It's a feat whose merits occasionally go out the window such as when the simulation is based on something that seems unattractive in reality. Games based on American sports often lack foreign interest due to both ignorance and perceived lack of excitement, whereas they are often ideal subjects for games even if non-Americans find them boring as spectators.

Nascar Thunder 2004 is one such example. While most people already know the exhilaration of Sega's Daytona series (one of the greatest racing games of all time), the sport itself fails to attract much interest outside of the US. In fact, few had expected Nascar racing even to take off outside of rural US to become what it is today. In video game form, however, the sport has plenty to offer the international market. The variety of computer assistance, user controls and management options make Nascar Thunder 2004 particularly attractive to a broad audience, whether for sim fans or casuals.

For the first time, the PC version now has a career mode. Starting with a basic vehicle, you can choose your colour scheme, make and model and work your way up the rankings. Earnings and placings provide access to improved hardware with sponsorship interest also a factor.

As well as the range of ovals and road courses, a classic Daytona Beach circuit is also featured. This 50's style sand and road oval is used as a testing field for vehicle modifications apart from track-specific R&D at the official race venues.

While the extensive garage options allow almost endless tinkering and form a core part of the simulation experience, Basic Garage offers a simple quartet of sliders to adjust your car's behavioural tendencies and allows novices to get results quickly and easily. The full garage also provides explanations for each adjustment, so learning as you go is not an issue.

Two further crucial factors of the sport are wear and tear and the principles of drafting, and it is here that Nascar Thunder 2004 produces mixed results. While it is hard enough to stay with the pack at the beginning of a career mode race, this is based more on your car's capacity than the speed advantage that a pack of stock cars will have over a lone racer. Bizarrely, a drafting chain appears to have no advantage, whereas in reality both the leading and following cars will benefit from the effect and therefore move faster as a group.

Computer cars exhibit behaviour that confirms this principle, seemingly uninterested in forming trains with similarly positioned cars in order to catch up to the leading pack. Once close enough to a car, drafting has a strong effect and avoiding the temptation to charge up the side of the pack is essential to avoid the likelihood of crashing or getting knocked back and out of the slipstream.

The gameplay twist to the lack of drafting trains is that it is never impossible to catch up on your own and succeeding at improving cornering speeds by even one mile per hour will reap dividends (provided, of course, you do not set the race too short).

The pleasure of such an accomplishment is a reward in itself, accentuated by the excellent physics modelling of this year's PC version and good all round force feedback performance. The rub is that once surrounded by opponents, one wrong move can undo your hard work in an instant. In these situations your spotter provides reasonably useful reports on your relative positioning to cars in your blind spot, particularly when it is inconvenient to use your side views, allowing you to move through the pack without incurring a collision or the wrath of your opponents.

The biggest spoiler of racing Nascar Thunder is the flag system, which is an issue that EA games have struggled with in the past. Not only do the flags come on under trivial circumstances such as a quickly rectified spin-out at the back of the pack, but the pace car stays out too long. Races soon become a sponsorship parade and a big player turn-off.