Before the race starts players can choose their car. There are three different racecars to choose from. A Pontiac Grand Prix, a Ford Thunderbird, and a Chevrolet Lumina.

Players could choose to run single races at each track, or run for the season championship. The race distances ranged from 10 miles to a more realistic distance of 500 miles for the superspeedway races. In the MS-DOS version, the championship consisted of a visit to each of the eight tracks. In the NES and Game Boy versions, the season championship consisted of each of the four tracks run twice, for a total of eight races. Championship points were awarded consistent to the real-life Winston Cup of the time.