America seems to love two things: driving the family car in three or four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours on end, and omnipresent advertising. Small wonder, then, that stock-car racing is so popular: Unlike sports that are supposedly a lot like American life, NASCAR actually is like American life.
As NASCAR is about driving fast in circles, it ought to be fairly easy to develop into a game. True, there are many different circles—ovals, short ovals, super-speedways, tri-ovals—infinite variety! While the (sort of) different-tracks thing is old hat, this year's edition of the NASCAR video game also throws in Total Team Control. In short, you can ask other drivers on your race team for help, a draft, a bump, and so on. This works danged well; they'll actually react in a realistic fashion, taking into account the racing situation and how you've behaved toward them recently. You can even switch cars on the fly, jumping into your teammates' ride to execute race strategy yourself, in a fun and useful touch that can't have been easy to develop. And you can use it on all levels of stock-car racing, from the minor-league Whelen tour on up, in the involved new career mode.