The answer ISN'T what everyone thinks: You've got to be skidding!
The sky is a white fog of low cloud. There are five inches of fresh snow on the ground, it's treacherously slippy and I am sitting behind the wheel of a nippy Ford Focus being urged to put my foot down.
Beside me, rally driver Lionel Firn leans back, grins his warm, easy grin and looks more relaxed than any passenger of mine has a right to do. Especially in these conditions.
'Keep it in third and give it a bit more throttle,' he says calmly. 'You're up to about 35mph. Now drive through that gap and turn left.'
Skidding around: Lionel Firn instructs on just how to use drifting wheels to your advantage
I swing the wheel sharply to the left. But I'm going too fast and at once several unwelcome things happen in a hot-cheeked blur of disconnected freeze-frames.
One moment we've started to turn exactly as intended. The next the car is slewing across the underlying ice like a drunk on a waltzer.
A plume of snow sprays up from the back wheels as they skid round. And then I'm peering through the stationary windscreen, noting that the car's spun through 180 degrees and is now facing the wrong way.
Lionel's relaxed voice bites into my consciousness. 'You haven't quite got the hang of the steering bit yet.' No kidding.
It's just as well we're not on a public road where I might have caused a nasty accident. But at Elvington Air Field, near York, you'd have to try very hard to find anything to bump into. And as it happens, skidding was what I was supposed to do because I've come to Lionel's DriverSkills academy for tuition in skid control.
No one was ever going to nominate me as motorist of the millennium. When I was 17, I used to run my rallymad eight-year-old brother, Jonny, to Cubs, with him hanging out of the window providing a (much-needed) running commentary on the closeness of parked cars.
In the driving seat: Victoria Moore prepares to get a skidding lesson from Lionel Firn
