Three years ago, when I got to take a crack behind the wheel of a legitimate NASCAR racer during SEMA at Las Vegas Motor Speedway courtesy of McLeod and the Richard Petty Driving Experience, I entered not knowing just what to expect. I’ve been critical of NASCAR for…well, pretty much my entire life, yet here I was, suiting up to get plopped into a Gen 4 Dodge Charger-bodied machine before taking a rip around the circuit. Eight minutes behind the wheel of that machine gave me the Cliff Notes version of what a NASCAR driver puts up with for hours on end: a car that is tuned to turn left so much that on the straights you are actively cranking right, a general unease about the whole event because everything seems unsettled, and more speed than you know what to do with. In real life, whether you are critical of NASCAR or not, piloting a stock car is one of the most adrenaline-inducing things you can do.

But there’s two elements to NASCAR that keep plenty of people out of the seat. One is cost…the amount of money it takes to successfully run NASCAR is far beyond the days of the budget racer. And then there is the safety aspect, because even with all of the technologies that have come out over the years, it’s still gonna hurt if you screw up, or if a tire blows, or any of the other reasons that wind up with twisted metal and oily smoke. That’s why a lot of aspiring racers turn to the virtual world of racing. A lot of racers run in legitimate simulation racing, like iRacing, where the racing is deadly serious and requires true control.

In this video, Brad Keselowski take a virtual run at Atlanta Motor Speedway on iRacing while explaining the physics and tricks of the track that he has to deal with when he’s trying to get that trophy and not wind up in crash footage or as the star of a Radioactive episode. This is unique insight to the world of a stock car driver’s headspace as they deal with each individual track!