No keithl, there's no "either-or" situation here. By all means, set a heading to compensate for the drift and, thereby, stay on track as closely as possible. Given the original situation which, at least in my mind, specified a 50 knot cross-wind on the outbound leg, then your heading correction will give you a headwind component. Now you need to make a (slight) timing adjustment to account for the slightly reduced groundspeed.
The whole aim of the exercise is to get the aeroplane far enough away from the beacon that the reversal manoeuvre works out fairly closely. To close in and you'll never reach the FAT in time to make any reasonable descent.
Has this helped?