In an ideal world, we're all looking for an effortless flow from white line to apex to white line, gracefully scribing smooth arcs lap after consistent lap. What many of us end up doing is often quite different. We need professional help.
"A guy at a briefing for a car day once described it to me quite well," says Niall Mackenzie. "He said if men are in Tesco's they'll go down the vegetable aisle and make a nice swoop with the trolley to get a good exit into the fruit aisle, then drift across nicely to peel in for the biscuits. But on track you've got gears to change, wind noise, other people around you, braking, all that. The geometry is pretty straightforward - the shortest distance between two points - but executing it is hard because so much else is involved."
What we can't do is talk you through every corner on every track in Britain. Instead we're going to look at what we're trying to achieve overall and how best to approach it, from learning a new circuit, be it on a track day or a club race, to finding the fastest, smoothest line.
