Lift Off Drifting Technique

The lift off drifting technique, or “Kansei” drifting technique, is one of the hardest advanced drift techniques to experiment with.

While all of the techniques are a bit different from one another, they all come down to the same thing: Creating oversteer. For the lift off drifting technique you create oversteer by overspeeding and steering into the corner while simultaneously lifting off your foot from the throttle.

If you release the throttle the weight starts shifting forward. The rear grip is reduced and your front grip increases. Once you lift off the throttle after you’ve steered into the corner the car will automatically start to slide. The difficult part here is when to lift off the throttle in order to start the weight transition. You should release the accelerator right after you’ve steered into the corner.

The weight transition from the rear to the front is much more subtle than with for example a braking drift or feint drift, hence why you need more speed than you normally would.

Lift Off Drifting Technique
How To:

• Coming from the straight towards a corner


• Remain on the throttle and steer into the corner


• While steering into the corner lift off the throttle


• The front grip increases and thus so does the steering angle. The rear grip decreases and will start to lose grip. If the rear doesn’t lose grip your entry speed wasn’t not high enough, or you didn’t steered enough into the corner


• The rest of the drift is the same as the previous drifting techniques. Feel the tires lose traction and start to countersteer


• Wait until you see that the car is facing the direction of the corner exit. Then gently give it a little power to pick up the drift. Control the throttle throughout the drift towards the exit.

Depending on the entry speed, how sharp the corner is and the steepness of the road, only lifting the throttle and not touching the brakes is in some cases already enough to get the car to oversteer.

It’s a very useful technique for downhill corners since there already is a lot of weight resting on the front. It can also do wonders for getting underpowered cars with stock suspension to oversteer. You’ll usually need all the speed you can get in standard cars so you’d prefer not to do any braking. On standard cars with stock suspension you’ll usually see this technique combined with the feint drifting technique.

Practicing this technique might be dangerous because of the high speeds involved so please make sure to have mastered the basics first before attempting any Kansei drifting!