Can You Drift in iRacing

No, iRacing does not currently offer any sort of drifting series. iRacing’s primary focus is road and oval racing. If you want to drift then I suggest you look into other sims that offer a better experience, such as Assetto Corsa.

Why Can’t You Drift in iRacing?

At the time of writing this, iRacing currently only offers four different disciplines for racing.

  • Road
  • Oval
  • Dirt Road
  • Dirt Oval

Whilst you can get sideways in the dirt road series, it is less than ideal in a racing scenario and I wouldn’t exactly classify it as drifting… more just slipping and sliding around in the mud. I don’t think you’d be too satisfied with it if you’re after an authentic drifting experience.

iRacing is one of the best sims available at what they do, and what they do well is world-class online competitive racing, in the four categories mentioned above. The physics and cars are simply not set up for drifting. The road cars are designed to stick to the road and hold as much traction as possible, whilst going as fast as possible. This is the complete opposite of what you want from a drifting setup.

There are plenty of other sims available that offer both single-player and online multiplayer drifting experiences. They are cheap (or even free) and offer some great mods, especially for those of you that are JDM fans, like me. Keep iRacing for the fantastic road and oval racing that it offers, and pick up another sim to get sideways on.

What Sims Can I Drift In?

If you want to start drifting, then there are two sims that I’ll recommend for you to start with.

  1. Assetto Corsa
  2. Live for Speed

If I could only pick one, it would be Assetto Corsa.

Assetto Corsa

Out of the box, Assetto Corsa presents a few basic drifting opportunities with a dedicated drift track and drift cars that are easy to get sideways consistently and stay in control once you have a bit of seat time. The real beauty of drifting on Assetto Corsa comes to light when you start to install car and track mods.

After you’ve installed some popular mods and you feel somewhat confident in your ability, I would highly suggest that you go and check out the various multiplayer community-hosted drifting servers that Assetto Corsa has to offer.

If you’ve ever wanted to tandem down Mt. Akina, then you’re able to do exactly that. With the strong modding community, Assetto Corsa is, in my opinion, the best experience when it comes to drifting simulations.

Live for Speed

I’ll be honest in that I don’t have a lot of seat time in Live for Speed. It was originally released in 2002 so the game is approaching its 20th anniversary at the moment. They released their latest update in December 2021, so it is far from a forgotten sim.

As far as I know, there is a small but very dedicated community behind the game, and the official multiplayer servers are pretty sparse. With that said though, there are a lot of real-life drifters, like Taylor Ray, that swear by the physics of it, and that it feels much more realistic than Asseto Corsa.

At the end of the day, Life for Speed is free so you’ve got nothing to love by giving it a go!

Wrap Up

Unfortunately, iRacing does not currently offer any dedicated drifting, and trying to drift any of the current cars on iRacing is an underwhelming experience, as it should be. iRacing is designed for various road and oval disciplines of racing, and at the moment it should only be used for that.

If you are wanting to get into sim drifting then check out Assetto Corsa and its massive, and very impressive modding community. Assetto Corsa is my #1 recommendation for drifting sims.

Life for Speed is another sim that you can check out that is highly regarded by real-world drifters as having physics that are very close to the real thing. It’s free too!

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