Assetto Corsa Drift Setup Guide: Beginner's Edition

E30 Drift.jpg
BMW E30 drift spec. Images: @MadMat
The world of drifting in Assetto Corsa is as vibrant and populated as ever. Here are some of the basic setup tips to help you nail those slides and reverse entries!

Assetto Corsa is a sim with many qualities and disciplines. One of the more popular ones is drifting, which is actually part of the sim in its stock form. Compared to circuit racing, this requires different setup tweaks, of course, so we decided to put together a short guide for the basics.

For this short guide, I will be using the drift spec BMW E30 available in the base version of the game. There are hundreds of cars available externally, but for this beginner's guide, the drift spec E30 is the best place to start. I have also downloaded the updated E30 liveries from OverTake community member MadMat.

As well as the E30, we will be using the basic 'Drift' track included in Assetto Corsa. Other tracks are available, but this is the best starting point.

E30 Drift Highlands.jpg

BMW E30 drifting at Highlands.

Practise On The Base Setup​

One mandatory adjustment, even with the base setup, is to make sure you are on 'Street 90s' tyres. Anything more than that and you won't be able to break traction easily enough for the amount of power the E30 has.

The base setup of the drift spec E30 is not too bad. It is not perfect, of course, but usable. If you are new to drifting, then a fancy setup will make you a pro in a few hours. Get out on track and throw the car around for an hour or so and learn how much it does or does not slide, what gear you need to be in and, most importantly, which camera angle you like most for drifting.

There are camera adjustments you can make within Content Manager to make the camera turn as you go sideways. This can be difficult to get used to at first however, so we recommend just simply jumping into a practice session and getting to grips with the car.

Drifting Technique​

You may think that you need maximum angle, and aggressive sawing at the wheel to catch a good drift. It is quite the opposite, however. To start with, focus on simply breaking traction and catching a slight slide. Build it up with more speed and progress the angle accordingly. Once you found your limit, practise this more and more and you will eventually make it around the bend sideways.

BMW E30 3.jpg

BMW E30 sideways.

Beginner's Drift Setup​

The setup I have created for you is from three hours of testing and going through the trial and error process to see what works and what doesn't in 2024. The game has evolved a lot and a lot of the setup guides from six years ago aren't much use anymore.

For reference, I am using a Thrustmaster T300rs with the Ferrari edition wheel rim. I use 900 degrees of rotation and my force feedback settings within the MyThrustmaster app are also listed below.

SettingPercentage
Constant100%
Damper100%
Periodic100%
Spring100%
Overall Strenght Of Forces85%
Rotation Angle900°

image_2024-06-21_163400075.png

2024 BMW E30 Drift Setup: Beginner

Starting at the top, the aero settings have been left the same. You do not usually get enough speed for these settings to make any noticeable difference at all. If you are planning to drift at much higher speeds in the future on longer tracks, then consider adjusting these accordingly.

Next on the setup sheet is the car's alignment settings. These are the most important sets of figures at your disposal for drifting. Starting with the camber numbers, the front wheels are set at 2.4 and the rear wheels are at 0.5. The toe angle is also imperative for keeping the car stable mid-slide. The front wheels are set at 20 and the rear wheels are set at just 5.

The damper settings have been kept the same as the baseline setup. Adjusting these can give you a significant change in handling. However, for a beginner step that is designed for you to edit and change to your liking, there was no need to edit these. Play and mess around with them yourselves to learn the setup and find what works for you!

The final element of this beginner's setup is the tyre compound and the corresponding pressures. 'Street 90s' are an essential addition to this setup and pressuring the front with 31 PSI and the rear with 34 PSI seems to work the best for the power output of the BMW E30.

What do you think of our beginner-friendly BMW E30 drifting guide? Let us know over on X @OverTake_gg or down in the comments below!
About author
Connor Minniss
Website Content Editor & Motorsport Photographer aiming to bring you the best of the best within the world of sim racing.

Comments

Nice!
Could you also give us your AC ffb settings?
Axis, FFB and CSP FFB Tweaks.
And ofc if you changes the car's individual ffb multi on the track, this too :)
 
I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't drift at all in AC. My wheel (T500) is way to slow, even without any dampening, etc. Before the wheel does anything, I'm already spun out. It's like a huge delay between the FFB and what I see on screen. And I already drive without vsync on a 120 Hz Monitor.

I have no problems drifting in Richard Burns Rallye or even in real life (Wintertime in an Audi A4 Quattro is fun)
 
Last edited:
Premium
I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't drift at all in AC. My wheel (T500) is way to slow, even without any dampening, etc. Before the wheel does anything, I'm already spun out.

I have no problems drifting in Richard Burns Rallye or even in real life (Wintertime in an Audi A4 Quattro is fun)
Have you tried boosting the sensitivity on the wheel?
 
I'm using a lut for perfectly linear response
Not wanting to burst that bubble, but the measuring of the linearity is pretty off, since it's not measuring the ffb strength linearity against a constant resistance while not moving (which would be what you feel in your hands), like putting a luggage scale on the wheel and measuring something like 25% ffb = 2 kg, 50% ffb = 4 kg, 100% ffb = 8 kg.

No, it's measuring how far your wheel rotates on its own, when giving it a short pulse.
Who says the friction of the wheelbase is perfectly linear?

My Moza R12 is measured to change its linearity completely, depending on what I set for damper, friction and inertia.
But 25/50/100% ffb always feel absolutely identical, when holding it in place.

LUT generator is a fancy and well programmed tool, but I really wouldn't recommend it to be used, sadly.


Feel free to post your settings, maybe I'll be able to find the issue for the wheel reacting too slowly to drift properly.
 
Last edited:
I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't drift at all in AC. My wheel (T500) is way to slow, even without any dampening, etc. Before the wheel does anything, I'm already spun out.
Same. I have 160 hours in AC, the vast majority of it spent fiddling with the FFB and still nothing.
 
Same. I have 160 hours in AC, the vast majority of it spent fiddling with the FFB and still nothing.
That is so weird. My T500 has no resistance to countersteering inputs and spins super fast when I let it go in drifting conditions, no matter which game I'm using. That was one of the main reasons I upgraded to the T500, it behaves like a real steering wheel in that regard. I don't know how to help you solve the problem, but it "should" work great for this.
 
Very interesting, though not my normal ball game.
I would've thought negative toe values, but the explanation of value settings combined delivering stabilization for continued drifting makes some kind of sense I think. Quite an eye opener here.
Most drifting I've had is VR racing classic rally cars at the playpen grounds in DR2.0..... i.e.apart from being tossed around and completely taken apart in an AC Nordschleife online lobby a couple of years ago, filled with extremely skilled drifters, driving circles with me in their Mercedes 190E 2.5 EVOs or Yellowbirds while speeding through the bends, almost putting Stephan Rozer's 1987 display to shame - where before this I thought I had enough with my playground drifting in my driving instructor's 1987 BMW E30 320i, lots of drift control in both dry and wet - but I could pack the old pride in the grave immediately.
I probably won't get the time for it among my to-do's of old wishes, now I finally have some sim time again, but interesting reading that I will remember the next time I'll go that path.
 
Last edited:
View attachment 764854
View attachment 764856
No worries at all, hopefully, this helps you! :)
Not me directly, I went from a very old Thrustmaster 200° to G27 to TS-PC to CSW 2.5 and now Moza R12.
I'm "the ffb guy" for my racing team, so I was just curious what you are using to drift with the T300.

110% gain are clipping like hell, but it makes a lot of sense for drifting, since you don't need to precisely feel the grip, but instead need a quickly turning wheel.
I'd say "Road effect" is a bit much, but at 110% gain it's not as pronounced due to clipping.
Kerbs is just a Sine-wave vibration, when the surface.ini says "kerb = 1". The visibly 3D kerbs are correctly calculated into the ffb, so the kerbs effect is mainly to know the track limits on "paint kerbs", like the top left apex of Eau Rouge.

Anyway, sorry for the blahblah. What you should really try though:
1. disable "Output real steering forces to wheel". It's only meant for mod cars that actually use it and are build to use it, like the IER Oldbac Kalana. For other cars, it's just an ffb gain multiplier that "does something" but I'm not sure what. It's not doing anything useful though. Just adjust the car-specific-multi if you want to dial in a car (or the menu gain for overall baseline).

2. Reduce the gain to 65% and then put "Range compression" from 100% to 250-400%. This boosts low ffb forces without clipping high ffb forces. This should basically achieve what 110% gain with 2.0% min force do, but without the clipping that comes with it.

3. Try the new "Custom soft lock" in the ffb tweaks. It works really great with my R12. No bouncing when hitting the max. rotation of the simulated car, but a firm resistance. Not important for the E30 Drift, since it has 900°, but if you'd set your T300 to 1080° or use a car with just 800° or so, the Custom soft lock will be quite cool :)

My recommendations:
1719447267675.png


1719447196741.png
 
Last edited:
Premium
ffb is very car dependent in AC. so many mods by Patreon guys have the steering so soft that ffb hardly works. best cars to setup ffb on are default kunos cars. also logitech g29 g293 work great out of the box with no need to fiddle with ffb (but the opposite in AMS2) , while more expensive wheels for some reason need lots of setting up.
 

Latest News

Article information

Author
Connor Minniss
Article read time
3 min read
Views
1,585
Comments
13
Last update

What is your next sim related purchase

  • DLC

    Votes: 163 25.8%
  • Full game

    Votes: 157 24.8%
  • CPU

    Votes: 78 12.3%
  • Graphics card

    Votes: 118 18.7%
  • Other PC related hardware

    Votes: 70 11.1%
  • Pedals

    Votes: 101 16.0%
  • Wheels

    Votes: 135 21.4%
  • Wheel base

    Votes: 101 16.0%
  • Monitors

    Votes: 64 10.1%
  • Something else?

    Votes: 65 10.3%
Back
Top