How do people drive so fast?

Practice practice and a bit more practice i used to think exactly the same myself when i first started in nodo but now I'm a hell of alot quicker

when i first started out there was a track i really really liked and played it alot i set what i thought was a quick lap time in a zentirno and a few month back was playing on that same track in a sultan and beat my lap time in the zentorno in my sultan by 5 secs thats how much i had improved

Practice is the most important part. I believe you need to be connected with your car. Your car is you best friend, you must know it inside and out. Racing to me, is like a sixth sense. I've been racing in video games since I was 5, I mean sim games like Richard Burns Rally, F1 challenge, plus I drive rc cars, I used to even hotlap bikes when I was younger. I watch a lot of racing, almost everyday. I know where I can improve my time, change my braking points, and just adjusting random stuff to get the perfect lap. Just spend time learning the track and get acquainted with your car. Practicing with other people helps, as you can learn and try their lines. I think I may take this too seriously

I will point you to broughy's real life racing and racing school video. They explain everything you need to know also,knowing how everycar behaves, what're their braking points, capabilities is very important. I, myself, am new to racing but watching broughy's videos and racing with awesome crew members I think I have improved quite alot in this short amount of time.

Also find a track you like, get on there, memorize its everything. After sometime with the track you will start notice ideal racing line, braking points, where to defend, attack and doing this with diffirent cars you will start understanding the diffirences of cars as well.

Here is the link to broughy's channell : www.youtube.com/user/hwkabro

Hope I didn't bore you

Use the cars your comfortable with, use your throttle to slow down instead of your brake as much as you can. The other thing is track knowledge, if you know every little bit about a track, you'll be a lot faster, try and follow people's lines through corners, find the route that works for you!

Observation is your friend. I am still a good way off the pace of most top racers but when I first joined NoDo, I still regularly lost in random lobbies and was 7-10 seconds off the pace per lap in NoDo races. I'm not a car/motorsport guy and to some extent not even a big player of racing games but I love online racing in GTA and I found my best weapon was studying people better than me obsessively.

The tiniest difference in breaking points and how wide you approach a corner can make all the difference. Sometimes I'll think I've mastered a corner but then I'll be behind a guy in a race who takes the approach a fraction wider and brakes a tenth of a second before me and I copy that on the next lap and find the apex of the turn straightens up so much more and can gain you as much as a second which over the course of a race is huge. It's easy to watch one of Broughy's videos and think you take basically the same line as him through a lap then wonder why he can get lap times that are 5 seconds quicker than yours - one thing I've learned is that "basically the same line" isn't enough. You really have to pay attention to the finest little details to get the best lines and shave seconds off your lap times. I'm still a long way off but learning all the time.

This is by no means a definitive guideline but for me, a guy who knows next to nothing about competitive motorosport, my only weapon is my observational skills and being able to study much better racers.

This!! Practice is good but not if you are hammering in bad habits. Learn the basics by watching the videos THEN practice good technique. Thats what I did, I got a lot better, still lose a lot but I get the bronze in NODO races a lot, finish mid pack most of the time.. Sometimes I finish dead last but I still have fun doing it. 

I agree with this a lot. It definitely applies to when we were trying to show people our lines for LSGP and North Loop. A new guy would come in be way off the pace and just come to the conclusion "I suck" and never get better. Meanwhile (just an example) someone like uR Timer just grinded and grinded until she set the LSGP world record. When she started she was running over 10 seconds off the pace but by doing what Eder is saying she progressed rapidly on that track.