What's up. I'm Frankie, I'm 14, and I got Driver for the PlayStation for my birthday in July. I have played it basically every day since. My mom says I spent all of August in the 1970s, because that's what the cars and the music in Driver are like, and she's right, and I'm not sorry.

If you've played Driver, you know about THE GARAGE. Before the story even starts, you have to pass a driving test in an underground parking garage to prove you can drive. You have 60 seconds. It is the hardest thing in the whole game. People have thrown their controllers over it. I'm not saying I did. I'm saying the controller is fine now.

I passed it on try number 61. Here's how you can do it in less.

Here's the deal. You're Tanner, an undercover cop, and you're trying to get a job driving for some bad guys. They want to see what you can do first. So they put you in a garage with a stopwatch and a list of moves. You have to do all nine before the time runs out. You can do them in any order. The game checks them off as you go.

Tries 1 through 30: panicking. I'd do the burnout, then just drive around trying stuff and the clock would run out with like six moves done.

Tries 31 through 60: planning. I figured out an order and stuck to it, so I wasn't wasting time driving back and forth. This got me to eight out of nine a LOT of times. The ninth was always the reverse 180. Always.

Try 61: I stopped trying to do the reverse 180 fast. I went slower backwards and turned harder. It worked. With FOUR seconds left. I screamed so loud my dad came downstairs to see if I broke something.

My order: Burnout at the start, then Handbrake at the first corner, Slalom down the pillars, 180 at the end, Speed back up the other side, Brake test right after, then 360, then Reverse 180, then finish the Lap. Try it. If you have a better order, e-mail me, but I bet you don't.

Also: the reverse 180 is easier if you do it in a wide open part of the garage, not near a wall. That sounds obvious. It took me 60 tries to figure out.

1. The handbrake is your best friend. You can't take a corner at 90 without it. Tap it, steer, gas. Practice it in the garage until you can do it without thinking.
2. Watch your felony meter. When the cops see you do something bad, like running a red light or smashing into somebody, the meter goes up. The higher it goes, the meaner the cops get. If there's a cop car around, drive like a grandma until he's gone.
3. Don't ram cop cars. I know it's fun. It makes everything worse.
4. Watch your damage too. If your car gets too beat up, it's over, no matter how good you were doing.
5. Alleys are shortcuts. Cop cars follow you into them, but traffic doesn't, and you can lose them on the other side.
6. Learn the map. The cities are based on the real ones, with the hills and the bridges and everything. Once you know the streets, you stop getting stuck in dead ends with three cops on your bumper.
7. Don't worry about people on the sidewalk. They always jump out of the way. Always. You can't hit anybody. That is the main reason my mom said yes to this game.