Drift Practice: Figure 8

Summary

Drift Practice: Figure 8 strips drifting practice back to its roots. All you need to focus on is mastering the figure-eight layout, surrounded by containers and various obstacles. There are no unlocks, no upgrades, and no distractions – you get one car, and you’ll get to push it to its absolute limits.

The physics let you fine-tune your skills with realistic weight transfer, allowing you to practice and optimize advanced drifting tweaks like throttle control, left-foot braking, transitions, and proximity.

Think of it as a digital parking lot session where you’ve just picked up your first rear-wheel-drive car, you’re yet to spend a single dollar on mods (it certainly looks like it could use a coilover kit!), and you’re learning to make the most of what you have before going all-in on upgrades. It’s just you and your basic rear-wheel-drive car with a limited-slip diff learning how to throw the back end out and control it.

While it might be too thin on content for advanced players, Drift Practice: Figure 8 is perfect for those getting started who want to remove all the distractions and added complications to help build the real skills that’ll carry over to more comprehensive drifting games further down the line.

Features

• Release date – November 2019
• Difficulty – Beginner
• Levels/environments – 1
• Number of vehicles – 1
• Vehicle customization/upgrades – No
• Multiplayer – No
• Mobile – No
• Developer – TopSpeed Games

Physics

The handling is smooth, predictable, and great for learning. You’ll soon get the hang of the weight transfer, and you’ll be able to hold consistent angles without requiring constant corrections – drift in a circle, and you’ll literally trace a perfect ring in tire marks.

You’ll likely notice that, since the car is a little underpowered, it tends to understeer, so you’ll need sharper steering and more aggressive throttle inputs to really throw the rear end out. The positive is that the lower power means you can keep the throttle pinned for longer, making it ideal for getting comfortable with drifting fundamentals before jumping into something faster.

Graphics

Drift Practice: Figure 8 offers clean, simple visuals that do the job. You can zoom in and out (slightly), but there are no other camera angles, which admittedly would’ve been a cool addition to the game.

The BMW E46-style car model looks good, the smoke effects are satisfying as you smoke out the area, and the dockyard parking lot has enough detail, with containers, tire piles, and concrete bollards, to keep things visually interesting.

Drift Practice: Figure 8 controls

PC/laptop/Chromebook

• W/Up arrow – Accelerate
• S/Down arrow – Brake/reverse
• A/Left arrow – Steer left
• D/Right arrow – Steer right
• Space – Handbrake/e-brake
• Mouse scroll wheel – Zoom camera in/out

Mobile/tablet (iOS/Android)

Drift Practice: Figure 8 isn’t available on mobile browsers. If you’re on your phone or tablet, our mobile games collection has loads of alternatives that work perfectly on portable devices.

How to play Drift Practice: Figure 8

Initial setup

When you load the game, you start in the dockyard parking lot. There’s no menus to navigate – what you see is what you get here.

In the top left, you’ll see your total accumulated points. The top-right has a music toggle (which you might wanna turn off), and the bottom left shows the mouse scroll wheel details to adjust the camera distance. There are no graphics options or camera angle adjustments, but you can slightly tweak the default overhead view.

Getting started

Your goal is simple – you’ll master drifting in a large figure-eight pattern around the obstacles in the center of the lot. Start by doing a few donuts to get a feel for the car. You’ll quickly notice it’s forgiving enough that holding the steering in one direction with full throttle produces a perfect, clean circle.

The center has concrete bollards and old tires with plants growing from them (retired drift-car tires, clearly). It’s worth noting that the tires are seemingly filled with concrete, as you’ll soon see when you smash into them. You’ve been warned!

Containers line the perimeter as your outer walls (wall runs, yo!) Points accumulate as you drift, and if you keep linking transitions without stopping or crashing, the combo multiplier soon kicks in.

When it comes to making the most of the e-brake, don’t expect it to throw the back end out if you hold it while you’ve got the throttle pinned down. Lift off the gas first, steer (full lock), then tap (try not to hold) the e-brake to let the back end step out. Get straight back on the throttle once you’ve got the angle, and keep the tap short, or you’ll scrub off too much speed given the lack of power.

Game modes

There’s just one mode. You’re in the parking lot, drifting figure eights, and collecting points. However, you can make your own mini-challenges by seeing how close you can get to running the walls (for ultimate proximity) or seeing how many points you can collect in a certain amount of minutes, then seeing if your friends can beat it.

If you enjoy the physics on offer here, but want more variety from the same developers, you’re in luck. Drift Practice TopSpeed offers multiple tracks, along with an AI tandem car you can spawn for door-to-door practice. This one focuses entirely on the figure-eight layout, so it’s more of a deep dive into mastering this one specific skill.

Car list

You get one car – a coupe that looks like a BMW E46 M3 and Toyota JZX100 had a baby. While the rear suspension looks like it’s begging for a coilover upgrade, it delivers decent power, making it great for beginners. There are no other options to unlock or swap to. The automatic gearbox means no clutch kicks or manual shifting to worry about.

If mastering a manual is something you want to work towards, Drift Race Simulator is the best browser game for this. You’re forced to get to grips with a stick shift across a variety of JDM legends with awesome physics and some great locations.

Tuning and upgrades

Unfortunately, there’s no tuning, upgrades, or performance modifications. You’re stuck with the stock power, stock tires, and the questionable ride height! Drift Practice TopSpeed offers a Camaro where you can also change the paint color, if you’re after a little more variety (alongside its additional game modes).

Thankfully, there are plenty of browser-based alternatives here, though. If you want to dial in your setup, Drift Hunters MAX is the gold standard, with 39 cars, full-suspension geometry tuning, game modes including Drift Attack with clipping points, online leaderboards, and cross-platform saving. For lower-spec devices, the classic Drift Hunters is a solid entry-level alternative that also offers in-depth tuning.

Force Drift Racing: Aussie Burnout offers what may be the most advanced tuning system in any browser game, with everything from suspension geometry to forced induction.

Alternatively, if you’re after tuning/customization as well as online multiplayer, Drift King is the most popular free multiplayer drifting game right now, with great physics and awesome tracks. You can also try Drift Hunters Pro from the same team, but with a 90s JDM focus, including familiar cars such as the Toyota Supra and Nissan Skyline R34.

Advanced tips & tricks

Start with donuts, then work up to full figure-eights

Get a feel for the traction and understeer/oversteer before you start trying to link transitions, or you’ll likely crash into something. Once you pull off a clean donut, try connecting two into a proper eight around the bollards.

Avoid relying on the e-brake

You might think the e-brake feels broken if you’re also holding the throttle at the same time. To make the most of it, lift off the throttle, apply full steering lock, and tap the e-brake. Also, make sure you practice using brake and throttle lift for initiations to achieve ultimate weight transfer control. This method teaches you better real-world drifting techniques that’ll transfer to any sim drifting game.

Use the obstacles as clipping points

Once you’re comfortable, treat the bollards, tire piles, and container walls as proximity targets. Get as close as you possibly can without smashing into them – this is where the real skill-building happens and essentially mimics what pro drifters practice.

Chase combos for the ultimate test

The ultimate challenge in Figure 8 is maintaining the highest combo you can, while also running the walls to perfection. You need to combine speed, angle, and consistent transitions all at once, and if any of those drop, the combo breaks. Getting this right means you’ve pretty much completed everything this game has to offer.

Drift Practice: Figure 8 FAQ