A driver who just drives aggressively all the time is not a dynamic driver. A driver who drives like Grandmother Doris all the time is also not a dynamic driver. People really misunderstand the word “Dynamic.”

What “Dynamic” refers to is the difference between the lowest of something and the highest of something — how gentle you are when driving versus how aggressive you are when driving. So, how can you become a dynamic driver? Well, first, you’ve got to get good at driving like Grandmother Doris, and second, you’ve got to get good at driving like me. Funny yeah.

Once you can be good at both the gentle and the aggressive, only then can you start deciding when is the best situation to use either one, and only at that point are you a dynamic driver.

Drive as Gentle

A limousine stop is when you’re on the brakes, and just before you’re about to stop, you ease off the brakes to stop very gently.
I get in the passenger seat of other people’s cars, and every time they come up to a red light, there’s a jerk. Then, as they take off, there’s another jerk. They are just jerks.

People are always trying to drive too quickly, and they accelerate like mad men up to the red light. Just coast, be smooth, gentle, and pretend you’re Grandmother Doris.

But be even better than Grandmother Doris, because she can only see about 20 meters into the future. You need to be seeing hundreds of meters into the future, planning for what’s going to happen. You cannot be a dynamic driver if you are never smooth, if you are never gentle.

I mean, even the way you come out of a junction shows whether you are a good dynamic driver.
If you can come out of a junction smoothly, if you look in all the directions you are supposed to, come out confidently, and choose the correct lane in good time — especially if you know the area and what’s going to happen with the lanes. Like, I know these two lanes merge into one.

So, even if I wanted to overtake someone at this point, it’s awkward when you end up right next to them as the lanes merge. You can see in the rearview mirror the exact situation. When there’s a little bit of traffic, don’t just accelerate and stop when the next car stops. Leave a little gap so you’re a bit more flexible, a bit more elastic. Some of you might not believe me, but you can be a more dynamic driver in a Kia Picanto than you can be in a BMW M car, Mercedes AMG car, or any hot hatch. It’s just about the way you drive.

You’ll actually have more fun like this. When you focus on driving really smoothly and gently, it makes the times when you drive aggressively more enjoyable and more fun.

This is not just about learning a cool trick like the limousine stop, doing it once, and saying, “Oh yeah, that’s cool, I can do that.”

Incorporate it into your everyday driving. Once you learn something like that, it should just become the way you drive because it’s better than stopping with jerks.

Although I know a few people who have done advanced courses, or they just have a natural ability for driving, they can do all of this stuff to some degree. They can drive very smoothly, gently, and nicely.

Drive as Fast

You are only a dynamic driver if you can excellent at the full range of driving skills. Handling your car quickly in the wet is a great way to demonstrate this. The far side of driving is about how you use the throttle, how you roll into it, and how you make sure to use the gears to stay in the right power band. How do you control the car around corners?

Let’s be dynamic again. The way you use your gears really shows what kind of driver you are. Drop a gear before the corner, roll into the throttle through the corner, brake for the next one, roll through, and then as I come up to some corners, I can drop another cog just for a bit of extra control at that moment. This is like 3,000 RPM out of 10,000 RPM. This is very gentle for my car.

But you can always step it up a notch. Now, if I push my car at 5,000 RPM out of 10,000 RPM, as I roll into the throttle a bit more, even though the road is wet, I aim to make the corner at 60 mph. I don’t really want to be sliding around. So you can still go full throttle—you just have to roll into it and be gentle.

One cheat code to improving your driving on the faster end is doing a track day. When you do a track day, you can learn the limits of your car. You start to know what the car can and can’t do. When you know what the car is capable of, it hugely increases your confidence because you’re not worried, thinking, Will the car make this corner? Won’t the car make this corner?

Now, you just have an intrinsic understanding of what’s too fast and where you can still push harder. It’s that difference between how smooth you can be and how spirited you can be that defines a dynamic driver. And dynamic drivers are the best drivers because the prerequisite for being dynamic is that you’re fantastic every day, and you go hard when you want to.

Most importantly, you know when to choose which option.