There are so many different ways to start and continue a drift, and professionals often use a combination of these techniques in order to do successful runs for high points in competitions. Many of these techniques are explained in greater detail in Calvin Wan's Drifting Performance Handbook. 27-year-old Calvin Wan has been driving professionally for twelve years. Although a professional drifter since 2003, he started his motorsports career as a roadracer and lives in San Francisco (review.asille). Here are a few techniques straight from his book:


                    Upshifting - "Quickly shifting into a higher gear and instantly getting back on the throttle while turning in causes an abrupt increase in rear wheel speed which breaks rear-tire traction. The upshift initiation allows you to keep accelerating into the drift, and allows you to carry high entry speeds entering the corner."
                   
                    E-Brake - "This technique is performed by pulling up on the emergency brake lever while turning into the corner. This will lock up the rear wheels, creating a condition of over-steer. Depressing the clutch pedal while simultaneously pulling up on the e-brake will momentarily disengage the engine's power to the rear wheels, allowing the e-brake to lock up the wheels more easily."

                    Downshift - "The shift lock technique is performed by depressing the clutch pedal while turning into a corner, allowing the engine rpm to drop while downshifting, and then quickly releasing the clutch pedal to engage the lower gear. When the clutch is reengaged, the drivetrain speed is much less than rear wheel speed and the wheels are abruptly  slowed, causing a the rear tire to break traction."

            Trail Braking - "Trail Braking is a technique of trailing off of the brakes while steering into a corner to induce a drift. This initiationis performed by braking into the corner while adding steering input to cause a weight transfer to unload weight from the rear wheels. This causes the rear end to break traction and rotate toward the outside of the turn. the weight transfer loads up the front end, causing the rear end to pivot around the outside front tire."

     Lift Throttle - "When performing a lift-throttle drift, the driver shifts the weight balance of the car by reducing throttle input. The driver accelerates into the turn at high speed, then lifts off the throttle, resulting in a sudden deceleration that transfers the weight of the car forward and unloads the rear tires. This is done while turning into the corner to create an oversteer condition."

     Feint - "The feint initiation is used in tight decreasing radius corners and hairpins where a deeper drift angle is needed to better position the car for the exit of the turn. This technique is performed by initiating drift in the opposite direction of the turn using any of the different types of drift initiations to build up momentum, and then quickly rotating the car back around into the direction of  the corner, allowing the car to rotate into a higher drift angle. The feint is basically linking two drifts together before the corner entry."


  Clutching - "In a common clutch-initiated drift, as the driver gets near a turn she'll push in the clutch and drop to second gear. She'll then rev the engine up to about 4,500 rpm. When she releases the clutch, there's a huge surge in power to the wheels the engine is spinning so quickly. The sudden power dump makes the back wheels spin so fast they lose traction, and the the back end swings into the turn."
       
      Dirt-Drop Drift - "The driver drops the rear tires off the race course into the dirt. This technique helps initiate a drift, maintain speed to hold a drift through multiple turns or increase the drift angle . . . during a single turn.