I've thought about it, and the best way I could see this working is with a set of rules like this:
Tire wear must be on. Tire choices from Comfort Hard to Comfort Soft are at the discretion of the driver. There is a PP range the drivers agree on, like say 450-500 pp where everything in-between is fair game.
The winner is the one who has the lowest overall time, not the one who crosses the line first. During the drift sections, failure to tandem properly (anything that would result in a D1 DQ) offers a +5 second penalty to their final time. This means that inability to drift your race car could cause a +25 second difference. That, combined with the tirewear of improper drifting, definitely means that drifting with skill and finesse is vital for speed.
Failure to drift the section at all would also incur a penalty.
At the end, the judge/judges pick a stylistic drift winner just like in D1, who has 5 seconds removed from their time. That isn't 5 per lap, but just 5 overall.
This means that to win, an optimal selection between a car that can drift well and efficiently, and a car that can still race fast, without wearing the tires down too quickly, would win. Considering how fast (Imagine Suzuka for 5 laps, and drifting the tandem section 5 times, on CS tires) tires can wear, I think it makes for a more fair competition if the two cars are kept within a general performance range.
The whole point is that the winner must be able to drift carefully and stylishly, but also race with speed and efficiency as well. It would be impossible for a car that is not set up to drift at all to enter one of these competitions, and still win even though they would fail repeatedly at the drift section. Likewise, a drift car without any regard to control and speed during the race sections, or conservation of tires, would fail too.
.........just asking, cuz i hearded of these the first time.
Drifting is what you want to avoid when you want to race and be fast. You drift because it is the most awesome way to go around a turn...
sometimes drifting is the quickest way to achieve that, sometimes not.
