Computer game inspires racing driver
NASCAR DRIVER Carl Edwards decided it would be a clever idea to try a trick that he learned from racing cars on his computer.
Edwards noticed that in computer games you could bounce your car off the side of the race track to get around a corner a lot easier.
Figuring that the games developers knew a bit about physics, Edwards attempted to defeat rival and two-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson by bouncing his car off a concrete wall in the same way he would in the game.
He told Kotaku that he planned on hitting the wall, but didn't plan on the wall slowing him down quite as much as it did.
"In video games, you can just run into the wall and run it wide open. That's what I did, but it didn't quite work out the same as the video game," he said.
Unfortunately he just crashed. µ
L'Inq
Kotaku
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*Trombone* : Wah Wah Waaaah

And hey! I'm a yank...unfortunately.
nah, he just need to keep practising the bouncing off the wall trick in all his races... all year long... just to give us a a good laugh lol
It just confirms the stupidity of Yanks..
bwahahahhahahahahaha
Yet another intelligent yank i see!
Sounds like he needs a Physics plugin.
He didn't crash. he came second, which is exactly where he would have finished if he hadn't tried the last-lap manoeuvre.

In the words of Foghorn Leghorn: "It's a joke son, you're built too low, the fast ones go right over your head!"
Are you seriuos ?... I mean... this really happen?...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpFdNbZYwuM

Yawn, Americans
With the plastic linings the cars will slide off. If racers have smooth side finishes to their cars then they could use the walls for getting around corners.

Plastic is not a good conductor of heat, so this idea may fail spectacularly. Which will make great TV and Youtube. Bring it on!
I'm guessing the person who wrote this article didn't actually see the race. He hit the wall because he went into turn three, on the last lap, at full throttle, briefly gaining the lead in an attempt to finish first. It was a last second attempt to pass the leader and win the race. Of course it also caused him to hit the wall which slowed him down quite a bit. He finished in second place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzFiAGIsE8k

Play from 1:15 to see him hit the wall.
perhaps then you could
I mean seriously- how much brainpower does it take to think about this for one second. Well, we'd better start trying to ban all NASCAR games now. Actually, I'm all for that...here comes yet another left turn.. and another left...wait this is just a big circle..
If Will Ferral wasnt enough to point out how stupid nascar is, then i guess it's up to the drivers.
... he didn't trying winging one of those red shells he picked up at the guy in front.
As somebody who actually WATCHED the race, I can say that it actually was a heck of a move, and showed just how much Edwards wanted to win the race. He knew he couldn't catch Johnson, so he just tried anything he could think of to pull off a last corner pass. IF it had worked, everyone would have called him brilliant. And it almost did. It just scrubbed off too much speed and he couldn't accelerate as fast as Johnson did. It still made for a fantastic finish!
Even if he keeps hitting walls and loses all but one tooth, he'll still have better dental hygiene than you brits. 

Go back to the pub, get hammered and finish your pot-pie. Maybe later you can riot at a soccer game because, after all, that is obviously what you "smart" people do.
Carl is not a "yank", he is from Missouri.
There isn't a single thing the US could do to hold a candle to the sheer national brilliance that is the UK brain trust. After all, your greatest national export is... er... um... Harry Potter.

Damn.
if anyone watched the race, they would have seen that it almost worked. the pass was attempted on the last corner of the last lap, with plenty of distance to 3rd. carl lost no positions due to this attempted pass and still finished 2nd. i think with a little more real world practice the pass would have been successful, but he over estimated how hard he had to drive into the corner to clear the leader. anyways it was much more entertaining to watch than a f1 parade.
B & Owen, bite my arse.
It wasn't dumb because he's a yank, he's dumb because he's dumb.
That said, what an idiot :P
Maybe next we'll have people Halo jumping.
This article was written with the purpose to get an "Americans are stupid" reaction. Congrats on biting you twits. He grazed the wall during a last ditch effort to win the race, and no, he didn't crash. He finished second, a quarter of a second behind Johnson.

Edwards was in no way implying that he hit the wall because it works in a video game. Nice job of twisting a rather silly quote. That said, it was a boneheaded thing to do, although I do seem to remember it working for Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder.
This guy is stupid to be a politician! Look out Palin!
There's nothing new in this. Nascar drivers started doing this in the '60s (or earlier?) at one track - the paint scarring on the car so affected was referred to as the Darlington stripe.

The technique worked - the friction from the wall was offset by the increased speed allowed by the centripetal force.
NASCAR? ASSCAR more like. I mean, how much planning does it take to go round and round a big ringpiece without hitting the walls?

Jeez. Next thing you know they'll take a wrong turn.
I saw on TV where some cars have a Turbo Boost button that makes them go really fast and jump over other cars. 

He should try that next time.
Okay, number 1, Edwards could have EASILY pulled that pass off with just a LITTLE more restraint... it's called a "slide job"...

As for the Darlington stripe, that was caused by losing it and hitting the wall, not riding the wall purposely. It just so happens that Darlington, with its odd racing line through the corners, causes more people to lose it... but, since they're so close to the wall, they DON'T have enough time for the ass-end to come all the way around... the wall stop the extreme over-steer and helps colect the car getting it going straight again :)
Physics in games still have a long way to go - PPU or GPGPU nonwithstanding.
Didn't see the race and I don't much care about it anyway (not a racing fan of any kind), but I very much agree that car sims in general have dismal physics.
I especially love those car games where, if you manage to shove an AI car off the track, or make it crash, the following second it will be right behind you again, but if YOU do a 360 or exit the track in the same conditions, you'll be lucky if you manage to get back to speed before the last car has passed you.
I hate car games.