Drifting is a form of art that looks cool watching and even cooler doing. The Forza Horizon series always had more realistic car control and behavior than games like Need for Speed and naturally drifting is a bit more complicated. So if you are new to the game, here’s how to drift in Forza Horizon 4.
Choose the Right Car
Technically you can make any car drift. But some are much easier to learn drifting on than others. It’s important that you get an RWD car no matter the manufacturer or the model though. There are over 700 cars in Forza Horizon 4, but these would be the best drifting cars for you to pick up:
- Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG
- Toyota Supra RZ
- Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat
- Mazda RX-7
After you picked your ride we highly recommend heading to your garage and installing a custom drift tune for your car. You can start learning on a stock car, it may even be better in some way but will increase the learning curve.
In the garage go to the Tunes menu and scroll through the ones presented to you. Those tunes are made by the community and you can understand their purpose from their names in the top left.
Once you learn more about drifting and tuning cars you can upgrade the car yourself and customize all the parts you need. In that case focus on power, handling, and installing drift dedicated parts.
Adjust Controls
There are a few controls that you have to set up in Forza Horizon 4 to learn how to drift easier.
You have to turn off your Traction Control and Stability Control settings in the “Difficulty” menu. Those will impact your performance significantly especially if you want to get good at drifting.
The other setting is the gearbox. For drifting, you will need it in Manual. You can drift in Automatic but you will have less control and fewer cars to choose from to properly drift, as they have different gear levels. For a beginner, you should at least accustom yourself to the Manual layout.
There are drifting techniques involving the clutch using the Manual + Clutch layout. But that’s on the more intermediate side of learning.
Finally, you can customize the button mappings to aid your drift. It’s not like the default ones are bad but you can benefit from some level of personalization especially when it comes to controller deadzones. It’s not necessary, but something for you to play around with.
Start Drifting
Now that you have everything set up, it’s time to learn how to drift in Forza Horizon 4. There are a few steps to that but remember that the most important part of learning is lots of practice. Drifting can’t be learned overnight.
Learn to Drift Without Brakes
The first step to learning drifting is to learn how to slide your car without using anything but steering and throttle. Without the driving assists we mentioned above you will notice that cars will kick their back out much more often when you go into the corner. Take advantage of that and learn to control that slide.
The main part of the exercise is to drive, let go of the throttle, then start steering to the side and applying the throttle heavily to initiate the slide.
From there on your job is to control the slide by either steering or increasing/decreasing the amount of throttle put in. Don’t be afraid to step on the gas but make sure to ease off if you feel that the car is about to spin out. The same goes for the steering angle.
Add Brakes
Occasionally you may have to use brakes to adjust your drift. Let’s say when an NPC car appears on the turn. Try using your brakes to control the speed and angle of your drift much as you did with the throttle.
You can also use a slight amount of braking to initiate a drift but that works mostly at higher speeds.
Drift Using the E-Brake
Now that you got the hang of the basics you can start using the E-Brake. When pressed, the E-Brake will kick your car quite a bit so start by practicing quick 180 degrees turns. Your goal is to keep the car steady throughout the whole turn.
After that, you can start initiating the drift through the E-Brake and use the drifting techniques from before to control the drift. To further improve your drifting mix you can start using the Manual + Clutch layout and start using the clutch to initiate the drift instead of the E-Brake and then use it throughout the drift to give a car an extra kick.
Now that you are familiarized with some of the basic techniques of drifting in Forza Horizon 4 start practicing. Start by drifting in circles or single turns. Then start transitioning from one turn to another.
If you feel like all the instructions are a bit vague, it’s because most of the actual drifting will come from you feeling your car and how it moves to successfully drift.
