The skinny:
Do you regard the extra 25 bucks spent on rental car insurance as a dare to rub some paint against cement highway dividers? You're not alone, little fella. Instead of getting fed a shit burger by the sales agent at Avis, stick with a little virtual rubbing in EA's latest NASCAR title. The game offsets the fact that you drive in circles with fiendishly tough controls. Shift, brake, gas and drive pretty much cover the basics. But mere taps from other drivers, oil on the track and your own 750-horsepower engine are enough to send you spinning. If going three wide at Talladega means that much to you, we see an investment in a racing wheel in your future.

If you liked this game, you'd like:
Burnout 3: Takedown, Street Racing Syndicate, dreaming of one day actually changing the oil in your own car

Hours to complete:
Online support for PS2 and Xbox plus multiple race modes will keep you on the track for days.

Tantalizing tidbits:
Burn rubber in four official leagues: NASCAR Nextel Cup, Craftsman Truck Series, Featherlite Modified Series and NASCAR National Series, plus production car racing. Chase for the Cup puts a lot of weight on producing rivalries. An Intimidator feature lets you instill the fear of the racing God in fellow drivers. If scores aren't settled in sanctioned races, you can settle them off the track in the production cars, racing other drivers in tricked-out street cars like a Dodge Viper, Ford GT40 and Corvette. Instead of going with a standard driver, we created a homicidal redneck with the Create-a-Driver option. Well, all we really did was rebuild Dale Jarrett with his old mustache. He just didn't look right without it.

Buy, rent or run away screaming?
Even if you think restrictor plate racing is a form of bullying children with retainers, it's time to get your vroom on.