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A few comments in light of mostly good advice I see.
Words from a friend as we were talking at the track one day a long time ago: "If you are comfortable while you are going around the track, you will not get any faster. You have to make yourself uncomfortable in order to go faster."
When you are working on going faster, don't try to go faster everywhere at once. You will get information overload and it's a lot easier to make mistakes that way. Pick one or two corners at opposite ends of the track and run the rest of the track at a comfortable pace. Then just work on those corners until you are happy with your progress in them. Then pick two more corners, leave the rest alone, and so on.
I think that you have a pretty good approach in working up to the limits of traction. I am not a "Balls to the wall" let's just go faster type of rider. I prefer to approach it where I just keep gradually going faster. This allows me to sense the bike starting to behave differently and telling me things are starting to happen. An example is the first time I spun the back end coming out of a corner on purpose. I was gradually getting on the gas earlier and earlier when I started feeling the back end move around a bit more. I knew that the bike was saying; "I'm about to start moving some more " I knew what was coming, so I kept getting on the gas a little earlier, a little earlier, a little earlier until the back end drifted out easy as pie and I stayed on the gas and finished the corner with a big smile on my face, thinking: "I just spun up the rear!" No drama, big fun.
The bad stuff happens when you try to take big swings at your laptimes with an axe instead of carving on them with a knife.
Get a laptimer if you don't have one. What feels fast isn't always actually fast and you need a way to quantify your performance.
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