In Assetto Corsa you can differentiate between 3 classes of drift cars:

A - Beginner drift cars (Toyota AE86 Drift) (Less than 300 BHP)



B - Street drift Cars (BMW M3 E30 Drift, M3 E92 Drift, Supra MKIV Drift) (Between 300 - 600 BHP)



C - Pro drift cars (WDT Pro pack, VDC Pack, DCGP Pack) (Over 800 BHP)


DCGP S8 RX7

WDT Silvia S15

VDC E46 HGK

Most servers online feature street drift cars, as they are moderately easy to get into, yet hard to master.
Beginner drift cars have less setup options than pro drift cars.

If you are starting to learn how to drift, I'd advise you to avoid drifting road cars like Mercedes AMG GT. Use a drift car instead. Drift cars have one big advantage over road cars - they have much bigger maximum steering angle thus it's much easier to countersteer and control the slide.

Road cars like below shouldn't be used by beginners.

You should strive to use as little gears as possible (max 4), as changing gears during drifting makes it harder to control the car.

Best gearing is when it's long enough to not constantly bounce back from the rev limiter, yet short enough, so the RPMs are in the high range at all times.

Below optimal gear settings for Pro drift car. Notice how long gearing is set. You can drive pretty much all of the track on the 2nd gear.



Compound

On Kunos cars, tyres differ based on their grip, going from most grippy to least grippy:

US, SS, S, M, H, - full slicks (not usable in drifting)

SM - semi-slicks

ST - street

SV - Street 90s

Generally you should use tyres with least grip possible, as that makes drifting much easier. For instance, for M3 E30 the best tyres are SV, while most players go with racing SM tyres, which don't let tyres lose traction.

Pressure
Base of pressure setup should be the sidekick app. It's a must have for Assetto Corsa. Download it and enter settings by clicking hamburger button on the right of the app:

On the image above you can see tyre pressures set as delta from ideal. +3.4 means, that you need to increase pressure by 3 psi, to arrive at ideal tyre pressure. For drifting, you should strive to have +0 +0 on your front tyres for best grip, and more than -4 on your rear tyres. Low tyre pressures on rear tyres will make them grippy which is not optimal for drifting. Too high tyre pressures can make the tyres pop.
Delta values change as you drive, so do at least one full lap, and then adjust pressures.



100 % turbo generates more power - makes the car most oversteery. Generally you should crank up turbo to 100%, although If you can't control your car, you can try to decrease turbo to your liking. Remember that lowering turbo decreases power of your car, which can be a problem in tandems: you'll have trouble catching up other cars, and others will find it harder to chase you without ramming.

Important: If your car is misbehaving, you should first set up diff and suspension settings and decrease turbo only as last resort.

Beware: some pro drift cars have massive turbo lag. VDC Nissan GTR R35 is a book example of such car. You need to kick the clutch to keep RPM high. Drifting such cars is much harder.





Camber
To adjust camber you can use another must-have app which is CamberExtravaganza. On most cars ideal front camber is smaller (slider more to the left) than rear camber (slider more to the right, than on front). The smaller camber, the more sideways grip your car will have, which means the you'll have more grip in corners. You need grippy front tyres; not so much rear tyres.

Increase TOE to make the car turn slower.



It's the most important setting.
Diff power - increasing it makes car more eager to gain angle. If the car is uncontrollable, you should decrease it.

Diff coast - decrease it to make the car eager to switch directions (inertia drift) when coasting (not using gas pedal). Increase it to make the car more stable when coasting.

Diff preload - increase it to make the car more resistant to direction changes at all times. Comes in handy when drifting at high speeds (>120 km/h)



wheel rate
If the car oversteers too easily: increase front wheel rates and decrease rear wheel rates
If the car understeers: decrease front wheel rates and increase rear wheel rates

ARB
Increasing rear ARB creates oversteer
Increasing front ARB creates understeer


Brake bias
In drifting, we want the brake to induce oversteer, to rotate the car more effectively close to walls.
Feel free to decrease the value.

You can always see what other people used on their setups. Activate "setup exchange" in CSP for more setups: