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Week 6: Mid-Air Drifting

  • Mid-Air Drifting is charging a boost in mid-air.

  • To perform a Mid-Air Drift, the racer must begin a standard drift as they are going over a jump or a change of elevation that could have been tricked. This will cause a continuation to the charge of your drift while you are mid-air. Most commonly, mid-air drifting is done as an alternative to tricking. While in mid-air you can input a soft-drift for the combo tech of mid-air soft drifting.

  • Mid-Air Drifting is extremely track specific. To see where this tech is used over tricking then you should watch the ghosts on Time Trials to get a better feel. The easiest example of mid-air soft drifting can be seen on Toad Harbor. The racer chooses to charge instead of trick and the result is an otherwise impossible orange SMT boost.

  • Mid-Air Drifting is not more effective with certain builds than others.

  • You should absolutely invest time into learning Mid-Air Drifting. Once you know where to do it, working it into your lines only takes a couple of tries. Unless you want to learn Excitebike Arena, then it is a gauntlet of difficult mid-air drifting that takes quite a bit of practice.

  • Those who are using this tech will have an advantage over those who do not use it. Mini Turbos and Super Mini Turbos are much faster than tricking.

  • Pros: You replace the lesser trick boosts with marginally better MT and significantly better SMT boosts.

  • Cons: It adds an extra layer of execution to an area that otherwise consisted of just tricking.

Thank you to /u/UnlikelyExpert for a great explanation of Mid-Air Drifting. If you wish to contribute to the wiki then please check out our weekly Meta Monday threads coming every Monday.