Hanging loose: lunch hour at the virtual races with NASCAR nice guy Kenny Wallace requires a lead foot, a strong stomach and ... hey, you want fries with that shake?(Know It All)

I was virtually dead, sliding upside down on the hood of my racecar somewhere along Lowe's Motor Speedway. The Sporting News 352 1/2 wasn't half over, and already I was out of it. It could have been worse, though. I could have been spending another lunch hour looking for Cole Trickle memorabilia on eBay.

Instead, I spent it racing Kenny Wallace and a bunch of other TSN editors at a NASCAR Speedpark store in a suburban mall. Wallace was in town for a Busch series event, so we challenged him to a race on the Speedpark's virtual game. Told my boss it was for a story. He bought it.

As we waited for the start of the race, Wallace dropped Snoop Dogg rhymes, Nelly rhymes and Aerosmith rhymes. What, you were expecting Kenny Rogers, David Allan Coe and Alabama? Wallace's wife described him perfectly on the reality show, NASCAR Drivers: 360 when she said, "You never know what's going to come out of his mouth." You haven't lived until you've heard a fortysomething NASCAR driver rap It's kinda hard being Snoop D-O Double G.

My race strategy revolved around wrecking Wallace. I've watched Kurt Busch enough to know how to do it: Get up behind him and ever so subtly ram the son of a gun. But when the race started, I was awful. I couldn't keep up with Wallace or anybody else. Not only was I slow, I was out of control. I flipped, spun, bit the wall, ran over a dog, etc.

My co-workers apparently got the virtual cars that worked properly. Associate editor Roger Kuznia, a NASCAR gearhead if there ever was one, was leading the first race but wrecked on the last lap. Wallace passed him for the win. Wallace's P.R. guy, Chip Wile, is either very confident in his job or very naive. He beat Wallace to the finish line in the second race. (Of course, if you've seen Wallace on TV, you know I'm kidding. He is not an egotist. Gallon short of a full tank, maybe. But definitely not an egotist.)

How realistic is the game? To call it a video game is insulting. It is much more than ...