Taking to social media today, the longtime most-popular driver shared his thoughts on the illegal setup for his car and his teammates’ cars going into the race at Texas Motor Speedway this weekend.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be retiring from NASCAR’s Cup Series following this season, but for now, he’s still racing for Hendrick Motorsports – and as part of their sponsorship deal, the entire team will have their cars re-done under the Justice League movie promotion, but that’s exactly what’s making the cars illegal.
The movie, which will hit theaters on November 17th, is taking over the majority of the paint schemes for Kasey Kahne and Dale Jr.’s cars with their main sponsors still keeping a large presence in various spots. The problem with the new design is that the team has split the cars’ sides and each represents a different character from the movie – making the cars have two different-colored sides. This is a big no-no in NASCAR’s rulebook.
“I saw the car for the first time Friday and when I saw it I said ‘Hm, it has two different sides. I didn’t think that was allowed in NASCAR.’ So this is going to be fun to see how this plays out,” Dale Jr. confessed in a video posted to Twitter. “The race is Sunday.”
NASCAR has not issued a statement about the paint schemes and Hendrick Motorsports have not mentioned anything about the new design being approved by the sanctioning body – but it’s unlikely they would make an exception this time.
Back in 2014, fellow team Joe Gibbs Racing unveiled a paint scheme for Daniel Suarez’s car that had two separate-colored sides, but when the car hit the track, the paint scheme was completely re-done to fit NASCAR regulations.
It remains to be seen what will happen with the Hendrick Motorsports cars this weekend, but as of right now, the unveiled design shows two completely different sides.
Check out the video and images of the Justice League cars below and let us know what you think in the comments.
Huh. Apparently @DaleJr's Texas car has two different sides on it. pic.twitter.com/49vSS7FVet
— Save A Click NASCAR (@RacingClickSave) October 31, 2017
Looks like Kasey's does too pic.twitter.com/OFVKR0SvIU
— Save A Click NASCAR (@RacingClickSave) October 31, 2017