How to drift in Forza Horizon 4

Drifting in Forza Horizon 4 can be highly entertaining, but it does take a bit of skill and experience. This especially rings true if you intend on hitting the three star marker in any of the Drift Zones that are found throughout Great Britain. So, how do you exactly drift in Forza Horizon 4? Let’s go over what you need to do, starting with the settings that you should have set up.

First off, it’s important to make sure that the shifting settings in Forza Horizon 4 are set to manual. Yes, you could drift in the game with this setting on automatic — however, you won’t be able to get “Great Drifts” consistently or easily. To change this setting, go to the Difficulty settings. Then, set Shifting to Manual or Manual with Clutch. If you’re brand new to manual shifting, we recommend using the former.

Second, make sure that the vehicle that you use has rear wheel drive (RWD). You can see whether a car has RWD by checking the bottom right part of the stats section in your Collection.

Once you’ve met the two requirements above, hit the road with any RWD car. If you’re new to manual shifting and rear wheel drive cars, you may notice that the vehicle will be moving very differently, if not erratically. What you will want to do is as you accelerate with the car, hit B on the controller to shift the gears up. Just for reference, you can press X to shift the gears down.

As you shift up and accelerate faster, the car will be move, sway, and turn more often, It’s at this point where you should see that the game recognizes that you are drifting in Forza Horizon 4. A good visual indicator is when you see thin layers of smoke coming out of the car. When you see this, it’s an indicator that you are on the right path for drifting.

Keep in mind though that consistent drifts take time to master, particularly if you want to hit three stars in Forza Horizon 4. Skill really comes into play when you need to keep the car on the road while drifting, as it’s very easy for beginners to lose their steering and fall off while starting out on manual. Make sure that you have a healthy balance between speed and gears.

Also, cars matter with regards to drifting. Generally speaking, vehicles with higher horsepower will have a better chance of hitting Great and Ultimate Drifts. Once you nail down all of these finer points, you should be well on your way to mastering drifts in Forza Horizon.