Mood board: the above featured photo is me as I complete this absolute marathon of articles.
But this one applies, too, in terms of how exhaustive an effort it was:
That alludes to this entire Movie Paint Scheme Chronicle series of Reel Racing this season, which was an effort that spanned 19 articles over exactly six months and 20,627 words written.
And yet, before we get to the stats, I knew I had to be missing one.
I discovered an oversight: I’d missed Bobby Hamilton Jr.‘s 2004 paint scheme at Phoenix Raceway for The Incredibles, thanks to a random “forgotten schemes” post that showed up in my “for you” page on Instagram.
So with that amended, I figured I’d take a look at a bunch of random stats this week on movie-themed paint schemes. I’d love to dig into actors with the most movies featured, all of that, but that would take too long and I don’t have the patience for it.
You can check out my list of all the paint schemes, with some details on who ran the cars and where, on Letterboxd. It’s honestly gotten more traction on that site than I would’ve expected.
Some total numbers:
Total movie paint schemes: 161
Total drivers with at least one movie scheme: 81
Total Cup Series schemes: 122
Total Busch / Xfinity / Nationwide schemes: 32
Total Truck Series schemes: 7
No real reason for the David Reutimann – The Simpsons Movie car photo above. Just a big David Reutimann guy.
NASCAR-specific numbers:
Season with the most movies represented: 2003, 2004, 2006 (nine each)
Season with the most total movie schemes: 2004 (17)
Scheme that ran the most: Jerry Nadeau‘s No. 9 Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island car, seven races in 1998
– Honorable mentions (four races each): Fast Five (spiked-number scheme), Cowboys vs. Aliens (landscape scheme), Cowboys vs. Aliens (mosaic scheme) and Spirit Untamed
Total winning movie schemes: 9
Total DNQs: 3
Movie-specific stats:
Total movies represented: 115 (not including throwbacks to or cars used in the filming of Days of Thunder or Stroker Ace)
Franchise with the most schemes: Cars, eight (Star Wars second with six, The Fast and the Furious third with five)
Movie(s) with the most schemes — Looney Tunes: Back in Action, The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith (four each)
Top five drivers with the most paint schemes:
1. Tomy Drissi: 9
2. Bobby Labonte: 8
T-3. Kyle Busch / Jeff Gordon: 7 each
T-4. Jimmie Johnson / Kasey Kahne / Stanton Barrett: 5 each
T-5. Dale Earnhardt Jr. / Elliott Sadler / Terry Labonte / Tony Stewart: 4 each
Drissi wins the pure quantity battle by sheer number, but let’s not forget the caveat that he has a Hollywood ad agency and kind of had the inside line on getting movies onto his cars — a trend that extended to his sports-car and Trans-Am racing (with some even cooler schemes on that side).
So while Drissi wins it outright, we’ll give 49% of the trophy to Bobby Labonte, as that was a more organic way of landing sponsors.
Top five teams with the most movie paint schemes:
I’ll close it out with a trend I noticed, where in the 2000s, movie schemes were absolutely more geared at stalwart teams — your Hendrick Motorsports, Evernham Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racings of the field. Interestingly, in the following decade and up to now, things have backslid toward midpack or backmarker teams. It’s not always the case, but it’s definitely more prevalent.
But here are the top five of teams with the most film-based liveries, some of which is due to the sheer quantity of cars and time the teams have been around. I mostly stuck to the teams’ colloquial names, so if I don’t get into the weeds of “Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates” and stuff like that, give it a pass:
1. Hendrick Motorsports: 24
2. Joe Gibbs Racing: 17
T-3: Richard Petty Motorsports / Evernham Motorsports: 7 each
4. Roush Racing: 6
T-5: Chip Ganassi Racing / Stewart-Haas Racing: 5 each
I think the biggest takeaways, statistically, are that Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing, and specifically those teams and their drivers in the early-to-mid 2000s, were the main targets for companies looking to market movies to NASCAR audiences.
It’s definitely fallen off quite a bit, but it’s always a fun little spark when a one-time-only scheme runs to plug a movie and makes the field look a little different.
Next week, I’ll do some rankings and posit some of my favorites, now that the comprehensive library has bee completed. I’ll also poll my fellow Frontstretch staffers soon to see what their favorites were, and then we’ll close it all out by looking ahead to 2026 and what movies should be promoted via paint scheme in the year to come.
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.