Darlington Raceway is focusing on a 1990-95 theme for this year’s throwback race and teams are celebrating with their own special throwback paint schemes. Some veer out of the theme but many do and it’s usually a very popular concept among many in the NASCAR community.

One driver that has totally fit in with the early 90s theme is William Bryan. Despite being born in the late 90s, Byron revealed a well known throwback paint scheme and did it the only way he could that would be fitting of a design like this.

Byron and Hendrick Motorsports went full Days of Thunder by spoofing the Tom Cruise classic and revealing his version of Cole Trickle’s green and yellow #46 he’ll drive this Darlington race.

I wouldn’t necessarily give Byron and crew chief Chad Knaus (playing Harry Hogge) an acting award but it was an amusing spoof and a brilliant setup to reveal the #24 car.

In addition to the obvious NASCAR connection, Days of Thunder has been a big part of the Darlington race as well as Hendrick Motorsports. Rick Hendrick supplied the race cars to film the movie and the characters of Cole and Harry are based on Tim Richmond and Harry Hyde when they raced for Hendrick.

While the Hardee’s #18 and Mello Yellow #51 have been utilized at Darlington, the #46 hasn’t been done before. Kurt Busch raced a version at Daytona years ago but the #46 hasn’t been done at Darlington until now. And maybe William Byron can channel the power of Cole Trickle and get his car in victory lane.

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.

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