Free Racing Games: Race Cars, Bikes and Karts Online
Pick a car, a bike or a kart and go for first place. Whether you're into serious car racing games or a silly dash on foot, play free online in your browser, no download needed. If you're on a phone, start with a game that supports touch controls.
Most Popular Racing Games and How to Play Them
These six are a good place to start. Each one asks for something different, so a quick look at the controls will save you a few crashes.
Drive Mad 2
Here your car picks up speed by itself, so there's no gas key. You steer with A and D, press Space as you turn into a corner to drift, and hit F to fire your nitro. Save the boost for the straights. Hammers block the track in places, so look a little way ahead. You race AI drivers, and there are 10 cars to try on the start screen.
Pixel Car Racer
There's no steering at all. This is drag racing, so every race comes down to a clean start and good gear changes. Hold D while the lights count down (on a phone, the pedal on the right of the screen), then press E each time the RPM needle reaches 9 to shift up through six gears. A win pays 2,000 coins and even a loss pays 500, so you can keep buying faster cars. The shop has 85 of them.
Formula Rush
You start in last place. This F1 game puts you 20th on a grid of 20 cars and gives you five laps to climb into the top three. Finish 4th or lower and the run ends, so you start again from Track 1. Hold ↑ or W to speed up, steer with the arrow keys or A and D, and tap ↓ or S to brake before sharp bends. There are three night-city tracks, and each one is harder than the last.
Formula Racers
Each race is one lap against 11 rival cars, seen from above. Win and the next country's track opens, from the USA all the way to Portugal. Your car speeds up on its own, so you just steer with A and D or the arrows and hold S, ↓ or Space to brake before each bend. A yellow sign shows which way the bend turns. The coins from every race pay for five upgrades in the garage.
Boom Kart 3D
This is a kart race with tight corners and nitro boosts. You drive with W, A, S and D and press Space to drift. On a phone you use on-screen buttons. Drift around the sharp corners and use your boosts to get past your rivals.
Real Moto Stunt Racing 3D
You ride a motorcycle along sky-high 3D tracks and pull stunts at speed. The game is physics-based. Steer with WASD or the arrow keys, or tap the on-screen buttons on a phone.
Find Your Feel: Realistic, Arcade, Drift or Crash
Racing games don't all feel the same. Some make you brake early and hold your line. Others hand you a boost button and tell you to go. Here's how to find the ones that fit your mood.
Real-Feeling Circuit Racing
Formula Rush and Formula Racers both punish flat-out driving. At full speed the car runs wide in a tight corner, so you brake on the way in, let go and steer through. The grass slows you down fast in both of them. Pixel Car Racer feels real in a different way. It's drag racing, and the whole race comes down to your start and your gear changes.
Arcade Racing: Floor It
Street Car Racing puts you in a 3D sports car on city streets. W is gas, S is brake, and A and D steer. Race Master 3D - Car Racing keeps the controls even smaller. You steer with A and D and click the mouse to fire a power-up, and the tracks throw sharp turns at you. Both use only a few keys, so they suit a quick race between other stuff.
Drift and Slide
In several games here, drifting is one button. In Drive Mad 2 and Boom Kart 3D it's Space. The Drive Mad 2 tip is to start the drift as you enter the corner, not halfway through it. Browse our drifting games for more tracks to slide around.
Stunts, Jumps and Obstacles
Mad Truck is all about staying on your wheels. Levels mode has 10 side-view levels with stairs, planks and rocks. Challenge mode has 5 levels on tracks high in the sky, seen from behind the truck, with ramps and crates. Beat the target time on a level for 3 stars. If the truck lands on its roof, you try the level again. Monster Truck: Drive Mad is a side-scrolling stunt game where throttle and balance decide how your truck flies and rolls over wrecked cars and rocks.
Build and Tune Your Car
Want to make your own ride faster? Turbo Drive: Mode Blitz lets you drive a customized supercar around an open city. It has pursuit and race modes, plenty of modification options and a nitro button on F. 4WD Race Legend starts with the build: its game page says you put the 4x4 together, then race it. In Pixel Car Racer, coins buy faster cars, and a faster car is the surest way to win more often.
Crash and Chaos
Car Driving Crash Party has two modes. In collision mode you ram your rivals and survive to the end. In track mode you drift around an arena and grab nitro bottles to pass them. You drive with WASD.
Motorbikes and Karts
Prefer two wheels, or a small kart? These are the ones to try.
Motorbike Racing
Moto Attack mixes bike racing with a fight. You drag the mouse to steer, click to attack, and hit other riders on your way to the finish line for cash. Mini Moto: Speed Race works the same way. Drag to steer, hold to accelerate and get close to a rival to attack. For stunts and big jumps, see Real Moto Stunt Racing 3D above.
Kart Racing
Kart Rush is a kart race with obstacles and acceleration belts on the track. Drag the mouse to move, hit the belts to pass rivals and dodge roadblocks. Sprint mode puts you against the clock or against opponents, and you unlock stronger karts as you go. Boom Kart 3D, above, is the kart option with drifting.
Streets, Deserts, Snow and Off-Road: Where You Race
Not every race happens on a circuit. These games take you somewhere else.
City Streets and Highways
Street Car Race Ultimate drops you into heavy city traffic with the timer running. Weave through the cars and reach the finish before time runs out. You drive with WASD. Extreme Car City Driving is slower. You cruise a big city map and take on driving missions. A and D steer, W drives, S brakes and R restarts. If you'd rather cruise than race, browse our car games for parking, city driving and more.
Deserts and Off-Road Trails
OTR Off-road Driving is a 4x4 sandbox where traction matters more than speed. You climb steep rocks and test your suspension on rough ground. Drive with WASD and press C to switch the camera view. Desert Riders: Car Battle swaps racing for shooting. You drive an armored vehicle across the desert, drag the mouse to move, and click to attack or speed up. Browse our driving games for more trucks and 4x4s to try.
Snow and Ice
Thrilling Snow Motor is a snowmobile simulator on slick winter tracks. You drive with WASD, and the tracks are tricky.
Racing Games on PC, Android and Phone
You can play in your browser without downloading a game. Check the controls on the game page to see whether it uses a keyboard, mouse or touchscreen.
Keyboard and Mouse on PC
In Formula Rush you hold ↑ or W to speed up and tap ↓ or S to brake. In Drive Mad 2 the car speeds up on its own. You steer with A and D, press Space to drift and use F for nitro. In Pixel Car Racer, D is the gas and E shifts up. Mad Truck uses W to drive and S to brake, with A and D to tilt or steer. In Kart Rush you steer by dragging the mouse.
Buttons and Swipes on a Phone
In Formula Rush you hold the left and right arrows to steer, the gas pedal on the far right to speed up and the brake pedal next to it to brake. In Formula Racers you hold the R button to brake. In Pixel Car Racer the pedal on the right of the screen is your gas, and you tap the + paddle on the left to shift up. Mad Truck has gas and brake pedals on the right and tilt buttons on the left. In Kart Rush you slide your finger to steer. You can also add FreeGame to your home screen and open it like an app.
Race Rivals or Race the Clock
Pick a race against other cars or a course with a time to beat.
Race Against Computer-Controlled Cars
In Drive Mad 2, you can drift through bends and save your nitro to pass the pack on a straight. For a shorter race, Formula Racers gives you one lap to beat 11 rival cars.
Beat a Target Time
A target time gives a solo race some edge. Mad Truck shows one on every level, and beating it earns 3 stars. Going over doesn't end the level, you just earn fewer stars. Kart Rush has a Sprint mode where you race the time limit or your opponents.
Racing Without a Car
Plenty of races don't need an engine.
Snow, Water and Animals
Snow Race 3D: Fun Racing has you build a huge snowball and craft ladders as you race your rivals. Water Race 3D is a water-skating race down twisting slides and past obstacles, and you drag to play. In Animal Racing you transform to fit the ground. You become a shark to cross the sea, an eagle to leap a cliff and a gorilla to climb a ladder.
On Foot
Fall Guys Knockout is a cartoon runner. You move with WASD, jump with Space and dodge swinging hammers and moving belts on the way to the finish line. On a phone you slide to move.
Racing Games That Changed the Genre
Racing games have been around since the arcades. These four helped set the rules for the games you play today.
Pole Position (1982)
Namco's arcade game was the first racing video game built on a real circuit, Fuji Speedway in Japan. It was also the first to ask for a qualifying lap, so you had to set a time before you could race. It was the highest-grossing arcade game of 1982 in Japan, and many people credit it with setting the rules of the genre.
Out Run (1986)
Sega's Out Run let you choose your road. Near the end of each stage the track forks, and your choice leads to one of five endings. You drove a Ferrari Testarossa convertible and could pick one of three songs for the radio.
Super Mario Kart (1992)
Nintendo released it on the SNES in Japan on August 27, 1992. You raced as one of eight Mario characters and used power-ups to attack rivals or speed up. Two players could race at the same time, and Battle Mode had you pop the balloons around other karts. It's often credited with starting kart racing as a genre, and Boom Kart 3D and Kart Rush belong to it.
Gran Turismo (1997)
Sony's PlayStation game went for realism. Arcade Mode let you choose your track and car. Simulation Mode made you earn driver's licenses to enter events, then win prizes to buy parts and tune your car. It had 140 cars and 11 tracks, and it sold more than 10 million copies.
Racing in the Browser Today
Adobe stopped supporting Flash Player at the end of 2020, and browser games now run on the web itself. Formula Rush, for example, is built with CreateJS, a JavaScript library for web graphics, so it opens without a plugin. That's how every game on this page works.
Why You Keep Crashing (and How to Stop)
Most crashes come down to a few mistakes. Here's how to fix each one.
You Hit the Wall in Every Corner
Brake before the turn, not in it. In Formula Rush, tap ↓ briefly before a sharp bend and press ↑ again on the way out. In Formula Racers, a yellow sign shows which way the next bend turns. Brake before the bend, let go, and steer through.
You Run Out of Speed on the Straight
Save the boost for the straights. In Drive Mad 2, nitro needs time to refill after each use, so fire it where the road runs straight and you get the full boost without losing control. In Pixel Car Racer, shift when the RPM needle hits 9. Shift sooner and the next gear pulls weakly until your speed catches up.
You Lose on the Same Track
Learn the track. Formula Rush has a minimap in the bottom right that shows the whole track, so a quick look tells you when a tight turn is coming. The replay button runs the same track again. Formula Racers shows your stars for each track, so you can see which one needs another go.
Your Truck Flips Over
In Mad Truck, ease off the gas on stairs. Holding it all the way up can lift the front of the truck, and a truck that stays on its roof for a few seconds ends the run. Let go for a moment and the wheels settle back down.
FAQ
What are some popular racing games on FreeGame?
Here are five popular picks from this category.
Which racing game feels the most realistic?
Formula Rush and Formula Racers play most like real circuit racing. You have to brake before the bends, and the grass slows you down. If you'd rather try drag racing, Pixel Car Racer has you shift through six gears by hand.
What are some old racing games?
Pole Position (1982), Out Run (1986), Super Mario Kart (1992) and Gran Turismo (1997) are four classics. The section above tells you what made each one special.
Can I play on a PC or phone without downloading anything?
Yes. You can play on a PC or choose a game with touch controls on your phone. Formula Rush uses a keyboard on PC and on-screen pedals on a phone. In Kart Rush, you drag the mouse or slide your finger to steer.
Is there a racing game for two players?
Not right now. Races here are against computer-controlled cars or the clock. Try Formula Rush to race AI drivers, or pick Mad Truck to beat a target time.
How do I get better at drifting and braking?
For drifting, press the drift button as you enter the corner, not halfway through it. Drive Mad 2 is a good place to practice, because its first few races are made for it. For braking, tap the brake before the bend, then let go and steer through.
Are there motorbike or kart games?
Yes. For bikes, try Real Moto Stunt Racing 3D, Moto Attack or Mini Moto: Speed Race. For karts, try Boom Kart 3D or Kart Rush.
Can you race without a car?
Yes. You can race as an animal in Animal Racing, slide down water slides in Water Race 3D, build a snowball in Snow Race 3D: Fun Racing, or run a knockout course on foot in Fall Guys Knockout.
What is the difference between arcade and simulation racing?
Arcade racing keeps it simple. You steer, drift and boost, and the game keeps the pace up, like Drive Mad 2. Simulation racing leans on realism, such as gears, braking points and tuning. Gran Turismo's Simulation Mode, for example, made you earn driver's licenses before you could enter events.