Sean O'Grady: Racing the GPS is one of motoring's richest pleasures

The journey? London to the Sussex coast. In? Mini Cooper S Convertible. Conditions? Fine. My opponent? The in-car sat nav.

There are few pleasures left in motoring life, but racing oneself via the "expected arrival time" on the sat nav is one of the richest. These machines are so smart that your own short-cuts, hard acceleration and sheer concentration can seldom beat them. And of course Professor Gatso's little yellow boxes make the sat nav that bit tougher an opponent.

It's like playing chess against a computer; awesome and even beating the ETA by a few minutes gives pleasure as Sebastian Vettel must feel after a Grand Prix win. I lost my race, by the way. I got lost.