The first time Michael McDowell ever saw the half-mile speedway in Salem, Ind., he posted the fastest lap of practice his very first time around. Two weeks later, in his first trip to the legendary short track in Winchester, Ind., he not only won the pole but broke a 10-year-old track record. The next week at Kentucky Speedway, it was the same story -- fast off the truck, and a pole position in his first time there.

Autostock

Michael McDowell

Sprint Cup Series

Owner Points, Pos. 27-35

Pos.	Car	Points	Behind
27.	No. 00	461	-321
28.	No. 15	449	-333
29.	No. 28	428	-354
30.	No. 55	402	-380
31.	No. 96	386	-396
32.	No. 70	374	-408
33.	No. 5	368	-414
34.	No. 44	367	-415
35.	No. 77	356	-426

• Owner Points

At first, he figured it was a coincidence. But as the poles and the fast laps began to pile up, McDowell began to realize it was something else. All that training he was doing at home was paying off.

He had never been to places like Salem or Winchester, but he had made hundreds of laps around those racetracks on the driving simulator installed at his house. That's one reason why McDowell, in his first year driving a stock car, was able to so quickly adapt on the ARCA circuit, where he won four races, nine poles, and finished second in final championship points. He's using the same approach as he nears his Sprint Cup debut this weekend at Martinsville Speedway, where he's never made a lap in a NASCAR racecar. But he's made more than 700 circuits around the half-mile track on the monitor at home.

"The simulator really helps in where you're going to lift, how much brake pressure you're going to use," said McDowell, 23, who takes over the No. 00 car at Michael Waltrip Racing being vacated by David Reutimann, who is sliding over to Dale Jarrett's old No. 44. "The only thing you don't get is, you don't get the seat of the pants, the car is going to slide out [feeling]. It's visual. But for me, I've been using gaming and simulation for so long that I've been able to adapt to what's real and what's not real. I think it's a huge help."

It's not exactly PlayStation 3. McDowell uses a PC-based simulator with a racing wheel, racing seat, foot pedals and a monitor large enough to resemble the windshield of a car. The results were evident last year, when McDowell shot to the top of the ARCA ranks with no previous stock-car experience. The Phoenix native thought his career path would lead to open-wheel cars -- he has an extensive sports-car background, and he raced go-karts in Europe against future Formula One drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg -- but after two starts in Champ Car, the funding fell apart. He wound up in ARCA with Eddie Sharp Racing through a contact with Chip Ganassi's team.

It was there he caught the eye of the Waltrip organization, which had developmental driver Josh Wise already in Sharp's stable. MWR officials were impressed with McDowell's skill as well as a technical acumen honed during his open-wheel days. They liked the input he was able to give from the driver's seat, as well as his ability to apply what he learned on the simulator to the racetrack.

"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."