Education, education, education

Jackie also extolled the benefits of reading the road as far ahead as possible and anticipating what you’re driving into. I saw that deployed to the extreme – along with supreme car control – by 1983 World Rally Champion Hannu Mikkola when I sat beside him in an Audi S1 Quattro as he blasted through a Welsh forest evaluating centre and rear differentials for the 1986 WRC season.

His concentration was ferocious as he constantly read two key zones of the road: one as far down the gravel track as he could see, the other immediately in front of the S1’s bonnet. With his eyes flicking between the two, he knew exactly what was coming both immediately and eventually. The S1, flat at every opportunity, was always perfectly placed as Hannu tweaked the wheel with precise little movements; always smoothly.

There was a divine moment when he perfectly blended acute anticipation with sublime car control. On a not very straight straight across the steep mountain face, a pine had tumbled from the uphill bank, leaving a few yards of its trunk jutting at an angle up over the track. Its tip looked level with my head. As we tore towards it, the trunk seemed to hang in slow motion, waiting to smash through the windscreen. Mikkola didn’t let up. An instant before disaster, he flicked the Audi fully sideways at 100mph and poked its nose under the trunk. The tree passed six inches above the bonnet, three or four inches ahead of the windscreen. He straightened up and stormed on.

Apart from JYS and Hannu, I’ve been lucky enough to glean tips from racing drivers such as Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss and Derek Bell, and legendary test drivers like Bob Wallace and Jaguar’s Mike Cross, as well as Ti’s handy wheelmen Steve Sutcliffe and Andrew Frankel, who honed their skills as road testers.

But a little while back, after driving for more than 50 years, I learned new subtleties about anticipation, road position and corner limit points when my daughter Georgia and I spent a day driving with former police advanced driving instructor John Gregory. He’s known for his YouTube videos posted under his nom de plume, Reg Local. Apart from his films, John’s insightful and witty books are as good a guide to driving at a high level as any I’ve ever seen.

Georgia, in her mid-30s, had been driving since she was 18. She’s always been confident and capable behind the wheel but wanted advanced instruction to boost her skill as a clean, safe and swift road driver.

John is based near Bolton, handy for some of Lancashire and Yorkshire’s best roads, where he takes pupils for eight hours’ instruction. You go in your car. What car would be good for the job, I wondered; and settled on a then-new Golf R Mk7.5 – discreet, agile, surefooted, fast, responsive and with enough refinement and comfort for a 400-mile day.

As we headed north for the Yorkshire Dales, John started teaching Georgia how to read the road and its surroundings diligently. ‘Get your eyes onto high beam,’ he told her, and look as far ahead as possible. As we encountered different situations, he reeled off a range of tips – for example…

The distant tops of telephone poles usually indicate where the road goes. Peer over hedges and walls; perhaps you’ll see the roof of a car coming down a side road to a junction that may be blind.

‘One of my favourites,’ he said, ‘is that if a car joins the road in front of you from a side road to the left, it will almost certainly turn off in the first mile or so, usually to the right and vice versa. And if a vehicle pulls out of a side road into your path, don’t worry about that one – look for the next one and the next one.’

As an S-bend sign loomed, he advised: ‘With S-bends, the left hander is usually tighter than the right hander because we drive on the left and are therefore on the tighter ‘inside’ of left handers – it’s the reverse in right-hand driving countries.’

Fresh mud on a country road suggests a tractor may not be far ahead. Rubbish bins sitting higgledy-piggledy beside the road often mean there’s a bin lorry close by. There’s always more than one deer/sheep/kangaroo: if one jumps out in front of you, look for the next. And if you see a warning for temporary traffic lights, there is approximately a 75 per cent chance they’ll be on red when you reach them.

When we came up on a pair of cyclists, John said: ‘Try to anticipate cyclists’ moves. Approaching a junction, if they’re freewheeling with their right pedal at the top they’ll probably turn right; if the left pedal is at the top, they’ll probably turn left.’

At Horton-in-Ribblesdale, we saw John’s observational skills demonstrated to especially good effect. We were on the B6479, one of those loping Yorkshire Dales roads that spears straight for decent stretches, then darts left or right, streams over crests and plummets into dips. It demands attention but delivers rewards. In the bright winter’s day, it was an inspiring road to be following.

As we neared a crest, a man’s silver-haired head popped into view on the right verge. We soon saw it belonged to a chap who was poking a camera over the dry-stone wall to photograph Ribblesdale as it stretched east, glowing golden brown in the sharp light.

Instantly, John, in the front passenger seat, commanded: ‘More brakes please Georgia. There’ll be a car stopped around the bend.’ Sharp-eyed John had spotted that the picture-taker was lightly dressed. It was February. The wind was icy and it was 3 degrees C outside. John had deduced that, because the guy wasn’t wearing much, he’d hopped out of a nearby car to take his snap. And with such narrow verges, it was probably blocking the road.

Sure enough, as we eased over the crest into the left-hander that followed, there it was: a silver 2011 Vauxhall Corsa, parked half across our lane. Georgia stopped in plenty of time. The bloke suddenly seemed aware of the hazard he’d created and turned, with alarm on his face, to look at his car and us. Yes mate!

We paused in a layby for a while where, using a diagram sketched on his iPad, John talked Georgia through perhaps the most important single thing about swift and safe road driving: limit point analysis. It sounds complex but isn’t. The limit point (or vanishing point) is the furthest point you can see in a corner.

‘As you approach a corner, it’s the point where the road’s nearside and offside edges appear to meet,’ John explained. ‘That point will tell you very early on how tight the corner is, and whether you need to slow down or can accelerate through.

‘But it’s not where the limit point is; it’s what it’s doing. First, as you approach the corner, it will be getting closer. Second, at some stage it will stop getting closer and stay at a constant distance. Third, it will then start to move away. That’s where the corner is opening up, and you can push the accelerator harder and harder and keep the car balanced.’

Then, into the bends, using the four phases of the System of Car Control outlined in Roadcraft: The Police Driver’s Handbook, he showed her how to:

1 – Position the car to the nearside into right-handers to increase her view, and, into left-handers, to edge to the right – including using the offside on a clear road.

2 – Adjust her speed using road features like a rise to slow down; or backing off, and braking if necessary. ‘The aim is to have everything sorted so that all you have left to do at the start of the corner is to turn the wheel and then press the accelerator.’

3 – Select the right gear to use through the corner – ‘low enough for strong acceleration but high enough to get all the way around without running out of revs’. In the admirably elastic Golf R manual, third was perfect, with its vigorous response from 1500rpm (17mph) right through to 75mph at 6500rpm.

4 – And finally to accelerate – earlier than her previous inclination – to balance the car through the bends.

To bring it all together, John asked Georgia to drive eight miles of the winding, undulating A682 without using the brakes. ‘It seemed hard initially but it soon taught me how to anticipate and get my approach speed right,’ Georgia said. ‘I kept remembering John’s golden rule: always be able to stop within the visible distance.’

Through the day, over a couple of hundred miles of demanding roads, her driving was transformed, and her previous unease about corners dissipated.

Reading the limit points set her up properly for each bend. She was never taken by surprise. The moment the limit points moved away, she got on the throttle assuredly, revelled in the Golf’s pep and learned how good a car with this much grip feels when it hunkers down through a bend.

She got into a rhythm of slow in, fast out and was able to enjoy the R’s performance with confidence. Using John’s overtaking discipline – hang back, move to the offside for a good look, and then go – she nipped past dawdlers with new-found mastery.

Georgia learned invaluable technique in those eight hours; and for me it wasn’t just a refresher. I gleaned new tips about observation and response, and deeper insight into limit points.

Great roads John recommends

‘For the absolute best driving roads anywhere in northern England, it’s worth going north from Kirkby Stephen to Brough and then into the North Pennines. I’d thoroughly recommend the B6276 to Middleton-in-Teesdale and then the B6278 North to Stanhope; it’s one of my all-time favourites. From there you can do a loop round to Alston and finish with the A686 over Hartside Pass to Penrith. It’s newly resurfaced and an absolute cracker.

‘Further south, there’s a terrific B-road – the B6478 – from Dunlop Bridge through Slaidburn and Tosside to Wigglesworth.

‘I’d suggest the Buttertubs Pass in the Yorkshire Dales too. Take the road north of Hawes from Simonstone to Thwaite. If the weather is good, the views towards the River Swaile and Thwaite are fantastic.’