The yellow M&M’s livery is coming back to Bristol Motor Speedway. The difference this time is that the man who made it famous won’t be behind the wheel.
Joe Gibbs Racing and Mars confirmed Thursday that the iconic paint scheme will appear on Ty Gibbs’ No. 54 Toyota for the Bass Pro Shops Night Race on September 19. The announcement came from Samantha Busch via Instagram, and the car is anything but a generic throwback — it’s a mosaic of career moments from a driver who treated Bristol like a personal proving ground.
Kyle Busch, who died May 21 at age 41, won 22 times at Bristol Motor Speedway across NASCAR’s three national series. Eight of those victories came in the Cup Series alone. He swept the tripleheader weekend — meaning he won all three national-series races in a single event — twice: in 2010 and again in 2017. No other driver has done it once, let alone twice. Bristol wasn’t just a favorable venue for Busch; it was a track he seemed to genuinely operate on a different frequency from everyone else.
A Sponsor Relationship That Ran 15 Seasons
Mars backed Kyle Busch at Joe Gibbs Racing for 15 seasons — one of the longest continuous driver-sponsor partnerships in modern NASCAR history. Busch joined JGR in 2008 with Mars already in place, and the arrangement produced one of the sport’s most recognizable liveries. The yellow-and-red M&M’s car on the No. 18 Toyota became as synonymous with Busch as his aggressive, take-no-prisoners racing style.
Of the 56 Cup Series victories Busch recorded with JGR, 47 came with Mars branding on the car. He won championships in 2015 and 2019 under that banner. His final win with both the organization and the sponsor came at Bristol dirt in 2022 — a fitting last act — before he departed to Richard Childress Racing ahead of the 2023 season. On the Xfinity side, 90 of Busch’s 102 series wins came with JGR, eight of those with Mars support.
“Kyle became the M&M’s guy,” Samantha Busch said in the Instagram announcement. That wasn’t marketing copy — it was an accurate description of how completely the two became intertwined in the minds of NASCAR fans over a decade and a half.
Why Bristol, and Why the Mosaic Scheme
There’s no manufactured sentimentality in this choice of venue. Bristol legitimately meant something specific to Kyle Busch, and anyone who watched him race there understands why. “Bristol wasn’t just another race to him,” Samantha Busch said. “He loved everything about that place — the intensity, the energy, the fans and the challenge of racing there. Some of the greatest moments of his career happened on that track in the yellow M&M’s car.”
The decision to bring the scheme back at Bristol rather than a more marquee venue like Daytona or Charlotte reflects a clear understanding of what actually mattered. Bristol’s 0.533-mile concrete oval is unforgiving — passing requires commitment, and contact is a feature, not a bug. Busch’s relentlessness was perfectly calibrated for it. The M&M’s car and Bristol’s high banks belong in the same sentence of his legacy, which is exactly why JGR and Mars made this call.
The scheme itself is a mosaic — panels filled with defining moments from Busch’s career. It won’t be a simple throwback to any one livery from a specific season. It’s a career retrospective on four wheels, which, given the numbers he put up at that track, makes the car an appropriate monument.
Gibbs Steps Into a Significant Moment
Ty Gibbs, grandson of JGR owner Joe Gibbs, inherited the organization’s fourth car when Busch left for RCR. He’s built his own identity in the No. 54 since, and 2026 has been his strongest Cup season to date. Gibbs won last weekend at Iowa Speedway and currently sits second in Cup Series standings as the series heads into the Richmond weekend and, beyond that, the ten-race Playoff bracket.
Running the M&M’s tribute scheme at Bristol puts Gibbs at a layered intersection: honoring the driver whose seat he inherited, carrying the sponsorship of a company that helped define JGR’s identity for 15 years, and doing it at a track where the standard of comparison is 22 wins. That’s not a comfortable position, but it’s a meaningful one. “Seeing Mars and Joe Gibbs Racing come together to honor Kyle this way is incredibly emotional to me,” Samantha Busch said. “To see the No. 54 car carry those iconic colors again, filled with moments from Kyle’s incredible career, feels like bringing a piece of him back to the track he loved so much.”
Race Details
The Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway is scheduled for September 19 — the third race of the ten-event Playoff bracket. Coverage begins at 7:30 p.m. ET on USA Network and HBO Max, with radio coverage on PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. If this weekend’s racing at Richmond is any indication of where the Playoff field stands, the short-track chess match at Bristol in September is going to matter considerably.
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