Courtesy of Galveston County: The Daily News

Alex Bahena realizes his is not a normal hobby.

“I don’t think it’s considered a sport, even by the (Sports Car Club of America),” Bahena said. “They didn’t want to get involved with us because it looks out of control. It freaks people out. The SCCA looked at it and said, ‘Wow.’”

“Wow‚” is, in fact, a good general description.

What Bahena does is called drifting. Not like in a boat. Not drifting quietly in some blissful, random lapping sense. No, sir. He drifts as in a car, at high speed, on asphalt. With a great deal of noise and general chaos.

Drifting is the sport of taking a rear-wheel-drive car into a corner and applying too much throttle. Actually, way too much throttle. That deliberate misapplication gets the butt-end of the car dislocated from the pavement and induces a spin — which never quite happens. It’s the art of getting the rear tires spinning so the back end controls the car via the subtle changes in the throttle pedal.

That’s a kind of technical explanation. What it looks like, however, is an out-of-control automobile driven by somebody who took an off-ramp too fast and then tried to keep from killing themselves. It’s a true “wow” experience. Either to watch or to do.

Drifting is the new drag racing. It’s the new backyard WWF. The new skateboarding. Drifting is raw and noisy and sometimes quite scary. But, if you could turn down the sound and just watch the ballet of a car driven at speed by somebody who knows how to do it, it’s utterly fascinating.

Drifting contests, such as the ones Bahena organizes, are based on:

• How fast you go into the corner and how much speed you maintain through the corner;

• The angle at which you slide the car into the corner (the farther out the back end is, the better);

• How much excitement you generate.