‘The Rental Car 500': NASCAR drivers plus borrowed cars often equals mischief

New York Times

27-03-2025

Place a group of bored race-car drivers inside a racetrack with nothing to do during a rain delay, with few people around to document any mischievousness, and inevitably they'll find a way to entertain themselves.
'The Rental Car 500 was a real thing,' three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano said. 'Everyone ended up trying to dry the track, then all of a sudden you had 30 rental cars out there, and no one really knows how to go slow in this industry.'
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The tales of drivers using their rental cars in ways that were not intended are as old as NASCAR itself. NASCAR Hall of Famer drivers Joe Weatherly and Curtis Turner were notorious for their rental car exploits during the sport's formative years in the 1950s and 60s. Their shenanigans were even an inspiration for scenes in the Hollywood films 'Cannonball Run' and 'Days of Thunder.'
Such adventures aren't confined to a bygone era where it was easier to get away with rascality. They still occur today, just less frequently, away from the limelight, and in a different form.
Many of these 'Rental Car 500' races happened during midweek testing sessions, often closed to fans and media. The catalyst: Drivers would be asked to get into their rentals to help dry the track whenever it rained. And, race-car drivers being race-car drivers, things escalated.
'You've definitely had some rental car races over the years that I've been a part of,' Legacy Motor Club driver Erik Jones said. 'So that was fun. It's a good time-killer.'
Sometimes it can just be a couple of drivers conspiring on how to push a rental car's performance limits. This was the case when Jones and Bubba Wallace, then teammates at Kyle Busch Motorsports, took part in a Truck Series test at Homestead-Miami Speedway, in 2013 or 2014, when rain delayed on-track activity.
Noticing that some KBM team members had been issued Smart cars, Jones and Wallace decided to take the unconventional vehicle for a spin. And with it raining, Wallace, who was driving, thought it would be fun to pull the emergency brake down while zipping down the frontstretch.
'No harm, no foul. Didn't hit anything,' said Wallace, who now drives for 23XI Racing in the Cup Series.
It didn't take long, however, before track security intervened.
'Dude, it was like a SWAT team,' Wallace said. 'They came in, and they were like, 'Whoever's driving that is kicked out.' We had to do some talking and be like, 'Everything's fine here.''
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Although Kyle Busch didn't recall that particular incident when asked, he did share his most memorable time driving a rental car onto a racetrack. It came at Winchester Speedway, a very high-banked half-mile oval in Indiana where the top groove is the preferred line. It's easy to surmise what happened next.
'We were there for a test and trying to get out there to get some laps because it was getting too late in the day, so we're all just out there in rental cars trying to dry it off,' Busch said. 'And since you run the top there, I was like, 'How close can you get to the wall down the backstretch?' I was just trying to nip the passenger-side mirror on the fence. So I was just getting a little closer, a little closer, and then took the whole right side (of the car).'
Neither Chase Elliott nor Alex Bowman have any stories of their own to share, but the Hendrick Motorsports teammates have witnessed and heard plenty over the years.
Bowman recalled a rental car dropped off at an airport on fire due to overheated brakes. Elliott shook his head, thinking at the state of some cars he's seen returned. Both advised against buying a used rental car that was ever driven by someone within the NASCAR industry.
'Not from this circus,' Elliott said.
Limits on how frequently a NASCAR team can test have curbed many opportunities drivers once had to take their rental car for a joyride around a racetrack. But still prevalent is the frenzy of drivers and team personnel dashing from the track to the airport immediately following the race.
'Honestly, the craziest thing, I think, is watching the team guys leave a racetrack,' Joe Gibbs Racing's Chase Briscoe said. 'It is like the best racing and just the most chaos you've ever seen in your life.'
When asked if he had one encounter that stood out, Briscoe instantly remembered leaving Talladega Superspeedway after a race last year.
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'I'm running down the interstate, and a minivan comes hauling on the shoulder, passing, two wheels in the dirt,' Briscoe said. 'I'm like, 'This guy is stupid.' We're all gonna get to the plane; might be 20 minutes different if you're on the first or second plane. We get to the light at the exit. He rips by 30-something cars through the dirt. I'm like, 'Come on, what are they doing?''
Briscoe pulled into the airport nearly right behind the minivan due to traffic and red lights. He then saw who was piled into the van that disregarded the rules of the road.
It was his own team.
'I was like, 'What are you guys doing? We all got here at the same time and you blew by me 10 minutes ago,'' said Briscoe.
These rental car antics often come with a price tag. And it can be costly.
'I definitely don't look forward to the bill I get,' said Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin, who stressed his rental car accidents had nothing to do with any tomfoolery on the racetrack.
This is something Ricky Stenhouse Jr. can relate to.
Fifteen or so years ago, he and fellow driver Trevor Bayne were tooling around in a rental car in the area surrounding the Homestead track, which features many uneven dirt roads. Stenhouse decided to have some offroad fun, something his Chevrolet Impala wasn't equipped for.
'I was running down through there, and I was foot to the floor,' Stenhouse said. 'And there were some big potholes back there, and we were rallycar-ing it through this dirt road, and all of a sudden, I'm like, 'Man, I don't have any power.' … I looked under (the car) and there was a massive hole in the oil pan; there was a trail of oil all the way, I don't know how long. So now we were going to be late to the rookie meeting.'
Stranded in the middle of nowhere, Stenhouse and Bayne reached out to another driver, Michael McDowell, to come pick them up. When McDowell arrived, he noticed the damage and quickly pieced together the chain of events.
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'When I got there, there were all three colors of fluid on the ground,' McDowell said, laughing. 'They knocked the oil pan out of that thing.
'Just glad it wasn't me.'
That season, Stenhouse went on to win Xfinity Series Rookie of the Year honors. Fulfilling a reward he had made earlier, team owner Jack Roush gifted Stenhouse a special edition Ford Mustang — except there was a catch.
'(Roush) wouldn't give me the keys until I paid for the engine in the rental car,' Stenhouse said. 'I think it was like $5,000 or something.'
Just as Roush didn't brush off the cost, neither do rental car companies when a vehicle is returned damaged. How does that conversation go when the damage is beyond the typical wear and tear?
'I just tell them I got it like that,' Jones said, laughing. ''I just picked it up that way' is always the go-to.'
(Top illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Logan Riely, Cameron Spencer, Andrej Isakovic / Getty Images)