upgrade. If you can’t get back on the power quick enough, you’ll lose your focus and potentially control. Now, onto tyres and rims…
One misconception that everyone has with drifting is that it’s just losing control and for that, you need no grip. The complete opposite of this is true. You need lots of grip, but not too much as to not be able to break traction. I’ll come back later to the tyre compound and width and see what I like. You do however want as much track width as possible. Stability is key!
Now, all that’s left is aero and appearance. This is where you can go wild. Have as much fun here as you like (rims too!). Aero won’t work as it’s intended when you’re going sideways so it doesn’t really matter what you chuck on. Thankfully for my S15, there’s a lot of customisation. Go ahead and slap a livery on if you want.
Step 3: Tuning
Tuning is essential. Your car probably feels pretty slidey as it is now but it’s not that great at holding any slide. The first key thing is to have a locked differential. This will greatly help you keep sliding without one of the tyres suddenly getting grip while the other is still spinning. So chuck the acceleration and deceleration on 100%.
Now with the brakes, this is an optional step. You will be braking a lot in drifting, but you still need to slow down for corners. I like to chuck the braking force on 100% front bias. The reason for this is as you brake with just the front, the car will get lots of grip on the front while leaving the back end quite loose, which will help initiate a drift.
Gears are super important and you will need to play around with them to find your golden gears. You want them to be quite short, like a rally car. You don’t want to be stalling out in a drift nor do you want to be rev banging a lot and not having the speed for some corners. You need to get it just right. Feel free to come back later and play around some more.
I don’t mess around with the damping, springs or ARB settings usually unless I’m troubleshooting. Just make sure that your car is fully slammed with the ride height as low as possible. This helps keep your centre of gravity super low and make you more stable.
If you’re finding it hard to break traction, either add more negative camber at the rear or increase the tire pressure. If this still doesn’t work, downgrade your tire compound or width. And vice versa for the opposite problem.
Step 4: Having The Correct Settings
If you’re trying to drift using automatic, you’re not going to have a very fun time. So there are two options – Manual or Manual w/ clutch. The answer is… either. Manual w/ clutch is much harder as you have to worry about a clutch but it does open more doors on how to drift such as clutch kicking. Manual is perfectly fine too.
I recommend having a controller. Steering wheels and keyboards are totally possible but it’s a bit brave! I highly recommend enabling drift camera. If you go into your HUD and Gameplay settings, you’ll find an option called “Cockpit Drift Camera”. Enable it! I generally use 3rd person, but it’s super fun with drift camera on in first person too. It can also help you judge when your car has lost grip as well as help you see where your car is trying to go.
A little exercise…
You’ve made your drift car! Now you’re excited to go send it around a corner and pray you don’t hit a fiesta. I’ll leave this first part with an exercise for you to do. It’ll help you get the hang of things. Get yourself to the skid pan right outside of the festival. Not the drift zone, but that little doughnut area inside of it.
Try holding a drift around here. Don’t worry if you spin out! Keep trying until you can hold it. Feeling confident? Alright then, here’s a challenge. Try to hold a drift for a couple of laps around the inside of the ring. Don’t go offroad but keep that front bumper as close to the inside edge as possible. Done that? Now do the outside, making sure your rear bumper touches or even hangs over the edge.
Do send me photos of your builds on discord! What did you think of this first part of this series? Let us know down in the comments or on social media. Don’t forget to tell us about requests and we’ll see to them.
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