Debate swirled this past weekend after comments made by the NASCAR Cup Series’ most popular driver, Chase Elliott, about the viability of the yearly Throwback Weekend race at Darlington Raceway.
After multiple Cup teams elected not to participate in throwback weekend, some wonder now whether or not the event has lost its luster and needs a bit of a pick-me-up, or if this is merely the latest gripe in a long line of “what are we going to complain about this week?” answers.
Thankfully, two writers here at Frontstretch have their own ideas about what Throwback weekend should look like.
Throwback Weekend Needs To Mean More
Nobody is ever going to call this version of Chase Elliott dynamic, spontaneous or even all that fun to listen to. But what I can tell you here is that he has a point.
“I thought (Throwback Weekend) lost its luster about four or five years ago,” Elliott said.
That’s a big point to make, and to be quite honest, it’s where most people stopped listening. However, if you keep listening, he makes a valid point.
“Not to be a downer…I joked about this years ago, but if we kept going down the road, we’re going to be throwing it back to me in like, 2018,” Elliott said. “At some point, I think we’ve got to chill on it a little bit. I think we’ve rode the horse to death, and we tend to do that a little bit too much.”
There it is.
“We tend to do that a little bit too much.”
That’s the sport’s most popular driver talking about what has essentially become a popularity contest in throwback weekend. I don’t know about you, but I don’t hear him saying that Throwback Weekend should go away, but I do hear him saying that it needs to be shaken up a bit.
NASCAR has ridden this horse for years now – taking old paint schemes that look wonderful and bringing them back around. Nobody is saying that the concept itself should go by the wayside, but expecting more than 100 cars to show up to Throwback Weekend with different paint schemes than the year before each and every year is a bit excessive. Eventually, you run into the same problem that Elliott is describing here – there’s not much left to throw back to.
There’s problem No. 1, then.
However, there’s a second problem that fans don’t want to hear, but it’s the reality of where the sport is. Throwback weekend hurts a lot more sponsors than it helps. In fact, it truly helps sponsors that often aren’t part of the sport anymore at all.
We’ll start with an extreme example.
Take Parker Retzlaff’s No. 4 NASCAR Xfinity Series Chevrolet. When you see that car, what do you think of? I can just about promise you it’s nowhere close to his primary sponsors, Dr. Teals and VisualPak. Despite sharing the last two letters, the company that car makes you think of is Kodak, which defeats the entire purpose of sponsoring the car if your name isn’t Kodak.
HendrickCars, which is owned by the same Hendrick Motorsports Kyle Larson drives for, sponsored Larson’s No. 5 this past weekend. Larson ran a throwback scheme for Terry Labonte‘s Kellogg car, but it does little to nothing for the HendrickCars brand. It does much more for Kellogg’s, who, again, is no longer involved in the sport.
Wood Brothers Racing even had to throw it back to Jim Clark this year, which is a great idea in my opinion, but it isn’t truly a NASCAR throwback, is it?
Now, some companies are fine with this, and some even come out of it ahead, but like Elliott said, eventually companies are going to run out of good ways to showcase their own logos and companies on throwback schemes, and I think we’re starting to see just that.
A shot in the arm is exactly what’s needed. Sweeten the pot for the sponsors who are willing to bend the looks of their logos, especially, and make it something that everyone wants to compete in. These are professional athletes after all, and if NASCAR were to make it more of a true competition, I would just about promise that some of the bigger spenders in the sport would start throwing their hat in the ring a lot more seriously.
It’s important, though, that NASCAR starts work on this sooner rather than later, because with another two or three throwback weekends like this previous one, no one will care whether NASCAR changes it or not.
That’s a fate worse than everyone being pissed off when they do. – Tanner Marlar
Honoring History is Essential
The hot topic surrounding the spring race at Darlington Raceway isn’t the racing (though the “Lady in Black” would be insulted by the notion). Instead, it’s about the racecars themselves. Paint schemes take center stage in both the Cup and Xfinity Series garages and one team in each series is awarded “Best in Show” for its colorful livery.
It’s Throwback Weekend, y’all.
Teams and fans alike embrace NASCAR’s past, with cars and sometimes crew members decked out in their retro best paying homage to those who came before them. There are paint jobs to make fans reminisce about drivers from Richard Petty (STP had a one-off on the No. 43) and Dale Earnhardt to more recent legends like Jimmie Johnson. Some are less obvious; Christopher Bell, for example, chose to honor his sprint car roots. Teams that don’t choose to run with the theme are looked at with disdain (because they’re lame).
The 2025 edition of the nostalgia-driven event drew criticism from some within the sport, though. Perpetual Most Popular Sadsack…er, Driver Chase Elliott told the media that he’d like to see the weekend end, noting that teams were running out of ideas (his half-assed paint scheme certainly supported his argument). Elliott wasn’t the only one who thought the celebration of NASCAR’s past has run its course.
The thing, though, is that Throwback Weekend is not just a fun nod to the good ol’ days. It’s essential to the future of the sport.
Racing is not just cars going in circles. It’s people: the talented ones driving the cars in circles, the ones who make those cars go fast and take pride in making tham faster than the others. It’s the criminal masterminds who have, since the day the first cars took to the track, worked in the grey areas of the rulebook, filling in the spaces between the letters with creative solutions (or, depending on if you liked that driver or not, cheating).
It’s the promoters who built racetracks like Ray Kinsella did his Field of Dreams. And it’s the fans who, when the promoters built them, came.
NASCAR’s past is so much more than box scores and penalty reports. It’s memories and storytelling, passed from one generation to the next.
It can be hard for new fans to embrace the sport. Yes, they come for cars going fast, but not every race has an exciting finish. If all they see is cars going in circles, they won’t stick around. If a blind date doesn’t have any character, it won’t be love at first sight.
But the stories—the creative engineering, the wild crashes somehow survived (and the somber realization of the ones that weren’t), the pranks, the retaliation, the sentimental favorites and the naked-in-the-swimming-pool antics—draw people in, make them care. Nobody remembers generic macaroni and cheese from a box, but they remember MeMaw’s secret recipe at family dinners.
Throwback weekend is NASCAR.
Seasons change, and much has already been lost to time. Throwback weekend ensures that not everything will be.
It seems to me that NASCAR Throwback Weekend is kind of like Christmas. Not everyone celebrates it, but those who do seem to enjoy it greatly. If we cancel everything that has less than 100% participation/approval, there won't be much left.
— Dave Moody (@DGodfatherMoody) April 8, 2025
That’s not to say it couldn’t use a tweak or two. The mistake made early on was ending an overarching theme. Early renditions recognized specific decades, narrowing down choices for teams.
Seventy-five years is a long time. With schedules averaging 30 races a year or more and each race featuring 40 or so entrants, sometimes more…over 75 years, that is a lot of racecars, and that’s just in NASCAR. Open-wheel, off-road, sports cars and even drag racing have influenced teams and drivers as well.
Other than decades (and decades could be rotated through multiple times with plenty to choose from), themes could range from honoring the driver’s childhood racing hero (many do that anyway), other series or iconic events (Indy 500 throwback schemes have potential), past champions, Hall of Famers.
Joey Logano gave a nod to the late Cale Yarborough this year.
Logano is too young to have seen Yarborough in his heyday. But when a very young Logano stepped into the Cup Series and faced down the “Lady in Black,” it was Yarborough who gave him dancing lessons, teaching him to navigate the notoriously difficult track.
"This throwback just made sense to honor Cale's legacy."- @joeylogano is carrying an iconic 1976 Cale Yarborough paint scheme at Darlington.
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) April 6, 2025
The defending Cup champion talks about why it means so much to him: pic.twitter.com/YevXY6gjzW
If it weren’t for heroes and mentors, there would be little reason for youngsters to want to race for a living. There would be little reason for fans to want to watch, week in and week out, if they had nobody to cheer for. The people in the sport are more than statistics and names engraved on trophies.
One week a year dedicated to honoring them is hardly too much to ask.
And the best thing about the sport? Not only do we have the heroes of the past and their stories, but every fan who sits in the stands and chooses a driver to root for makes a new hero.
Years from now, perhaps a driver will be considering a throwback scheme and think to himself (or herself) how exciting it is to race with Joey Logano’s old paint scheme.
And so it goes. The ghosts are thick at Darlington. They deserve this one weekend a year. And so does every fan who cheered for them. – Amy Henderson
Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated’s OnSI Network, a contributor for TopSpeed.com, an AP Wire reporter, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host and master's student at Mississippi State University. Soon, Tanner will be pursuing a PhD. in Mass Media Studies. Tanner began working with Frontstretch as an Xfinity Series columnist in 2022.