A DRIVER has been jailed for “treating the roads around the Selby area like a racetrack”.

Cathy Taylor, prosecuting, said Joe Frost drove at up to 100 mph, and at double the speed limit through residential areas, went the wrong way round roundabouts and drove on the wrong side of the road.

The high speed chase began when he performed a handbrake turn to evade a police car that pulled up alongside him to try and stop the journey and ended when he abandoned the car in Barlby and ran off, only to be caught and arrested.

Shortly before the chase began, officers spotted him on a Camblesforth drive, sitting in a VW Golf with the engine running at 2.30am on March 11 and he assured them he was not intending to drive anywhere.

Shortly after, police saw him drive out of the village on to the A645 and A1041 and ordered him to stop.

He was a banned driver with a long record for offences involving cars including stealing them during house raids.

The Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, told him: “You were treating those roads around the Selby area like a race track. Anyone who got in your way, driving as you were to escape from the police, wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

He jailed Frost, 26, of Durham Road, Dunscroft, Doncaster, for 16 months for dangerous driving and driving while disqualified.

The maximum sentence for the offences was 24 months and because Frost admitted both offences at a preliminary hearing, he had to reduce that by a third.

For Frost, Kevin Blount, said he had been trying to reform himself since he was last released from prison in October 2012.

He had the chance to work for a parts distributor in South Yorkshire and had been voluntarily working with probation officers to go straight.

He needed intensive rehabilitation measures that could be imposed as part of a suspended prison sentence.