No drift mode for Audi Sport

Drift modes are the next big thing in performance cars, but not at Audi, whose Audi Sport performance arm point-blank refuses to consider it.

Everybody from Ford to AMG to Ferrari is giving their cars drift modes, which allow their drivers to simply turn the steering wheel and stand on the accelerator pedal to show off a tyre-frying drift any rally driver would be proud of.

Except there’s a catch, because the drivers aren’t actually doing the hard part of the drifting at all, because the technology is essentially a few extra lines of code in the management software for the safety-first skid-control systems.

Precise braking on the wheels and regulating torque to the drive wheels manage the drifts, while the driver is usually tasked with simply steering and accelerating.

And it doesn’t interest Audi Sport in the slightest, according to its head of development, Stephan Reil.

"No drift mode. Not in the R8, not in the RS 3, not in the RS 6, not in the RS 4,” he insisted

“I don’t like them. I do not see the reason for them. We do not see the sense in sitting there burning the back tyres. It’s not fast.

“It’s much faster the way we do it, and drifting also does not really suit the architecture of our cars.”

The current wave of drift modes arguably began with the Lotus 111 track special, which had an adjustable traction control knob, which could be used to vary the car’s slip angle mid-corner. Australia had its own contender, with Corsa Specialised Vehicles also delivering a variable traction control knob in the early 2000s.

Ferrari was the first supercar maker to dive in to the market whole heartedly, with a drift mode on the F430, which has now spread to the 488 GTB, the 812 Superfast and even the California. McLaren has also succumbed and has fitted it to its new 720S supercar and even Pagani uses it.

It’s even fitted now to AMG’s E 63 AMG, the high-performance version of one of the most conservative and staid premium sedans in the world.

BMW even combined it with LiDar, 360-degree radar, ultrasonic sensors and analogue cameras to create two fully self-driving drift cars, modified from a 2 Series Coupe and a 6 Series Gran Coupe, as an extension of its Track Trainer system.

None of that is enough to convince Reil, but he says people were welcome to drift Audi Sport’s cars if their skill sets were high enough.

“You can do it yourself with the ESP off, if you hold it (the button) for three seconds.

“Then it will not intervene for you even when it (the car) is fully out of control, because that’s what you asked it not to do.

“You wanted the full control by pushing that button. You got it.”

That’s exactly the counter-argument car companies use against drift-control critics, who insist the system encourages irresponsible driving.

“Drift control is a lot safer than just turning everything off,” BMW M president Frank van Meel said during the launch of the M550i xDrive.

“The drivers can enjoy the car on a track but it still has another level of safety to catch them if they make a mistake,” he explained.