Forza Horizon 4: How to Drift for Beginners

Drifting is one of the most popular and flashiest driving styles known today. Drifting requires a set of driving techniques that aim to intentionally induce slip on the car’s rear wheels to achieve sideways angles that not only look cool but also feel amazing to execute correctly. When drifting, you are neither in control nor out of control. You are constantly treading that fine line between clearing corners sideways while looking cool or losing control and crashing into a steel barrier – which isn’t that cool.

Best Beginner Car To Use For Drifting

If you are new to the game, chances are you won’t have any extra cars except for the ones the game provides you with early on. Sadly, out of the first three cars you are presented with at the start of the game, only the Dodge Charger R/T is drift-worthy in stock form. That’s mainly because of rear-wheel drive and the powerful V8 under the hood. If you haven’t read the Forza Horizon 4: The Best Starter Cars Ranked on the PlayerAssist website, I suggest you do so right now to find out why.

Although we mentioned that the Dodge Charger R/T is the most drift-worthy beginner car if you wait for just two more races into the game and you will be gifted a much more powerful rally car. These cars are even better than the Dodge Charger R/T for drifting because, unlike the Dodge Charger R/T, these rally cars can be tuned in a variety of ways to suit drifting right away.

Therefore, the better car to start practicing drifting with is the Blue Mica ’05 Subaru WRX STI. (Or any one of the rally cars, really.)

Drifting In Forza Horizon 4

Although Forza Horizon 4 is more of an arcade-style racing game than a full-on simulator, the Drifting Physics in Forza Horizon 4 is still surprisingly on-point. The developers managed to make Drifting in Forza Horizon 4 fun without becoming overly technical and difficult. It won’t matter if you use a keyboard, a game controller, or even a wheel.

What matters most is that you get the theory down, practice enough times, and gain a feel for it. After all, drifting is something that you don’t think about. You just feel it.

How To Drift In Forza Horizon 4

There are several ways to Drift in Forza Horizon 4. These are:

1. Power Over Drift
2. E-Brake Drift
3. Braking Drift
4. Inertia Drift/Scandinavian Flick

Let’s take a look at them one by one:

Power Over

A Power Over Drift is simply using the car’s power and 100% steering lock to spin the rear wheels and turn the car around. This type of Drift is most used when coming from a stop. 180-degree turnarounds and 90-degree turns can be initiated using the Power Over method.

1. Position your car parallel to the direction you want your car to end up in.

2. Turn the wheel towards the direction you want to go. Keep the wheel fully locked.

3. 100% throttle while keeping the steering angle fully locked.

The rear tires will quickly lose traction and slide.

E-Brake Drift

This type of Drifting method is the quickest way to slide the rear wheels. This works because the E-Brake (emergency brake or handbrake) causes the rear wheels to lock up instantly, which makes the car lose traction at the rear wheels.

1. Position your car towards the outside of the corner:

2. While approaching the corner, turn the wheel towards the direction of the corner, and hold the E-brake and steering angle for a second. The rear wheel should start to point the car towards the inside of the turn. Like this:

3. Quickly apply 100% throttle and counter-steer (steer to the opposite direction of the turn) to keep the drift going:

Braking Drift

This drifting technique employs the foot brake instead of the hand brake to initiate a drift. Hard braking causes the weight of the car to transfer towards the front. This causes the rear wheels to lose traction due to the reduced load or friction on the road.

1. Approach the corner at full throttle:

2. Once your car is closer to the corner, immediately use the brakes and keep holding it while using a 100% steering lock.

3. Quickly follow up with a 100% throttle, and then counter-steer once the rear begins to slide. Like this:

Inertia Drift/Scandinavian Flick/Kansei Dorifuto

This last drifting method is the most famous in terms of pop culture. This is entirely the fault of that scene in the popular Anime “Initial D” where the protagonist flicks his Toyota AE86 Trueno right-to-left to initiate a drift.

And that is simply how this method is done. All you need to do is turn hard one way, then quickly turn hard the other way. A slide is initiated due to the left-to-right weight transfer which overloads the tires’ grip. This causes the tires to lose traction and sends the car into a slide/drift.

1. While approaching a turn at full speed, position your car towards the inside of the corner:

2. Let go of the throttle and quickly flick your car to the right:

3. Then flick back to the left:

4. Lastly, apply a 100% throttle and counter-steer to keep the slide going.

Drifting Your Way To Victory

Like any other art form, there is no singular way to Drift. There are multiple techniques and methods available for different situations. Try all of these methods to see what works well for you and the corner you wish to tackle.

Drifting is probably the most enjoyable driving method in Forza Horizon 4. The feeling of getting the controls down just right and holding a slide for long periods gives players an oddly satisfying feeling that is very addicting. Forza Horizon 4’s developers definitely got the physics just right to be both accessible and repeatable without being too technical for new or even veteran players.