Driving fast on the racetrack is fun. But the most fun you can have is being locked in a vicious duel with another driver, where you come out on top via a well-timed, beautifully executed overtaking maneuver — pumping up your ego while deflating your opposition's.

At the 24-hours of Le Mans, in 1952, a driver by the name of Pierre Levegh drove for 23 straight hours — even though the team had a driver who could have replaced him — such was the tenacity of this gutsy French racer. When it appeared that victory was all but assured, a fatigue-induced, clumsy gearshift caused his…

I'm sure you have heard — and maybe even been taught — that driving with a focus on being slow into the turn and fast out is the quickest way around a corner. It is one of the most common phrases muttered by instructors worldwide, and yet despite this superlative fact, I am going to tell you why it's wrong.

If you can morph into the chameleon of racecar drivers, chances are you will be successful in whatever you decide to drive. And that's good, because as Ricky Bobby said, "if you ain't first, you're last." The obvious question is how your driving should differ based on the car's configuration. Honestly, it's simple stuff.

The next race of the season was taking place at Sebring Raceway in Florida. It was five in the morning. I brushed my teeth and readied myself for a big day on track. But when you are staying in a hotel full of race team members — all driving rental cars — the battle to the racetrack can sometimes be fiercer than the…

Very rarely have I driven a car that was perfectly neutral. In almost every case there will be an imbalance of either understeer or oversteer — even if it's just by one percent.

Many amateur racers spend years discussing slip angles and cornering forces, thinking it makes them sound like really, really fast drivers. They proclaim daft statements like, "to truly perfect turn five you must determine the corner radius and lateral load produced, factoring in the desired 12 degrees of slip angle…"…

Next to drinking a beer in the Talladega grandstands, autocrossing has the lowest physical risk in motorsports. If you go off, you'll just squash a few orange cones. But the lower risk can actually make winning an autocross harder.

It's three in the morning and you are still glued to your TV screen with your steering wheel on your lap and headphones firmly attached to your ears. Most likely there is a lukewarm beer to your left that you have neglected in your ambition to beat that Finnish sim-racing maestro named Markku.

Driving fast requires extreme skill and technique. But no matter how talented you are, if you can't overcome the fear, then you can never take a car to its absolute limit. You'd have to be a complete idiot to do that.

Nothing is more rewarding to a driver than the sweet sound of that perfectly timed blip of the gas pedal, effortlessly matching the revs to the wheel speed, and downshifting crisply into the preceding gear. It's the sound of a true professional.

We've mastered the racing line, but now we need to understand the techniques necessary to operate a car at its limits. This is the aspect that turns you from a wannabe racer, that is regularly ridiculed by all your competitors in the local autocross, to the guy standing atop of the podium, swigging the urine-tasting…

If you want to carve a mesmerizingly fast curve, you'd better understand how to determine the most efficient line around the bend. No matter if you've mastered cornering techniques like Michael Schumacher, if you are not on the correct racing line, you will be no faster than a NASCAR driver attempting to turn right.

Welcome to "How To Drive Fast," a new, weekly column by native mad-cunian IndyCar racer Alex Lloyd. Each week, Alex will impart the tools, techniques and mental conditioning that will get you around a racetrack quicker, and make you a safer fast driver on the road. — Ed