Driving to Spa is best on your own | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

Did I drive some thousand horsepower hypercar from Wales to Spa without using so much as an inch of motorway? I did not. On the contrary, from where I joined the M48 at Chepstow to where I left the E42 at Spa, I was on either a motorway or dual carriageway throughout. I was in a plug in Mercedes saloon and I went as fast as I could without drawing the attention of the local constabulary. And there’s nothing remarkable about that either.

But I was struck, and not for the first time, by the pleasure of being entirely on my own. I am not a hermit, I am a family man lucky enough to have friends whose company and counsel I cherish. Until, that is, it’s time to go somewhere. At which point I’d almost always prefer to do so by myself.

Because I think when most people contemplate a journey, they have some vague idea of departure and arrival times, but are quite happy to allow themselves to be diverted from their inexactly assembled plans by an almost limitless number of internal and external influences, from the whims of those with whom they share the car to simply and inexplicably being overcome by a desire to ‘take a break.’

It is not a modus operandi to which I subscribe and while my children were growing up I could be found gnawing my knuckles in frustration at the family’s inability even to leave at an agreed time. They would then sit in the car doing precisely nothing of any note before asking when we might be taking a break. From what? Staring out of the window, texting their mates, examining the inside of their eyelids?

Go alone and you leave all this behind. You get to depart when you wanted to, to the minute, and not 20 minutes later so you have to hare down the road so you don’t miss your train, bus, airplane or whatever it is you’re not rushing to catch. Go alone and you get to drive at the speed you choose, without any barracking from the back about going too fast or, just occasionally, too slow. Go alone and you get to listen only to what you wish. No inane conversations about who’s dumped who or what some ill-advised associate was wearing last night, just your choice of music, audiobook or silence.

I’m a much better driver on my own. With my head cleared of distractions, I’m just better at positioning the car on the road, reading the unspoken language of the road users around me, distinguishing between the aggressive idiots, the terrible drivers who just behave like aggressive idiots without ever meaning to, the distracted and the lost. It would be interesting to discover how much more likely you are to have an accident with your family on board than without. I have no idea, but expect it would be significantly so.

Something else. So long as I’m in a reasonably quiet and comfortable car – anything from a Volkswagen Polo upwards – long journeys actually relax me. A few hours to myself with the telephone on do not disturb and I always arrive with a head cleared of the clutter of daily life, or at least with it substantially reorganised. I gain clearer perspectives, have better ideas, become a happier person.

I do of course accept that none of this makes me in any way normal. I suspect most people regard long solo journeys as boring at best, decidedly stressful at worst. But to me as someone who never feels more at home than when behind the wheel of a car, I feel quite the opposite. It is where I belong, it is what I do. I enjoy it, it’s one of depressingly few things I am reasonably good at, and the more I do it, the more I enjoy it, the less I want that enjoyment diluted, compromised or blown off course by having to accommodate the needs and wishes of others.

So on Sunday morning, when the race is over and I’ve said goodbye to the friends and family who are also racing out here this weekend, I shall climb back into the Benz, shut the door behind me, cut myself off from the rest of world and do what I do for a few precious hours. And I’m looking forward to it already.