The 2013 NASCAR Cup seasonmarked the first time movie schemes won in back-to-back years since Jeff Gordon (Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith at Talladega Superspeedway) and Kasey Kahne (Click at Michigan International Speedway) did it in 2005 and ’06.
After Dale Earnhardt Jr. finally snapped his winless streak at Michigan in 2012 with The Dark Knight Rises aboard his No. 88, Ryan Newman snapped a streak of over a year at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2013 … but we’ll get there.
There were a few schemes in ’13, mostly for big-budget movies hitting theaters, but a good amount for the first year of the Gen 6 car.
Monsters University
After Jimmie Johnson‘s first outing with a combo scheme of a new, animated movie and Lowe’s’ “Build and Grow” play set campaign, the hardware store brought it back for 2013.
No film appeared on a car until June, when Johnson returned to Dover Motor Speedway — where year in, year out, people expected him to win. This time, he had the 10-years-in-the-making Pixar sequel Monsters University aboard the No. 48.
With Mike Wazowski as his copilot under the driver’s window, Johnson had an unremarkable day, starting 24th and finishing 17th.
Turns out, it was the fall race where Johnson returned to form, winning at the Monster Mile (his eighth at the track) en route to his sixth title that November.
Man of Steel
Two weeks later, the Cup Series headed to Michigan, where Dale Jr. looked to keep his success at the two-mile track alive … this time, with a different DC Comics character.
Instead of the all-black of the Caped Crusader, the No. 88 bore a matte, grayish scheme that partnered flagship sponsor National Guard with the new Superman movie, Man of Steel.
Junebug started outside the top 10 and finished a dismal 37th, the result mirroring the underwhelming scheme — which, in turn, mirrored the underwhelming movie (gonna get some comments on THAT take, I’m sure).
Quick soapbox on the movie: Superman is not about punching another similarly-powered villain through buildings for the final half-hour of the movie. Man of Steel is just not great.
(Co-Editor’s note: Adam needs to read more Superman comic books)
I’m really not that invested in Superman — I find the character itself pretty boring — but the new Superman is very aligned with the Christopher Reeve movies, which are what the character is all about. The new film, with David Corenswet as Clark Kent and Superman, is great (and it’ll crop up when we get to 2025 cars).
The Wolverine
A week further down the line, another movie car.
Tomy Drissi returns to the list here for a fourth-straight article, once again at Sonoma Raceway, where The Wolverine was aboard NEMCO Motorsports’ No. 87.
Joe Nemechek handed the reins of his self-owned Cup car over to Drissi for both road courses in 2013, and the No. 87 bore the branding of the semi-reboot of Hugh Jackman’s iconic role after the failure of 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
The movie itself goes off the beaten path by opening with Wolverine in Japan during the Nagasaki bombing and culminates in a villain with a huge suit of samurai armor, which is pretty badass.
Scheme-wise, it has a lot more going on than some of Drissi’s previous liveries — we have some claw marks along the doors, which is pretty cool, and the blood-red 87s on the doors and roof made it stand out despite a 38th-place finish.
The Smurfs 2
More than a month after Drissi’s appearance in wine country, Ryan Newman took to the bricks of Indy in a hybrid scheme of his normal sponsor, Quicken Loans, and the new animated film The Smurfs 2.
A 14% Rotten Tomatoes rating be damned, that movie somehow made nearly $350 million and ended up in the annals of the few race-winning movie schemes, as Newman led 45 laps en route to what became the penultimate win of his career.
Along with the 2008 Daytona 500, it was Newman’s only other crown-jewel victory.
It was another three-and-a-half years before he got his final win.
Planes
The third and final Lowe’s Build and Grow scheme was for yet another animated movie, this time the Pixar feature Planes.
Essentially an offshoot of Cars, trying to build on that success (let’s take a vehicle, make it a plural noun and make a movie about it), it got pretty terrible reviews but still made $240 million.
Johnson carried this movie’s branding at Pocono Raceway in a pretty bland scheme — let’s face it, the No. 48’s Lowe’s schemes were pretty bland in the mid-2010s as a whole. JJ started on pole, but finished 13th.
The Counselor
Who better to cap off this rundown than Drissi, again, and with the most out-of-the-blue movie to show up on this year’s list?
The Counselor was director Ridley Scott’s next film after 2012’s Prometheus. He eventually returned to his legendary form with stuff like The Martian and The Last Duel, but this was during a lull in his career.
The movie got middling-to-bad reviews, despite a star-studded cast of Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz (including a rather now-infamous scene involving Diaz and a car windshield and look at that, Pitt and Bardem together in a film 12 years before they reunited for F1!).
Drissi ran identical cars for The Counselor across two weeks. First up was Watkins Glen International, where he started and finished 42nd for NEMCO Motorsports — I very much respect Front Row Joe’s seeming commitment to “I’m not really good at road courses, so let me give the wheel to a road-racing veteran.”
The following week, Drissi piloted ML Motorsports’ No. 70 Nationwide Series car, which was usually Johanna Long’s ride in 2012 and 2013.
Drissi had more success than in the No. 87, starting back in the field but finishing 19th.
I like the simplicity of the scheme for the movie, regardless of Cup or Nationwide car body.
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.