Drag Racing Club

Summary

Drag Racing Club lets you take on underground street racers where perfectly timed gear shifts and a well-placed nitrous boost can mean the difference between walking away victorious or watching your opponent’s taillights disappear.

This old-school classic is an OG in the browser drag racing scene, and has become one of the most requested additions to our drag racing games lineup by Drifted fans – we’re stoked to say it’s finally here!

As you probably guessed, it’s all about nailing perfect launches, shifting in the green zone, and firing the NOS when it counts. But, be prepared, as the precision required to prove yourself on the streets is way more demanding than the retro visuals suggest. One mistimed shift here is all it takes to decide the victory.

You get a great selection of cars to unlock across three tiers, an upgrade system that’ll have you planning every dollar, a paint booth for making your ride look the part, and four game modes that each serve a different purpose in the grind to the top.

If you’ve got five minutes and an itch to smoke someone off the line rather than throwing your car sideways, this one is well worth a shot.

Drag Racing Club features

• Release date – December 12, 2018
• Difficulty – Beginner/Intermediate
• Number of vehicles – 25
• Vehicle customization/upgrades – Yes
• Multiplayer – No
• Mobile – Yes (iOS and Android)
• Developer – Inlogic Software

Physics

There’s no weight transfer or cornering to worry about. This time, it’s all about the rev counter. Although there’s not much in the way of traditional “physics” to think about, it’s fast, smooth, and plays nicely on just about any device.

The giant rev counter dominates the lower half of your screen, and the green shift zone becomes so small that you’ll need increasingly impressive timing to nail perfect shifts consistently. Land in the orange, and you might get away with it, but anything in the grey is likely to mean your race is basically over.

Similarly to drifting, the drivetrain matters. Front-wheel-drive cars (yawn) are likely to spin up on launch (creating a burnout that looks cool but kills your momentum), while the all-wheel-drive (AWD) options grip up hard off the line, giving you a noticeable advantage early on. As you face tougher opponents, the green zone shrinks slightly, and you’ll need to have even sharper reactions.

If you’ve enjoyed this, but fancy a “real” racing game where you’re actually turning a steering wheel and proving your skills on the twisties, Touge Drift & Racing provides a perfect mix of mountain touge racing with a full upgrade system and stunning Japanese scenery.

Graphics

It won’t take you too long to realize that Drag Racing Club isn’t winning any beauty contests. The old-school side-on camera angle features the same drag strip lined with tire piles and a city skyline each time.

But, you won’t care once you get started, as your eyes are glued to the tachometer and searching for that millimeter gap at the finish line the entire time anyway. Truth be told, it looks pretty polished compared to the super basic visuals of Drag Racer V3!

It’s also worth knowing that this game is the predecessor to the hugely popular Drag Racing Rivals. Despite the improved graphics on offer there, many retro gaming fans still prefer this original version for its stripped-back vibe.

If you want the opposite approach, UNBOUNDED goes all-in on visuals, featuring a streetlit nighttime city complete with realistic reflections, and insane graphics you won’t believe you’re seeing in your browser (although it does require a decent-spec computer). Drag Racing Club, on the other hand, keeps it simple and lets the tension do the work instead.

Drag Racing Club controls

PC/laptop/Chromebook

• Up arrow – Rev engine/Accelerate
• Space – Shift gear
• N – Activate nitrous

Mobile/tablet (iOS/Android)

On-screen overlays (also usable on PC with the mouse)

• Carbon fiber up/down paddle shifters – Shift gears
• Accelerator pedal – Rev the engine before launch
• NOS button – Activate nitrous

If you’re on your phone and want more options, we’ve got tons of mobile-friendly games to try.

How to play Drag Racing Club

Initial setup

The game opens with a tutorial race where you’re straight onto the starting line with your Toyota AE86-style starter car. It walks you through the three fundamentals: revving into the green zone for a clean launch, shifting gears at the optimal moment, and deploying nitrous.

Complete it cleanly, and you’ll earn enough to grab your first NOS upgrade right away (do this immediately, as it makes a noticeable difference).

After that, you’re in the garage where the ‘Settings’ cog sits in the top-left, the paint booth icon is bottom-left, and the play button in the bottom-right takes you to the mode select map where you can hit up the strip.

Getting started

Press the play button, and you’ll see a nighttime city map with four icons, each representing a different game mode. Understanding which ones to prioritize early is key to not wasting your time (we’ll dive into these properly next).

Your first races will feel challenging. The AE86-style starter sits at 220hp and 1,070kg, which isn’t too terrifying launching from the lights! I found myself up against a tuned Ford Focus-style hatch by round two of the opponent mode and barely scraped through.

As you progress, aim to perfect your launch timing and nail the shifts. You’ll earn bonuses for both on top of the base race prize, so clean driving pays off even if your car gets humiliated on the strip.

Races take roughly 15 seconds in a stock car, and you’ll be dipping under 10 later on. As you progress, your opponents taunt you with speech bubbles before each race (which just makes beating them even sweeter!)

Game modes

Four modes are available from the city map right away.

Crew Battles – This is the main progression path. Beat each crew member, then take down the leader to unlock the next tier. The difficulty is brutal from the start (if you attempt this with a stock car, you’ll learn the hard way). As you progress, the payouts grow quickly.

Street Ladder – 12 rounds of increasingly difficult rivals are thrown at you. Payouts scale with each round, making this another great long-term money earner. I was surprised at how far a couple of performance upgrades got me here. The earlier opponents don’t have crazy cars, so it’s worth giving it a shot to get as far as you can before upgrading.

Loaner Showdowns – This lets you borrow the keys of pre-tuned drag racers you don’t own. The payouts are lower, but it’s a lifesaver when your own ride isn’t cutting it. Don’t expect that to mean it’ll be easy, though, as the races are still closely matched.

Prize Runs – You get to choose from three difficulty levels: smooth, challenging, or insane. I found ‘challenging’ to be the sweet spot for early farming, and it was often beatable even with a near-stock car, along with decent payouts. Insane requires proper upgrades, but the rewards are worth it once your car is capable.

Note: The ‘Crew Battles’ and ‘Street Ladder’ modes are tier-locked. So, if you buy a Tier 2 car, you can’t use it in Tier 1 events, and you’ll need to keep upgrading your current Tier 1 car rather than jumping up too early (ask me how I know!)

There’s no online multiplayer available here, but if that’s what you were hoping for, Drift King offers real-time online multiplayer lobbies where you can tandem drift with your friends in private rooms, or head to the public lobbies. We’ve also got a multiplayer games section worth checking out.

Car list

You get 25 cars split across three tiers, ranging from budget offerings (Tier 1), to premium (Tier 2), and an awesome selection of supercars (Tier 3).

Each car has its own power (hp), weight (kg), grip, and drivetrain (FWD/RWD/AWD) stats, and they all feel noticeably different on the strip. Prices climb from free up to $330,000, featuring look-alikes of iconic real-world drag racing legends:

• AE86-style hatch (Free starter car) – Even when they’re not drifting games, no browser game could leave off the Hachiroku! I stuck with this longer than I probably should have (it’s one of the few JDM-style options available), but a few upgrades made it surprisingly competitive in the early tiers.

You’ll soon be unlocking some recognizable epic machinery in the showroom, such as:

• Nissan GTR
• McLaren F1
• Bugatti Veyron

• Ferrari Enzo ($330,000) – The most expensive (and fastest) car in the game, and the ultimate goal.

The roster is mostly made up of European offerings and American muscle, without the JDM depth you’d find in drifting games. If you want a full 90s Japanese garage with the potential for online tandem drifting, Drift Hunters Pro features the likes of the Nissan 350Z and S15 Silvia, Toyota Supra MKIV, and the Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R.

For sheer roster size, NSR Street Car Racing offers 50 great-looking cars, where you’ll venture into an open-world city with a Need for Speed-style progression.

Tuning and upgrades

There are five upgrade categories, each with five tiers:

• Engine
• Gearbox
• Tires
• Weight reduction
• NOS

Each upgrade tier costs significantly more than the last. While early upgrades are around $1,400-$1,600, later tiers soon rack up, with parts more than $10k each.

I hit a point where the next engine upgrade cost more than what I was earning per race, which is when you really need to think about whether you’re backing the right car or whether it’s time to make a new purchase.

Maxing all five to 5/5 unlocks your car’s full potential, with stat changes updating in real-time as you buy.

Planning your spending is half the game. A lightweight AWD car with modest power can embarrass heavier FWD rivals off the line, creating a proper sleeper build that’ll have the fans talking. Sometimes it’s smarter to fully upgrade your current car than to buy a faster one you can’t afford to mod.

While we’d love to tell you there are individual damper adjustments and tire compounds, we’d be lying. However, Force Drift Racing: Aussie Burnout features an insane amount of tuning depth, from Ackermann angle adjustments and individual damper settings to diff lock ratios, tire compounds, and forced induction upgrades.

Drift Hunters MAX also offers an impressive selection of tuning and upgrade features, alongside a Drift Attack mode that mirrors real Formula Drift judging (with clipping points and global leaderboards) and a street drifting mode where you get to slide around AI traffic going about their daily commute.

Customization

Press the spray can icon in the bottom-left of the garage to open the paint booth, where you get to choose from the following:

• Full body (excluding bumpers and trim)
• Window tint
• Wheels
• Bumpers and trim

Body resprays come in three finishes: standard ($500), satin ($1,000), and polarized ($2,000). Polarized gives you a candy pearl-style multicolor effect that looks great. The other three areas are $500 each, with a huge color selection (though not a full palette).

Advanced tips & tricks

Nail the launch before worrying about anything else

The pre-race rev zone is the single biggest factor in winning. Green means you’ll blast off the line, orange still gives you a fighting chance (assuming your car is up to spec), while grey will likely mean you’ve lost before you even stood a chance. Be sure to use the ‘Up’ keyboard arrow key rather than clicking the on-screen pedal for better precision.

Hold off on nitrous, especially with FWD cars

The last thing you want to do is to fire the NOS straight off the line in a front-wheel-drive car, only to watch the tires spin uselessly. Wait until the burnout stops and you’ve got proper grip dialed in, then activate it. While spinning up the wheels is great on a drift car, it’s not quite so ideal when you’re chasing your rival on the drag strip!

Avoid upgrading to the Tier 2 cars too early

I bought a Tier 2 car thinking it would help me beat the crew leader, only to discover it was locked out of Tier 1 events, which was super annoying. So, if you haven’t beaten the crew leader yet, keep maxing out your current car before moving up, or you’ll be stuck grinding the lower-earning modes to fund the required mods to stand a chance

Use ‘Prize Runs’ for super easy farming

Even a lightly upgraded car can consistently beat the ‘Challenging’ difficulty levels, which offer decent payouts. Use it to build your bankroll between attempts at the progressive modes, then switch to ‘Insane’ once your car can handle it.

Stick with it through the early grind

Payouts ramp up considerably as you push through the ‘Crew Battles’ and ‘Street Ladder’ rounds. Each race is under 15 seconds, so even a five-minute session adds up.

Drag Racing Club FAQ