Filming racing sequences for the original <em>Days of Thunder</em> at Phoenix International Raceway in 1989, when the movie cars ran in a real Cup race. Photo: us44mt via Wikimedia Commons, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>.
NASCAR’s chief executive walked onto a stage in New York on Tuesday and casually mentioned a build order that would keep most race shops busy for a very long time. Speaking at Front Office Sports’ Tuned In summit, Steve O’Donnell said the sanctioning body is producing more than 80 cars for Days of Thunder 2.
Not a team. Not a Hollywood effects shop. NASCAR itself. That detail matters more than the number, and it says a lot about how different stock car racing looks from the one Cole Trickle left behind in 1990.
Quick refresher on what is official. Tom Cruise announced the sequel on his own social channels on Aug. 29 from Daytona International Speedway, the same night Ryan Preece won the Coke Zero Sugar 400 by 0.024 seconds. Paramount has the film dated for June 2, 2028. Cruise returns as Trickle, Anne Hathaway joins the cast, and Jerry Bruckheimer, who produced the original, is back as a producer.
In 1990, the movie cars took real green flags
The first film’s hardware came from Hendrick Motorsports: Chevrolet Lumina stock cars, with Cole’s first ride wearing the colors of City Chevrolet, Rick Hendrick’s real Charlotte dealership. Those cars weren’t just props. They raced.
At Phoenix in late 1989, Bobby Hamilton qualified one of the movie cars fifth and led a lap before the engine let go, while Greg Sacks drove another. Sacks ran one in the 1990 Busch Clash. Hamilton and Tommy Ellis took movie cars onto the track in the 1990 Daytona 500 as unscored entries. At Darlington that spring, Hut Stricklin and Sacks started two more, and both were parked early after Sacks broke a crankshaft. In other words, the production treated live Cup races as a film set, and real drivers raced around cameras bolted to a fictional team’s cars.
Could that happen in 2027? It’s hard to picture. A non-scoring movie car circulating in a Chase-era race, where a single position can swing a title fight, is the kind of idea that would empty a team owner’s patience in one meeting. O’Donnell’s own reaction to Cruise’s wish to run an ARCA race hints at where the line is: he said at the summit that he was shocked by the request and wasn’t sure it would happen. (ARCA’s front-runners are reshuffling anyway, with Joe Gibbs Racing closing its championship-winning program.)
Why the sanctioning body is the one building
Here’s the part worth chewing on. In 1990, a team could build a believable race car because teams built race cars, full stop. The Next Gen car that arrived in 2022 changed that. Its chassis and major components come from single-source suppliers, and teams buy the same parts from the same catalog. NASCAR controls that catalog. If the film wants cars that look right in a close-up of a 2028 grid, the most direct pipeline runs through the sanctioning body, not through any one Cup shop.
O’Donnell didn’t break down what the 80-plus cars will be, so treat what follows as informed analysis rather than a spec sheet. A fleet that size almost certainly isn’t 80 race-ready Cup cars. Expect a mix: hero cars for close-ups, camera cars rigged for mounts, cars built to be wrecked, and enough lookalikes to fill a convincing field in pack shots. That last job is where the count balloons. A believable superspeedway draft needs dozens of cars that look right at 180 mph, even if many of them never need a race engine.
There’s a practical upside for NASCAR too. When the sanctioning body builds the cars, it also controls how its product looks on screen: correct body shapes, correct wheels, correct details. The first film is beloved, but racers have spent 36 years pointing out its liberties. Owning the hardware is the easiest way to avoid another generation of that.
Cole Trickle’s toolbox is obsolete
If the sequel puts Trickle in a modern car, he’s walking into a different machine. The Cup Series dropped carburetors for electronic fuel injection in 2012. The Next Gen replaced the four-speed H-pattern gearbox with a five-speed sequential, swapped the old solid rear axle for independent rear suspension, and moved to 18-inch aluminum wheels with a single center-lock lug nut. The five-lug pit-stop choreography that the original film turned into drama is gone.
That’s a ready-made story engine: a veteran whose instincts were built on feel and mechanical sympathy, dropped into a car designed around parity, data, and tight tolerances. Whether the script uses it is up to the filmmakers. The 80-car build means that whatever ends up on screen can at least be the real thing.
A marketing budget disguised as a prop order
O’Donnell became CEO in April, the first person outside the France family to hold the job, and his summit appearance was a pitch for a louder NASCAR. He called the current “Hell Yeah” campaign “the biggest promotion we’ve done” and said the goal is to have “a middle schooler in Seattle talking about NASCAR,” even without a race there. He also relayed Cruise’s warning that the sport should be ready for viewers who have never watched a race.
Viewed that way, 80 cars is cheap reach. The original film grossed roughly $158 million worldwide, and it’s still the reference point for casual fans who think of stock car racing at all. A summer 2028 release puts a Cruise-led NASCAR movie in theaters in the middle of a Cup season, with no rights fee required to get the sport in front of a global audience. Hollywood and stock cars have been sharing garages lately, with Ford mixing F1, NASCAR and film names in one Mustang, but this is a different scale of commitment.
What to watch next
- The car spec. Whether the film cars follow the current Next Gen or a future body style will tell you how far ahead the production is planning.
- Filming at race weekends. If cameras show up at Daytona in February, watch for whether NASCAR allows any on-track running during official sessions, or confines filming to off-days.
- Who drives. The 1990 film put working racers in its cars. Any modern equivalent would need teams willing to lend talent mid-season.
- The ARCA idea. O’Donnell sounded skeptical. If Cruise keeps pushing, the sanctioning body’s licensing and safety rules will decide it, not the box office.
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