THE JOY OF DRIVING

From mastering the everyday commute to unlocking the full potential of your performance car, our new series will help you become safer, more confident and ultimately more skilled behind the wheel

- JOHN BARKER

YOU READ EVO, YOU LOVE CARS, SO YOU PROBABLY LOVE DRIVING too, recognising that it's a skill to be nurtured and developed on every drive.

Sadly, many people treat driving as a chore and it's easy to see why: high levels of traffic, speed cameras ready to punish small transgressions, and new cars crammed with assistance and safety features that risk diminishing the involvement of the person behind the wheel. But there is still a great deal of real driving to be done on every journey, and an engaged, skilled driver will not only be safer, they will also make a positive difference and find satisfaction and enjoyment, even on busy roads and on the regular commute.

We get regular enquiries from readers fortunate to own high-performance cars who want to feel confident and safe enjoying their abilities and get more from their vehicles. Many drivers haven't had any training since they passed their test, and while we all hopefully learn through experience, every driver can benefit from driver training and from considering their driving afresh.

Most of us here at evo have been coached by well-known experts including Paul Ripley, John Lyon and Hugh Noblett, and that training has stuck with us.

We use it every day without thinking and it has served us and the magazine well, with remarkably few 'incidents' these last 25 years.

In this new series we'll look at the fundamentals of good road driving an approach to driving that can be applied to all journeys. Later on, we'll cover 'core' high-performance skills such as heel and toe downshifting, trailbraking and limit handling - understeer and oversteer - and we'll conclude with a look at trackday driving.

We hope this series will prove informative and encourage you to scrutinise and self-evaluate your driving and consider an advanced driving course as a great step to take.