LOVE LETTER TO NASCAR
STORY PAYS HOMAGE TO STOCK CAR RACING
“It’s not always the fastest and strongest car that wins. It’s the smartest.”
No, that’s not a tagline from Cars 3. It’s a quote from Ray Evernham, a man who knows a think or two about winning races. He was four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon’s crew chief, owned his own NASCAR team for 10 years and is currently an analyst for ESPN’s NASCAR coverage.
He also worked closely with Pixar Creative Director Jay Ward as a consultant on Cars 3, bringing his years of stock car racing experience to the table for a creative team dedicated to an authentic telling of NASCAR history.
Director Brian Fee calls Cars 3 ‘a love letter to NASCAR.’
Where the first Cars movie borrowed from the top-level stock car racing series — from ‘car-acters’ fashioned on real-life NASCAR characters, including Darrell Cartrip, Chick Hicks and Bob Cutlass — the third one goes all in. There are voices of four current drivers—Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott, Daniel Suarez and Bubba Wallace — and voices of past racers — Richard and Kyle Petty and Jeff Gordon. Even Evernham gets in on the action as “Ray Reverham.”
But a major element of the story arc has to do with NASCAR, in particular with its origins and characters that defined the nascent sport in the Fifties.
In doing research for Cars 3, Fee and members of the creative team attended a number of NASCAR races, and the director said that while the spectacle of the series’ signature races was impressive, it was the history of the sport that really resonated.
“It wasn’t the big races — it wasn’t the Daytona 500, it wasn’t the Coca-Cola 600 — it was having barbecue at Humpy Wheeler’s house, and hearing the stories about the characters when racing was just getting started,” explained Fee. “And sitting with Junior Johnson and having lunch and hearing his stories.” And the ghost tracks. “Tracks where you can hear the wind blowing through, and thinking ‘this place used to be packed,’” said Fee. “Now its dead but its still haunted by what used to happen here. That’s the stuff that I came away with. We have to get ‘this.’”
And get it they did, in the form of four new characters based on reallife stock car legends (see below) that Lightning McQueen discovers during a soul-searching trip to rekindle with the spirit of his mentor, Doc Hudson.
Here he also discovers the ghost tracks, decrepit dirt-surface tracks with rotting grandstands and weeds overtaking the pit lanes.
Said Fee: “Anyone who knows anything about the history of NASCAR, after watching the movie, will say ‘you paid a tribute.’”
Anyone who knows the history of NASCAR... will say ‘you paid a tribute.’ — Cars 3 Director Brian Fee