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Driving Tail of the Dragon
Apex Drift’s track is Tail of the Dragon, modelled on the line of US 129 at Deals Gap, the road famous among drivers and riders for its 318 curves in 11 miles. It is not a loop: each run is one drive from the start to the finish, through ten gates.
A run is one drive, start to finish
Your time runs from the start line to the finish, and that time is your score. Drive through all ten gates on the way: miss one and you take a time penalty, which almost always costs more than any corner you could cut.
It’s a road of linked corners
There are few real straights. One bend leads straight into the next, often the other way, so the exit of one corner is the entry to the next. Think two corners ahead: a line that is perfect for this bend but leaves you on the wrong side of the road for the next one is slower overall.
Small inputs, saved drifts
Most of the road wants small, smooth steering corrections, not big swings. Save the deep drift for the tight bends where you really need to rotate the car, and let the boost it charges fire onto the next short straight.
Brake in a straight line before a tight bend, never in the middle of it, and keep off the walls: touching one loses the boost you were charging as well as your speed.
Learn it a section at a time
Every gate shows your time against your best run, in green when you are ahead and red when you are behind. Use those splits to find the section that costs you most and practise that, instead of the whole drive every time. Practice runs are free and need no account.