Police tracked two cars being driven at 110mph on the M5 in north Worcestershire, a court heard.

The drivers were friends but were not racing each other. One had been showing the other a route home from the south coast.

The cars, a Peugeot and an Astra, then turned on to the A38 near Bromsgrove and travelled at 60mph in a 40mph zone and 70mph in a 50mph limit, said Jane Sarginson, prosecuting at Worcester Crown Court.

Surveyor Thomas Collings, aged 23, of South Lodge Farm, Upton Warren, Bromsgrove, and Andrew Looby, 24, a Webbs garden centre worker, of Parkway, West Park, Droitwich, denied dangerous driving but their guilty pleas to careless driving were accepted.

Collings was fined £500. Looby was fined £350 and both were ordered to pay £352 costs each.

Miss Sarginson said at 10.45pm on October 8, 2000, two police officers on patrol in a Range Rover saw the two cars travelling at high speed and followed them.

Collings, driving the Astra, was in the lead and Looby was trying to keep up with him on the M5.

Lee Masters, for Collings, said since the incident he had driven 60,000 miles safely in his job as a surveyor and passed an advanced driving course.

Looby's barrister Andrew Dickens said he had been offered a job as a regional sales manager, doubling his salary, if he kept his licence.

The judge decided not to ban the defendants but imposed penalty points on their licences.