Crafty tips to perfect overtakes

The sweetest moment to overtake a single car is when you first come up behind it. Carrying your momentum, you pass with a minimum of fuss in a decisive and understated sweep.

One way to tell if you’re riding well – and planning ahead – is to see if you can engineer successive momentum overtakes by employing subtle approach-timing so you arrive with all checks done and momentum maintained. You may adjust your throttle but don’t properly back off. You find a fluid overtake rhythm, and depart the scene without touching your brakes or ruffling anyone’s feathers.

Often it’s impossible to use the momentum technique, and that’s no problem, so back off and sit in. Desperately late or overambitious drivers have to maintain that momentum at all cost or they will never get past that lorry. But a bike with 60bhp or more can use its power- to-weight ratio to nip past anything.

Make sure you are in a gear that plants you in the torque with a responsive throttle and revs in hand. Be proactive. Make a plan. Quickly identify opportunities and areas of danger that will prevent any immediate progress.

If it’s a lorry you’re stalking, sit back so you can look down its near side; until you know whether or not there’s a T-junction or a cyclist or a tractor under its nose you have to be patient.