And the slowdown begins … there were only six movie paint schemes across the final two years of the past decade. And all but two were with mid-pack, mid-level-profile drivers, as well — the only two exceptions were Christopher Bell and Bubba Wallace, but to be fair Wallace was at the time a mid-pack driver in middling Richard Petty Motorsports equipment.
The Hurricane Heist
Things got started quickly in 2018, with Matt DiBenedetto starting off his second and final season with Go Fas Racing with backing from The Hurricane Heist.
It really feels like it would’ve been some direct-to-Netflix schlock garbage, but that movie somehow got released in theaters. It didn’t make much money, but it somehow got on big screens across America.
DiBenedetto’s car was kind of neat, with lightning flashing across a black background — kind of reminiscent of Kenny Wallace‘s Square D car, but far less cool and eye-catching.
This was around the time when DiBenedetto was one of the underdogs to watch on superspeedways, but he got caught up in a wreck and finished 27th.
Mile 22
Bubba Wallace’s Mile 22 scheme is most known for this:
The fourth of five partnerships between Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg (after Lone Survivor and the excellent 2016 duo of Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day, and before Spenser Confidential), and also borderline the lowest-rated team-up of the actor and director, Mile 22 came out in 2018.
Wallace carried Wahlberg’s likeness on the door panels, but all that came to a crashing halt when the No. 43 slammed the wall in one of Pocono’s infamous high-speed impacts.
God Bless the Broken Road
Cody Coughlin is one of those guys who randomly showed up for a few years and then vanished; he’s still doing occasional stuff in NHRA and ARCA, apparently, but he had rides with ThorSport Racing and GMS Racing, wrecked a bunch, refused to elaborate and left.
Coughlin had this extremely boring scheme to promote the extremely-poorly-reviewed film God Bless the Broken Road in 2018 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
What’s wild is the movie is apparently a theatrical interpretation of the song “Bless the Broken Road,” and it’s even more wild that we had a car with a ghost on a paint scheme. And it wasn’t even Halloween.
Third wild thing: LaDainian Tomlinson is in the movie. Sure. Why not.
Bumblebee
This one is a little borderline, since it was a GameStop car, but Christopher Bell’s scheme at Homestead-Miami Speedway still promoted the new Transformers film Bumblebee in 2018, starring Hailee Steinfeld.
The scheme was for the season finale, one week after Bell drove a scheme for the video game Just Cause 4 to victory lane at Phoenix Raceway in a must-win, clutch, walk-off win (at least for the Xfinity Series’ Round of 8).
This was Bell’s first shot against his 2018 and 2019 title competitors — Cole Custer and Tyler Reddick — but he couldn’t quite seal the deal this time (or the next year), finishing 11th.
Run the Race
Our third paint scheme archive DNQ — and first since 2008 — is Korbin Forrister‘s livery for Daytona International Speedway to kick off 2019.
Just like Coughlin’s truck, it’s another extremely boring scheme. Tim Tebow executive produced the movie, which got negative reviews upon its release.
Black and yellow, group photo on the side, failed to qualify. Yawn.
Shazam!
The best scheme of these two seasons was easily Aric Almirola’s car for Shazam!, which ran at Martinsville Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway in the spring of 2019.
A full-car scheme? A custom firesuit? What a concept! Shazam! itself was a really fun time — director David F. Sandberg was able to weave some of his horror elements into the movie, and it and its sequel are genuinely enjoyable.
At Martinsville, Almirola started second and finished ninth; his Bristol efforts yielded a sixth-place starting spot, but the No. 10 finished 37th.
Moving on to the 2020s next week!
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.