If this is your first time on the Dragon, here's the short version of everything that matters, and it's only three things. First: slow down — slower than you think you need to. The instinct is to keep up with the locals on their track tires who've run this a thousand times, and that instinct is exactly how first-timers get hurt. You are not racing them. Let them by; there are pull-offs everywhere for precisely that, so ease over and wave them through.
Second: look where you want to go, not at what scares you. Through the tight stuff your vehicle follows your eyes, so keep them well up the road, out to where the curve opens — not down at the centerline or the drop-off. It sounds like nothing. It's everything. And third: it is completely fine to just cruise. Nothing says you have to attack this road. Some of the best days out here are spent rolling through at an easy pace, taking in the gorge and the green and the whole ridiculous fun of a road with three hundred curves, pulling off whenever you like. The Dragon rewards the fast and the slow alike — it only punishes the reckless. So take it easy, and take it in.
Photo: William Klos from Mason, US · CC BY 2.0
