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.

“Squealing the tires with a lot of smoke, that’s considered style,” Bahena said. “If you can go through and don’t excite the crowd, that’s not good. The ultimate goal for a beginner driver is to get the thing through the course without losing control. For the advanced drivers, it’s to go through a course on a race line and as controlled as possible.

“It’s not just about sliding cars. I mean, that’s what we do, but it’s also about control. Slipping perfectly through the apex of each turn. It’s like that for any racing. You track out to the edge of the circuit, hit the apex of the corner and track out again. What happens in road courses is that you look for the fastest way through the course. Now you’re looking for the fastest way through, but you’re sliding the car. You’re sliding through the whole turn. It’s complicated to explain. It’s better if you see it.”

The events Bahena organizes in the area attract some 50-60 drivers and cars per event. That gets whittled down to about 30 cars, then 16, eight, four and then a winner. It’s all kind of informal, since it’s hard to judge. But it’s entertaining as a house fire.

And the new thing is to run tandem. That means they run at the same time, slipping, sliding and smoking the tires. Right next to each other. The idea is to have the cars stay together. The guy in back is trying not to have the guy in front pull away. He can actually pass if possible, but that doesn’t happen much. Mostly, it’s just how close they can stay.

And of course, when you go out on a limb that far, whether alone or in tandem, sometimes there are mishaps. Bahena says the circuits are set up to minimize mishaps. But it does happen.

“You do lose control once in a while.” he said. “You’re right on the edge of spinning out. That’s where car control comes in. Typically the way we lay out the course, they spin out, not in. So there’s not much risk of hitting a pole or anything else. We set it up in a safe manner.”

Well, as safe as a car out of control can be.

The next drifting event organized by Bahena will be 10 a.m. Aug. 27 at the Mineral Wells airport. Mineral Wells is about 30 miles west of Fort Worth.