Free Practice’s Infinite Drift campaign for Nike is underground racing meets CCTV fuzz

What happens when you meet the Fast And Furious franchise with the panopticon? Imagine the underground, neon vibes of Tokyo Drift with the fuzzy analogue of CCTV cameras – that’s what the Málaga-based studio Free Practice has done with Nike’s new campaign Infinite Drift, which sits somewhere between underground car meet, art film, and high-speed graphic experiments. It’s a visceral exploration of motion, identity, and design to match and coincide with the launch of the Nike AirMax DN8.

Free Practice’s concept brings together eight Serbian drift drivers, eight custom-built cars, and eight international illustrators, who transformed each vehicle into a moving portrait of its driver. The studio paired each driver with an artist, such as Ram Han, Jonathan Castro and Gustavo Eandi – who created bespoke car liveries inspired by interviews and insights into the drivers’ personalities and styles behind the wheel. The team also created a film, directed by Henrik Alm and photographed by Gabriela Alatorre.

At the centre of the campaign, the twin ideas of beauty and burn were explored. In beauty, there is rituals of care, motor aesthetics, reflective car bodies, effortless drift dances, and cinematic night rides – with burn, there is sensorial overload, aggression, power, smoke, petrol and screaming engines. “Within this conceptual framework, the director and photographer then set about to capture the cars, atmosphere and energy from both micro and macro lenses to find the tension of beauty and burn in each shot,” says Free Practice. Every still in the series is obscured in the smoke of melted rubber on the tarmac, long exposures and heat maps show giant etchings into the earth created by the blistering cars and their manoeuvres. A rough masculinity is paired with the muscularity of racing machines, creating a unique eroticism rendered by the grit and grime of images that look like they’re straight from the queer thriller Titane.

“The dream brief was to create an experiment of unreal motion that featured eight drift cars, set loose on the infinite figure-eight track on the outskirts of Belgrade,” says Free Practice. “We responded by designing eight custom drift cars, each piloted by a Serbian driver with their own distinctive approach to the sport.” Through a series of in-depth interviews, Free Practice uncovered each driver’s sensibilities and matched them with international artists to visually interpret with bespoke car liveries. “Driver Marco Brkic took us for a spin around the track and it completely opened our eyes to the ferocity of it all,” says Free Practice. “But at the same time when you are sitting inside, it is really poetic and gentle. Like riding a fire-breathing, mechanical demon, the drivers need strength, but also the finesse and softness to drive such an amped-up car with extreme precision.”

In a double-handed feat of representing the Belgrade racing scene and the finesse of the new DN8 shoe, the studio looked for unexpected influences in the scruffy, almost voyeuristic feel of CCTV cameras and film grain, which lured out the secret society vibes of underground racing whilst involving the viewer in an exclusive club. “Broadly speaking, we’re looking at sports, music, fashion, nature, art, and architecture from historical and contemporary perspectives,” says Free Practice. “But it’s a tough question because inspiration or influence doesn’t come from a fixed set of places – it’s constantly evolving and being informed by the world around us.” With an eye on the future, these photos evoke the famous sci-fi night scenes of biker classic Akira and the imagery of automobile cults seen in Crash. Caught on CCTV, a risque, even criminal atmosphere is set to make viewers feel the thrill amongst all of the burnt asphalt and rumbling engines, involving them in this adrenaline-filled tribute to Belgrade’s racing scene. “What emerged from the project is a dreamlike fusion of performance, collaboration, and design where chaos becomes choreography and speed becomes sculpture.” says Free Practice. “[Director] Henrik’s most-used phrase on set was, ‘It looks like a painting!’ – a sentiment we hope is reflected in both the film and the photography.”