With Ryan Preece‘s paint scheme this past weekend at Talladega Superspeedway paying homage to Talladega Nights (though inferior to his scheme last year at the same place in the fall, and especially since he didn’t have a counterpart scheme like he did in ’23 with Chase Briscoe), it brought to mind the movie’s paint scheme legacy in NASCAR.
Figured I’d take a quick look at how, nearly 20 years on — 18, to be exact — NASCAR continues to pay homage to arguably the most famous film to ever center around stock-car racing.
Similar to Days of Thunder, there’s five central paint schemes for Talladega Nights. It’s also almost exactly the same in that three of them apply to our protagonist in each. In regard to the latter film, it’s:
- No. 26 Wonder Bread (Ricky Bobby / Will Ferrell)
- No. 26 Laughing Clown Malt Liquor (Ricky Bobby)
- No. 62 ME / unsponsored (Ricky Bobby)
- No. 47 Old Spice (Cal Naughton Jr. / John C. Reilly)
- No. 55 Perrier (Jean Girard / Sacha Baron Cohen)
No team has replicated the Laughing Clown or Perrier cars to date, and any diecasts, regardless of scale, are extraordinarily hard to find.
After Talladega Nights‘ release in 2006, it took until 2012 for the first tribute scheme to appear. There was one (one!) promotional scheme for it in 2006, driven by Bill Lester — and not even in the premier series. That’s it.
When 2012 rolled around, Kurt Busch was driving for James Finch and Phoenix Racing after being ousted from Team Penske. It’s tough to top the sick TAG Heuer scheme the No. 51 had that season, but they did the job with the ‘Dega car.
Seeing the “ME” car out front at Talladega was pretty awesome. It didn’t win — in fact, it ended up spinning out down the frontstretch — and the numbers weren’t the same, but the cougar on the hood, plus a stuffed-animal version of the wild cat in the car, made it come full-circle. Busch’s firesuit, which was styled in Wonder Bread colors and said “ME” on it, didn’t hurt either.
A year and a half later, in the fall Talladega race, Busch returned with an authentic sponsor from the movie, this time with Furniture Row Racing.
Great-looking car. Also a diecast that’s hard to find.
In 2021, Tyler Ankrum‘s throwback at Darlington Raceway was also a tribute to Ricky Bobby’s Wonder Bread car, but showed up on a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series scheme.
Last fall, at Talladega, we had the best to date. Stewart-Haas Racing channeled the movie for half of its stable. Preece had Wonder Bread on board an authentically designed No. 41, while Briscoe had Old Spice’s familiar blue-and-red colors riding on the No. 14.
More importantly, their promotional graphic was actually designed in the style of the movie poster.
And just this past Sunday (Oct. 6), Preece had Wonder Bread once again (see the image at the top of this article). They also styled their windshield screen like the infamous Fig Newtons sticker from the movie.
I’m calling all teams to fully commit and replicate the movie’s schemes on all four of their cars. Don’t do Wonder Bread, that’s been done enough. But do the other three.
Shake ‘n’ bake.
Adam Cheek joined Frontstretch as a contributing writer in January 2019. A 2020 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, he covered sports there and later spent a year and a half as a sports host on 910 the Fan in Richmond, VA. He's freelanced for Richmond Magazine and the Richmond Times-Dispatch and also hosts the Adam Cheek's Sports Week podcast. Adam has followed racing since the age of three, inheriting the passion from his grandfather, who raced in amateur events up and down the East Coast in the 1950s.