They communicate just as they would on the race track, depressing a button on the steering wheel as they barrel into a corner at 160 mph. Except they're not at the race track. They're at home, in jeans or T-shirts or pajamas, connected via the Internet, looking not out of windshields but into computer screens.

“

With some of these tracks on the game -- and I really shouldn't call it a game -- you start in the garage and you even learn what gates to go through. You get to learn the race track before you get there.

”

MIKE DILLON, RCR director

Some have spent thousands of dollars to build cockpits accurate to the tiniest detail, with pedals and gearshifts and seats that perform just like the real thing. On any given Wednesday night, Michael McDowell or Brad Coleman or A.J. Allmendinger might be there. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Martin Truex Jr. have made appearances. It's all part of an invitation-only simulation league featuring NASCAR drivers who battle just like they're at Michigan or Kansas. No, it's not real. Asphalt and tire dust are replaced by pixels and code. But it performs very much like the genuine article, a fact that's drawing more in the NASCAR community to simulators, once dismissed as just toys for kids.

They're not toys anymore. The cars, programmed with data supplied by crewmen from actual NASCAR teams, perform like real cars. The tracks, built off satellite imagery and input from actual drivers, perform like real tracks. These aren't video games, but serious performance tools that more and more drivers are using to try and gain an edge on the competition.

"What I like about it is, just being familiar with the race track when you get there," said Mike Dillon, director of competition for Richard Childress Racing and whose sons Austin and Ty use simulators to help further their racing careers. "Looking out the windshield, seeing the bumps on the track, most of them are pretty accurate. Heck, it's tough enough to get out of the garage and get on and off the track for a rookie at a track you're not familiar with. With some of these tracks on the game -- and I really shouldn't call it a game -- you start in the garage and you even learn what gates to go through. You get to learn the race track before you get there, and it's pretty accurate."

The industry has benefited from a generation of drivers that grew up around video games, and in general are more computer-savvy than their predecessors. People took notice when Denny Hamlin credited simulation training with helping him win at Pocono his rookie season on the Cup Series tour. Michael McDowell, who trains in a full-scale cockpit with a 52-inch plasma monitor meant to mimic a windshield, opened eyes when simulation work helped him win four races in ARCA in 2007. Before Clint Bowyer started this past season's Nationwide event at Montreal -- an event he began without a single lap of practice, because of the concurrent Sprint Cup weekend in Pocono -- Dillon asked Sim Factory, a company that makes a title popular in the NASCAR industry and hosts the invitation-only Wednesday night series, to put together a simulated Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Bowyer finished ninth, despite never seeing the track before the day of the race. (Continued)