There is also the issue of crank arm length. In effect, a 52-tooth front chainring with a 165mm crank arm will be harder to torque than a 52-tooth front chainring with a 175mm crank arm because the short arm = less leverage. Now I'm not advocating changing crank arm length as a way to tweak your gearing but it does affect effective gearing somewhat.

Gearing won't really help you get faster (unless your gearing is really bad, but yours sounds like it's fine). If you want to get faster, do intervals. Those will make you faster than anything else. Doing long rides maybe once a week (not too easy....go moderate) and a tempo ride (super hard) will help a lot, too.

My normal ones (once a week) are 4x8 min at 20-25 off MHR w/4 min rest at 70 off. I'll do 5x1k on the track right after. Sometimes (maybe once a month or so) I'll do a set of max efforts, maybe 6 x 2 min or 10 x 1 min. I also do a tempo brick once a week (45 min at 25-30 off MHR on the bike then ~5 mile tempo run) and a long ride, which usually has some harder efforts in it, just not as hard as the mid-week workouts.