Drift Away!

The instruction might be easier to take without all the yelling. Then again, that might not work, either.

“Off the gas! Off the gas!! Off the gas!!! I said off the gas!

Mike McGovern’s persistence had a purpose. He knew what was coming.

The longer I put my right boot into the gas pedal of the brilliant-red Pontiac GTO, the worse it would get.

It didn’t matter.

I wanted to “drift.” I knew I could do it.

I had no idea the longer I unsuccessfully “drifted,” the worse the burning smell of the clutch would get. And it got really bad in a hurry.

“Jesus,” McGovern said, smiling at me from the passenger seat of the GTO. “I’m just glad I don’t own these cars.”

We were at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving here in Arizona and McGovern, a truly patient instructor, was reaching the end of his rope showing a half-dozen of us the hottest, wildest, zaniest and craziest sport done with street-legal cars.

Of course, it’s called drifting.

In began in Japan about a decade ago and today is so accepted that drivers have become celebrities and Bondurant has added it to his course list. In the rest of the world, it’s an officially sanctioned sport called the D1 Grand Prix in which top Japanese drivers compete in a series of events. In Europe, Australia and now in the United States, it is more amateur than it is professional.

Wherever you are, it’s a blast.

In a simple way, drifting could be called sliding with complete vehicle control. There’s another term I use: maximum oversteer.

In a more complex form, drifting is a high-skill, high-powered motorsport that calls for drivers to take a 450-horsepower car through a marked course while sliding it sideways. It’s like rally racing, except on a closed course where drivers earn points for style and execution, instead of speed.

Wheels spin. Tires scream. And white smoke curls around the rear of the vehicle as if it’s on fire.

It looks easy enough, but it’s hard to master.

Just ask the passengers in my car when I tired to drift at Bondurant and ended up stinking up the vehicle with the smell of burning rubber and clutch. Ask the guy in the back seat who wanted to get out.

A few minutes after my session in the GTO, McGovern grabbed the wheel and showed us how it’s done. He took us through a marked course in the Bondurant parking lot with the skill of a seasoned drifter.

To drift, he said, is all about timing. With McGovern on the gas it was pretty simple. We approached an orange pylon head-on at about 20 mph before McGovern slowed using the hand brake. After a push on the clutch, a shift into second, then a rev of the engine up to around 5,000 rpm, McGovern slightly turned away from the turn, cutting back towards it hard while popping the clutch and causing the rear wheels to spin.

When he lost traction — which is actually desirable and necessary — and began to slide around the corner, he held the drift until the next turn by feathering the accelerator while turning the car and avoiding the spin out.

Easy? Hardly.

It’s like driving on a sheet of ice.

“The kids all love this,” Bondurant tells me after my session with McGovern is done. “We’ve had to add a drifting section to our lessons because so many kids want to do it.”

One of the kids is Bondurant grandson, James. And if McGovern is good, James is greasy good.

He drifts the GTO in and out of S-turns on a closed track, sliding it in, bringing it back and scratching up the tires like nails on a chalkboard.

But my two-day trip to Bondurant’s school also comes with a layer of icing: Rhys Millen is in town and is practising drifting against James in what is called a “duel.” In drifting, a “duel” means two drivers drift against each other, sliding back and forth mere inches from each other’s door.

Millen is an established drifter who has earned his credentials drifting in Japan and is going to show James a lesson or two on real drifting.

“The kid’s good,” Millen says when he jumps out of his GTO after a few duels with James. “I think he’s got a legitimate future on the sport.”

So does the sport.

Drifting is catching on in North America and Millen hopes to create enough buzz to form another association one day.

On an amateur level it is huge, as Bondurant knows.

“I love drifting,” says the seasoned instructor who is in his 70s. “It has become my favorite thing to do.”

It’s high on my list, too. And after watching Bob, James, Millen and McGovern do it, I give it another wack.

More smoke. More spinning. And more awful clutch smell.

All of which has McGovern giving me a little advice come the end.

“Don’t try this at home,” he says.

Not a chance.