Drifting is much harder than television might have you think. You need to find precisely the right balance of steering and throttle, then sustain it for as long as necessary. The ability to find that balance, however, is very useful if things go south during a race. As such, my fellow sim racers encouraged me to spend some time getting the hang of it in Assetto Corsa.

The game has a few tools to help with the task – a special track for drifting, and a drifting configuration for certain vehicles, such as the BMW Z4 I’ve been using. The drift configuration should technically make it easier to break the rear tires loose, but that wasn’t exactly my problem. The real problem was keeping them loose, yet in control, as I powerslid around each corner. Needless to say, that didn’t always end as well as I wanted it to.
Everything comes with practice, however, and the more time I put into this, the better I got. There’s still much work to be done, with the end goal being to sustain a 360-degree slide around a small circle marked out on the track – in other words, a donut.
As much as I may make this sound like a chore, if you’re a gearhead, chances are you’ll find sim racing quite enjoyable. Difficult, but immensely rewarding. The frustration of getting it wrong is quickly erased by the feeling of holding that slide, clipping that apex, or demolishing your previous lap times. You could always enable driver assists (automatic gearbox,...