Rob Wilson is the man top racers turn to when they want to improve. Jonathan Crouch takes to the track with him….

However good a driver you are, you can always be better. Rob Wilson keeps telling me that. The world-renown driver coach is sitting beside me gently prompting about weight transfer and corner turn-in. And we’re doing 110mph flat out through a 90-degree bend in a Vauxhall Astra.

‘Don’t lift here whatever you do’, says Wilson in a tone suggesting that if I ignore his advice, Bad Things Will Happen. I don’t doubt it. Wilson’s tuition days though, allow for no half measures; his clients wouldn’t like it, those people representing much of the top tier of the professional racing community. More than half the drivers on the current F1 grid have recently been tutored by Rob.

As for his teaching tool of choice, well with that in mind, you might expect it to be a pretty extreme piece of machinery. Maybe an ex-DTM racer. Or perhaps some sort of supercar. Wilson’s tried all these kinds of cars of course, but he doesn’t hold with their use for high performance track driving tuition. For that, he reckons, you need a really well engineered standard roadcar. Which is why I’m pounding around the Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground in Leicestershire in a standard production 1.4-litre turbocharged Vauxhall Astra.

Wilson has long insisted on using the Griffin maker’s products. ‘I’ve tried other brands’, he says ‘and something always seems to go wrong after continual really hard use. All the Vauxhalls I’ve come across though, have been engineered to last’. Which is why almost all the famous currentday drivers you’ve ever heard of have at some point in the last few years found themselves behind the wheel of an Astra at Bruntingthorpe. As we drive around, Wilson tells me how Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen did this here, how Williams’ Valtteri Bottas did that there and how he taught Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg to perfect his ‘heel and toe’ brake/throttle gearchanging technique.

There’s rather more to work on with me of course, mainly because I’m continually having to change the software in my head. It’s not just my tendency to gently lift through flat out corners – which it turns out isn’t prudent but highly dangerous. I’m also driving in a way that I hoped would be smooth but which, it turns out, doesn’t properly take into account the way that shifting the weight of the car can give you extra traction and save you precious time exiting the bends.

And as all this is going on, I’m continually surprised by the response and sheer eagerness of the car I’m driving. Under the bonnet is a 150PS petrol 1.4 but it feels like a much bigger and more powerful engine than that. And the car, though not dressed as a hot hatch, has more poise and finesse than most models developed for that market. ‘Good isn’t it?’, Rob agrees. ‘My driving clients are always remarking on it – and this new Astra’s even better than the old one. The 200kgs of weight they’ve taken out of it has really made a difference. Not just to the way it feels but also to the laptimes, which are now up to two or three seconds quicker.’

He’s been using Vauxhalls for tuition pretty much ever since he gave up professional driving, a career that took him from home in New Zealand to the very brink of F1 stardom and through just about every other category the sport could offer. Even now, his ‘phone still rings with invitations to pilot powerful machinery in some far-flung part of the globe, but most are politely rejected. ‘I find the tuition stuff just as rewarding now; taking someone and in a short time, making a real difference with them.’

What’s he’s too modest to say is that he knows people – and how to get the best from them. And of course he knows his cars. Prior to meeting Rob, I thought the Astra was one of the better ones. Now though, I know it’s very good indeed. I wish I were.