McDowell's virtual M'ville preparing him for real track (cont'd)

"When we took him to the Nationwide race at Texas last year, I asked him, 'Have you ever been there?' He said, 'Man, I've run 3,000 miles over the last week.' I said, 'Where?' He said, 'My house,'" MWR vice president Ty Norris said. "He calls the software guys and says, 'Make this change.' I think it's really cool that he's doing that. And I think it's helped him, because at Texas after 30 minutes of practice he's in the top 10. He never even sat in the car and he was up there running pretty decent. His finish didn't reflect it, because we had a pit-road issue, and our green-flag pit stop got him a lap down. But he would have probably finished about 12th or 13th in his debut, which is pretty good."

McDowell's preparation entails more than just simulation. He's tested numerous times, including twice at Caraway (N.C.) Speedway during the week of the Atlanta Sprint Cup event. He's been at the first five races of this season, sitting in on team debriefs, becoming accustomed to the routines of a NASCAR weekend. During races he watches from the spotter's stand, listening over the scanner for tips on how drivers and crew chiefs adjust their cars throughout the length of an event. "He's just absorbing it all," Norris said, "and that's the enthusiasm you love to see."

But there's only so much McDowell can do. He could only watch nervously two weeks ago at Bristol Motor Speedway as Reutimann managed to keep what would soon be his No. 00 car inside the top 35 in owner points, securing a starting berth at Martinsville. There's still no full-time primary sponsor for McDowell's car, and he knows his performance in the coming weeks may determine whether one is found. And then there's his relative inexperience in NASCAR's national divisions -- four Nationwide events and one Truck race (at Martinsville), with a top finish of 14th.

MWR officials cite McDowell's ARCA record as proof that he knows how to drive a stock car. But they wonder how long the adjustment period to Sprint Cup will take.

"Stock-car experience is not the issue. It's just the level," Norris said. "[Racing] lines, how hard to push it, when to push it, what the car is capable of, what the car can handle, all these things [other drivers] know. Like in Phoenix, braking zone. How much brake, how little brake. All the things that took him a day to get going, you don't have a whole day when we go to Martinsville or we go to Texas or we go to some of these other places. You've just got to go. [Patrick] Carpentier, when he's been given the opportunity to qualify, he's been doing a pretty good job. But in the race, he and [Dario] Franchitti have really struggled. They'll both get it, but they're struggling to get the limits. I hope that Michael doesn't have the same curve."

McDowell is under no illusions as to the difficulty of the transition awaiting him.

"I'm nervous right now," he said. "You can't underestimate how difficult it's going to be. You can act confident and say it's going to be easy and jump in and do it, but we all know there have been a lot of great drivers that haven't been able to do it. What's going to really help us is being in the top 35 and being able to practice and not do qualifying runs the whole entire time. I think that was a big setback for the team last year. You spend all practice trying to get into the race, and once you're in the race, your cars aren't good because you weren't able to work on them. If we can just break through that barrier, I think we'll have better race results. It's going to make my job not easy, but maybe a little less challenging."

For now, at least, he can always ease the tension by retreating to the simulator and putting in a few more laps at virtual Martinsville, where a collision with the wall won't end his afternoon.

"That's the great thing about simulation. You can push it hard. You can hit the wall and hit reset and it doesn't cost you anything," he said. "But you've also got to treat it like it's real. If you treat it like a game and you bounce it off the wall, then you don't really learn anything. It's just like any other tool. It's how you use it. It's not the answer for seat time, but it's a definite help."