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New York Times
27-03-2025
- Automotive
- New York Times
‘The Rental Car 500': NASCAR drivers plus borrowed cars often equals mischief
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.' Advertisement 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.'' Advertisement 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. Advertisement '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. Advertisement '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)
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
About the Car and Driver Gear Team: Why Trust Us
Since 1964, Car and Driver has prided itself on hands-on testing and real-world experience behind the wheel and under the hood to bring you the best in automotive news. The Gear Team brings that same legendary passion and knowledge to our product reviews and gear tests. We take the same approach to gear that our car reviewers rely on to test cars: We evaluate products on their own merit, compare them to the competition, and tell you the truth. With many of the trusted magazines and newspapers of the good old days replaced by search-engine-hacking, algorithm-manipulating websites, the Gear Team delivers honest evaluations of the most popular automotive parts, tools, and products, driven by decades of knowledge and experience. If you're finding yourself increasingly baffled, bemused, and disappointed by the "expert" reviews you see online these days, you can still trust Car and Driver. The Gear Team gets our hands on nearly every product, tool, and piece of gear we test, and we never recommend anything we wouldn't buy ourselves. The Gear Team chooses all our products independently based on our knowledge of the automotive market and gear landscape. We never accept payment in exchange for editorial placement. Ever. We'll never say anything is "the best" if we wouldn't recommend it to our friends or buy it ourselves, and we won't tell you we've tested something unless we've put it through our own wringer. That's a promise. The Gear Team purchases most of the gear and products we rate and review. Some is supplied by manufacturers for testing purposes; trustworthy manufacturers and retailers offer us the chance to test their gear because they believe in the quality and value of the work they do and the products they make and sell. In fact, we're often suspicious of companies who refuse to donate products for evaluation. Car and Driver is one of the largest, most influential automotive publications in the world, so we don't have to worry about gaming search engines to get traffic, or promoting lousy products to sell junk. Rather, we're concerned with our legacy, our reputation, and most of all the trust that you, our readers, have in us. We know you rely on us to give it to you straight, and like our editorial car reviewers, the Gear Team promises to deliver the truth, every of Special Projects Thanks to the Cannonball Run movies and tales of his father's beloved 1969 Plymouth GTX, Patrick Carone has been obsessed with cars since the Reagan administration. Testing vehicles from his home in New York City has given him the dubious ability to confidently pilot half-a-million-dollar supercars through midtown at rush Commerce Editor Jon Langston is an avid motorcyclist and gear collector whose work has appeared in Men's Journal, The Drive, Rider, Iron & Air, Cycle World, and Commerce Editor Collin Morgan is the Associate Commerce Editor at Hearst Autos, where he presents the best gear for your automotive endeavors. He's been a technician in the trenches of Midwestern automotive repair, explored the automotive shrines in central Italy, and now enjoys making slow cars go fast around various Michigan Editor Collin Morgan is a Commerce Editor at Hearst Autos, where he presents the best gear for your automotive endeavors. He's been a technician in the trenches of Midwestern automotive repair, explored the automotive shrines in central Italy, and now enjoys making slow cars go fast around various Michigan Testing Editor Gannon Burgett loves cameras, cars, and coffee: a perfect combination for his Hearst Autos work. His byline has appeared in USA Today, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Digital Trends, the Detroit Free Press, and Testing Editor Gannon Burgett loves cameras, cars, and coffee: a perfect combination for his Hearst Autos work. His byline has appeared in USA Today, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Digital Trends, the Detroit Free Press, and Testing Editor By day, Katherine Keeler evaluates tools for your enjoyment; by night, she Frankensteins her ever-changing fleet of rust-bucket oddities back to repair. Her dream is to open a roadside attraction where the public can view, drive, and learn repairs at her emporium of curious Testing Editor By day, Katherine Keeler evaluates tools for your enjoyment; by night, she Frankensteins her ever-changing fleet of rust-bucket oddities back to repair. Her dream is to open a roadside attraction where the public can view, drive, and learn repairs at her emporium of curious Commerce Editor The Assistant Commerce Editor for Hearst Autos, Justin Helton is an enthusiast with a passion for heavily depreciated autos and a penchant for philosophical debate. As a lifelong Manhattanite, he has mastered the ins and outs of classic car ownership in one of the least car-friendly cities in the Testing Editor With a degree in multimedia journalism and a passion for the automotive world, Mason Cordell enjoys driving, wrenching, writing, and everything in between. At the age of 22, his garage consisted of a '95 Miata, an '08 M5, and a 1987 Porsche 944S. Clearly, he has a problem. You Might Also Like Car and Driver's 10 Best Cars through the Decades How to Buy or Lease a New Car Lightning Lap Legends: Chevrolet Camaro vs. Ford Mustang!
