NASCAR Coursebuilders, Drivers Consult Videogame Version

Thanks to the St.Petersburg Times for their article discussing how NASCAR videogames are giving the real-life drivers tips on a newly redesigned course. According to the piece, which discusses the "$10 million... redesign of Homestead-Miami Speedway", the drivers are checking out EA Sports' new NASCAR title for tips on the as yet undriven new layout: "'The boys playing the video game said Homestead's going to be real fast,' said Busch Series driver Scott Riggs in September... 'With that new banking in there, they could be pushing 180 (mph) in the straightaway'." The coursebuilders at the International Speedway Corporation also got their first look at racing conditions from the game, according to an EA spokesman: "The first time we went down and showed the game to the ISC people they were jumping around the office... [the redesign] was going to add roughly 30 mph to the top speed and shave five seconds off a lap."

Comments

here are some important distinctions

[sbma44]

Car racing is not a demonstration of physical prowess. Yes, I realize there is a lot of individual skill involved, and that it is physically taxing. But I doubt that the physical conditioning of winning drivers is reliably better than that of losing drivers. You can argue that skill is what people want to see, but I think physical feats speak to something basic in us. Otherwise I may as well be watching some "cyberathletes" frag each other -- it might be an entertaining exhibition, but it is not a sport.

There is less opportunity for specialization in individual sports like car racing, and hence, fewer opportunities for transcendent performance. I'm sure some drivers are better at taking the inside lane, others can trade paint more roughly, but I doubt any one of those skills will win someone a race. I can watch the Pistons' Ben Wallace dominate defensively or marvel at Keyshawn Johnson's showboat catch last week. These guys can be role players pushing the limits of what's possible in their sports. In NASCAR I suspect a broad range of above-average skills is what wins races.

There is too much emphasis on hardware. I know that the top racers all have virtually identical hardware, but surely you'll admit that teams with less financial backing have an inherent disadvantage, and that many races are lost before the car leaves the garage. I realize baseball suffers from the same money = wins problem. But then, I don't care for baseball either. The furor that can erupt over a spoiler being a couple of millimeters higher than regulation is about as interesting to me as reading posts on which processor is more overclockable -- which is to say not at all.

There is a cap placed on what is possible. For safety reasons there are hardware limits imposed. Perhaps football will have to introduce something like this someday, but for now the fact remains that today's football players are the best in history. Same goes for today's average baseball player. Basketball is a poorer example, but the physical capabilities of those athletes certainly have expanded. In racing, technological caps ensure that drivers can only do so much.

Which brings us to the most important point: the stakes are too high. Okay, there may be more dangerous sports (although I would like to see the statistics) -- skydiving and rock-climbing come to mind, I guess, although I wouldn't call them sports really. Boxing probably wreaks more damage on its participants (I'm no fan of boxing, either). At least these are in some way poetic, pitting man against man, or against nature, and stripping the contest to its bare essentials. Testing what humans can do, and who can do it better.

Racing is loud, long, repetitive and artificial. It's techno-fetishization with a high potential for death. It's about as ugly a sport as I could possibly imagine -- one carried out by screaming, polluting machines on strips of blacktop, and where the highlight reels are filled by brushes with unnecessary death. It's horrifying.