Well after coming home from voting and getting some chores done around the house, I decided to Down Load the new NASCAR 09 demo for the Xbox360. After waiting patiently for 20 minutes I received my notice saying the DL was complete!!

Now I’m not expecting much after all it’s made by EA (Electronic Art)Sports. They are notorious for ruining anything they touch, most of the time. Besides EA publishing this game it also has Jeff Gordon on the cover, not good (joking).

I played around with the menus, the interface looks like it was improved and loading times are very minimal. One bad thing is, it looks like the license earning is still in place from 08. For those that don’t know, last year, before you could do any cup races you had to be “certified” to drive on Short Tracks, Speedways, Super Speedways and Road Courses. Granted the challenges for certification were easy but I think it’s totally unnecessary.

Ok, so I hop into an race. The game will sport Truck, Nationwide and of course Sprint Cup. For demo purposes, only Sprint Cup was selectable. They had 2 courses to run, Daytona and Lowes and 3 drivers to choose from. Care to guess who they were? Well, they were all HMS drivers! lol Gordon, Johnson and Dale Jr….. with Mears being a glaring ommision (I wonder why). Obviously I chose Daytona with Dale as my driver.

My first attempt was miserable, I qualified dead last! Thats a lie, I didn’t even qualify…. my Crew Chief said we had to use a provisional to make the race, lmao! So I started a 10 lap tour of Daytona at the rear of the field. Trying to make my way towards the top. Right away I noticed the handling has improved over last year…. I finished 20th, not bad for a first outting (Hey, Im no Logano).

After that race I went back and decided to look at the game settings and setup (Read: Car Set-up). The setting were on Rookie with full assists (Stability Control, Braking, Line, Auto-Shift), that doesn’t fly with me! So I ramped it up to veteran. I was surprised to see that they actually allowed you to play with the car configuration b4 the race! I assumed it was a race what they gave you demo. I was able to play with gear ratios, tire pressure, spring rates, Toe, Caster…. they had it all! Not knowing much about all this I just did simple fixes. Added some toe-in, inflated the tires some, changed the final gear ratio for more top end and threw some tape on the grill for more downforce… now I was ready for racing.

I took the 88 out for a second attempt at quals. Surprise, surprise, I got pole! What a difference some quick tooling around did. After starting the race on pole, I found that the cars handled easier up front. Just like the drivers say every week! The difference between clear air and no air is like night and day! When running in the back, the car always pushed up the track especially in the middle. But, running by myself with a 1.5 second lead I was able to place the car wherever I wanted! So naturally, I drove the Jr line, rim riding around the track…. tres cool.

I guess my closing comment are, the physics have greatly improved, the graphics remained the same except they added some better lighting. I’m really looking forward to the full game, I know what I’ll be doing when I get home…. play with some more setups and I’ll be driving around Lowes! lol