<table> </table> After finishing second in Sunday&#8217;s Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway, Carl Edwards said that he had been let down. Not by his crew nor his car nor even by his own better judgment.</p><p>He was let down, Edwards said, by his laptop.</p><p>&#8220;I always wanted to kind of try to do that,&#8221; Edwards said of a &#8220;slide job&#8221; under winner Jimmie Johnson on the last lap of the race. &#8220;Now I know it doesn&#8217;t work quite the same as in video games.&#8221;</p><p>Curse that EA Sports or whatever game Edwards plays.</p><p>Seriously, though, video games have had a major impact on driving culture over the past several years. Drivers actually do use them to help them prepare for races. Especially young drivers.</p><p>Some of the games are so accurate, the individual tracks mapped out so precisely, that drivers say they can learn things from playing them &#8212; things that give them an advantage on race day.</p><p>Two years ago, Denny Hamlin gave gaming some big publicity. He swept both races at Pocono Raceway that year and did it as a Sprint Cup rookie.</p><p>Pocono is one of the more difficult tracks on the schedule. It is a tricky triangle which some drivers say drives more like a road course than an oval. Hamlin was asked later in 2006 how he was able to sweep Pocono as a first-year driver.</p><p>He credited seat time in front of his monitor.</p><p>&#8220;I think it helped,&#8221; Hamlin said. &#8220;It wasn&#8217;t something that made me faster I don&#8217;t believe. I think it just made me more comfortable at the racetrack.&#8221;</p><p>It made him comfortable by way of familiarity with, if not the nuances of Pocono, the general look and feel.</p><p>&#8220;If you&#8217;ve never been (to a track) before, Indy, for instance, it took me probably three, four laps before I was comfortable and I knew where I was at on the racetrack,&#8221; said Hamlin, who made the Chase for the Sprint Cup as a rookie. &#8220;Basically when I went around Pocono for the first time, it just cut that time quite a bit from the first, second lap. &#8216;Hey, I&#8217;m comfortable around here. I know where I&#8217;m at, know what I&#8217;m doing.&#8217;&#8194;&#8221;</p><p>Hamlin, now in his third full season in Sprint Cup, does not use gaming for preparation as much as he used to. He has seen, experienced and raced all the tracks on the schedule.</p><p>Ryan Newman, who is in his seventh full season as a Cup driver, knows the tracks very well, too. But Newman still uses games to work on his game.</p><p>&#8220;I used to do it all the time in college and I learned a lot about the racetracks,&#8221; said Newman, who holds an engineering degree from Purdue. &#8220;The racing is similar, but the actual physics of the racetrack &#8212; the way that they built the (video) game &#8212; is all based off of mathematics and dimensions. Theoretically, it&#8217;s an exact replica of the racetrack. You can get a good idea of balancing your race car, driving your race car, picking out the lines, picking out where the wall comes to you and where the wall falls away and things like that.&#8221;</p><p>Last Sunday at Kansas Speedway, Johnson effectively countered Edwards&#8217; slide job. He lifted off the gas when he saw Edwards blowing past, maintained control of his car, pointed it at the finish line and got the victory.</p><p>The countermove was not something he learned in a video game.</p><p>Johnson said that while he used to use games to prep for races, he no longer does. The games, he said, just do not help him at this stage of his experience.</p><p>&#8220;I have not seen a true simulator,&#8221; Johnson said. &#8220;Anything I&#8217;ve seen here is with just a monitor and a steering wheel. The graphics are fantastic, but you don&#8217;t feel the (G force) loading. There are so many other sensations involved with driving a race car, that I don&#8217;t see a benefit from it.</p><p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re new to the sport, it is beneficial. But with two years of Busch and seven years of Cup, I have the visual references down.&#8221;</p><p>Not that Johnson avoids video games altogether.</p><p>He said he&#8217;s big into &#8220;Rock Band&#8221;.</p><p>That doesn&#8217;t help him on race days, but, Johnson said, &#8220;I feel cool when I get stuff right on the game and feel like I&#8217;m killer as a guitar player.&#8221;