There seems to be a growing trend in today’s "sims" to be bigger, badder and better than anything in the past. The more powerful personal computers and consoles get, the more capable they are of pushing incredible amounts of data in a physics engine. This advancement leads to tighter handling models and more realistic graphics. But at some point in the very near future that will not be enough. So here's what simulation racing games will need to do to avoid stagnation in the coming years.

Serious sims will need to address a race team concept more. Oddly enough, the closest I’ve seen a racing game come to “getting it” is Formula One Championship Edition (F1CE) on the PS3 -- you’ll see numerous references to this title throughout this piece. You actually had to earn a spot as a test driver, and then had to be part of a team to succeed. It’s also the first sim I know of that made the pit stops interactive, which was a stroke of brilliance.

Parts of F1CE should be staples in any future racing simulation. With a few tweaks, the racing sim that takes these suggestions and implements them will be in a league of its own.

The first part is actually having a team concept at all. NASCAR 06: Total Team Control tried, but it was just a cheesy method of switching cars and having “blockers” out on the track. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about an actual team: research and development, engine builders, fabricators, sponsorship and management teams, over-the-wall pit crew members, crew chief, etc.

Racing games like NASCAR need more of a focus on teamwork.

That’s a lot of information to think about incorporating, but it wouldn’t have to be too technical to actually work. A lot of the text-based sims already have management engines built into them, and you see Madden 09 integrating Head Coach 09 into its already bulbous feature set. What the racing genre needs to do is simple: add more interactions and consequences for off-track decisions and actions.

The ideal career would start you out as a driver, nothing more. Much like F1CE, you would have to run tryouts for some of the lower budget operations. Earning a ride at all should be a race-to-race affair, like many of the hopefuls in racing circuits today run. You shouldn’t be given the ability to start a “career” with a top-tier team and equipment since you haven't logged any time in the virtual cockpit.

You shouldn’t have to start from scratch each time you change tracks. The car should start at your predetermined preference, whether it’s slightly loose, a bit tight, or anything in between.

So at this point the team concept needs to be introduced, and it needs to be more than just the occasional e-mail from a fake agent discussing your performance. It should all start with a virtual crew chief and practice days. Practice time at the major track types should be allotted at the beginning of each season. It is here that the virtual crew chief will really prove to be a huge leap forward in the sim-racing genre.

Practice should entail a dry run at a track type with a neutral car setup. F1CE has a form of this already with the Race Car Evolution stages, but you can carry it so much further. After a series of laps, the virtual crew chief would step in with a series of questions about the condition of the car, rather than a simple “choose A or B” option. Is it too tight? Too loose? If it’s either of those conditions, is it upon corner entry or exit? Is it just loose overall? The virtual crew chief can then make setup changes based on the driver’s responses to these questions. Setup changes are rather simple values adjusted in a numeric table, so it’s definitely within the realm of possibility.

After the changes are made, the driver should be put back out on the track for a finite number of laps. Real teams don’t get to test nonstop, so there should be a time limit here. After you run out of test time, you move to the next track type and repeat the process. That’s where the integration comes in. At this point, a sim should carry your preferences forward and set up a “notebook” on that track type. If you’re going from California to Michigan, for example, you can take the basic setup you used at California and tweak for Michigan. You shouldn’t have to start from scratch each time you change tracks. The car should start at your predetermined preference, whether it’s slightly loose, a bit tight, or anything in between. The virtual crew chief should already know where to start from.

After that, you should have team members that make a difference. A real driver must always consider his equipment while out on the track, but no sim has truly captured that yet. Perhaps your engine builder is great at creating a monster of an engine with regards to horsepower, but the engine can’t sustain extremely high RPMs for very long. Maybe your fabricator won’t have enough time to repair all of a car, so you have to drive extremely cautiously to ensure that you aren’t rolling around in a junk heap within a few weeks' time.

Team members should be rated as well, but as the driver, you won’t be able to pick the crew. You are simply one cog in the machine. Every member on the over-the-wall crew should be rated on speed and ability. Pit stops are too automated in almost every sim (except the already-mentioned-too-many-times Formula One title). You simply hit the proper pit road speed and watch as the same scripted routine plays out in front of you.

If the members had ratings, you could have mistakes or flawless stops. Your same virtual crew chief could ask questions during a race about the condition of the car and make tire pressure changes and in-race adjustments at the first stop. F1CE’s method of pressing buttons for each action during a pit stop is unique, and it makes the pit stops interactive and engaging, but it doesn’t really do much for the team concept. It’s better than what’s currently available, but not the answer long term with regards to immersion and realism.

If your team members experiment with a new engine package or chassis component, it should have an effect on the race weekend. Perhaps your crew chief exploits “gray areas” in the rule book and you’re docked points. There’s far more to any racing series than what is currently modeled in a simulation. The first step is to actually give you a team and make it feel like a team. The next step is to give you control of that team.

Many of EA’s past NASCAR games allowed you to simply upgrade car parts. That’s missing the boat entirely.

Madden has had a franchise mode for a long time. You hire and fire free agents and coaches, yet barely any of that exists in current racing sims. Once you have established yourself as a driver, you should be given the ability to be a driver/owner, much like the popular arcade racer Grid allows you to do. But beyond simply choosing a teammate, you should be able to hire and fire crew members, PR and management teams, and every other member of the organization. Who wouldn’t want to take over a no-name operation and turn it into the next Hendrick Motorsports?

Many of EA’s past NASCAR games allowed you to simply upgrade car parts. That’s missing the boat entirely. Cup teams that put out a car have roughly the same parts that the other teams do, and sometimes even borrow or lease engines from other teams. When a career starts out, you shouldn’t be forced to plod out a race car that’s incapable of being as quick as others. That may sound like a contradiction of sorts, since earlier I mentioned that you shouldn’t be placed into a top-tier ride, but you also shouldn’t be forced to race a hopelessly slow car with no hope of competing until you upgrade your engine or aero package, either.

Perhaps you hire a better engine builder and put most of your team focus into experimenting with engine packages. Maybe your engine program becomes so good that you lease them out to other teams. Maybe you bang into the wall a lot, so devoting dollars into a top-flight fabrication department is a must. Or maybe you simply hit too many cars, and your PR department must cover up your blunders so you come out smelling like roses.

The potential is really limitless. The narrow vision that so many developers seem to have for the career mode, and sim-racing in general, seems to be the handicap here. Currently a gamer is racing around in a bubble, with no real consequences to his or her actions on the track. When you introduce them as part of a greater group, things can get really interesting. Here’s to hoping that it doesn’t stay as a solo affair for much longer.