Hi,
If you wanted smoke for drifting, you could try checking out the easyEmit addon for Blender https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tovhSKqJ7vw and play with the settings (setting particle colors to gray, for example).
Then in code, you could toggle the emitters for your smoke on and off depending on how the car moved (I think the property to toggle is called ‘emitteron’ in the example I have provided). One of the drawbacks of the addon (as far as I know) is adding too much particles can affect your game speed, but that’s where you can compromise by adding fewer particles.
You can even create sparks for your car with easyEmit (shown here).
It also wouldn’t hurt to look into animated smoke textures (which you can fade in and out in code) and custom smoke animations to attach to your car. I guess what I’m saying is, a good solution to creating a drifting effect is to attach smoke to your car which can be controlled. If you want to know where/how to add the smoke to your car, you can take a look at where games place the smoke or sparks for car drifting.
Hope this gives you at least a general idea.