Vroom with a view: what's it like to sit in a Winston Cup weekend office on wheels? Hop in. (NASCAR).

It's the perfect environment in which to drive a car at incredibly fast speeds. Surrounding you is lightweight, aerodynamically engineered sheet metal that disintegrates into millions of large and small fragments when you crash. The decor is spartan, not that you will pay much attention. Because the land is faster than the eye as you whiz around the track, you have no choice but to concentrate on your fellow competitors--inches from your quarter panel, a mere breath of dirty air ahead of your front bumper. If someone parked that close to you at Wal-Mart, you'd key his door.

Welcome to the cockpit of a Winston Cup car--built for speed, built to last, built to survive more hardship than three generations of Cubs fans.

If you're not familiar with NASCAR, welcome to the weekend office on wheels. This is the batter's box, the slot, the key, the line of scrimmage for the left-turn set.

Each Cup team, and often each driver, has a cockpit specifically designed to suit certain needs. But you, as the driver, have to do more than just jump into the cockpit and hang on. You have to monitor a host of data. What is the water temperature? How much power does your battery have? Have your rpms been increasing with each lap? Is the electrical system working properly? Is the cockpit getting hotter? Did your crew chief say you had four more laps worth of fuel or three?

And, oh yeah, you have to answer these questions while trying to keep Kurt Busch from running you into the wall at 183 mph.

Fortunately, the tools of the trade make it much simpler for you to handle every situation. The cockpit is your toolbox, and every tool in it has its place.

1 Ignition kill switch. This shuts off the engine in case of an emergency, such as when the throttle sticks.