15 February

My greatest pleasure in driving is finding ways to maximise the smoothness and efficiency of the trip. Not changing gears (only cars with engines that have no grunt need gears), or any of the other boy-racer fetishes surrounding driving. What’s not well understood I don’t think is that the world’s best drivers, racing drivers, drive using the same principle. Smooth, efficient. Because that’s also the fastest way to get around a track. I watched a documentary hosted by Jackie Stewart, the famous F1 driver. He was getting people to drive around a track and comparing data with a professional F1 driver driving the same track. In every case the amateur’s data was jerky and all over the place, far too much acceleration and braking. The F1 driver’s data though was super smooth, efficient driving. Also much faster. This is the myth I like to explore, that the sort of yob-driving that dominates discussions around cars is somehow more advanced driving in some way. It’s not, it’s embarrassingly bad driving, on every metric. The same yobs who say we don’t need more road rules, just better driving. They can’t drive for shit, and cause most of the accidents.