NSCA Cup Series Showroom

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jacobc62

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Jun 25, 2017
565
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#8/#88 | Eric Reinhardt Jr.
Teams:
Eric Reinhardt Inc. & All-Star Motorsports
Seasons: 19 (17 full-time)
Active Seasons: 2000-2016 (Debuted in 1998)
Starts: 596
Wins: 27 | 2-time Daytona 500 Champion
Championships: 0
Top 5s: 1
Top 10s: 1
First Race: 1998 UAW-GM Quality 500
Last Race: 2016 Ford Ecoboost 400

Son of the legendary Eric Reinhardt, and the third-generation in the line of racers in the Reinhardt family, Eric Jr. has much to live up to. Following his father's death in the 2001 Daytona 500, Eric seemed almost lost in his way. But after coming back to Daytona in July and edging out teammate Cole Donnovan in what was then known as the Pepsi 400, Eric Jr seemed to begin healing mentally. It was Jr's first win since Atlanta the previous fall, and his first top 5 of the 2001 season after his 2nd place finish at Daytona in February. On the fanbase side of things, many of Sr's fans came to follow Jr as well, supporting him as much as they did the elder Reinhardt.

Schemes:
2001 Budweiser - The course of the 2001 season was a mixture of triumph and tragedy. The sport lost it's biggest star at the time, but almost lost in the sea of news that followed the 2001 Daytona 500 was that a son had lost his father. It took a while for Eric Reinhardt Jr to move past it, even after his victory when the NSCA returned to Daytona in July. But once he regained traction, he moved forward, and moved forward quickly.

88ERJ_1_2001_Budweiser.png


2004 Budweiser (Daytona 500) - Reinhardt Jr. picked up several wins throughout the early-mid 2000s, and this included the 2004 Daytona 500, where he led 34 of the 200 laps. Driving a special paint scheme, Eric was able to capitalize on what was a race of attrition, where only 18 of the 43 drivers finished the event, and only 6 of those were on the lead lap.

88ERJ_2_2004_Budweiser_Daytona_500.png


2007 Budweiser - Unfortunately, many good things come and pass, and this included Eric Jr.'s time at the team his father had founded. Behind the scenes, things took a turn for the downhill. Eric Reinhardt Inc. was facing serious financial issues, even with some big names sponsorship-wise backing the team. After a difference in opinion on how to save the team with his team owner and step-mother, Eric left the team to try and find his own way, landing at Chuck Rinsci Racing for 2008.

88ERJ_3_2007_Budweiser.png


2009 Amp Energy - Eric's tenure at CRR would be short lived, however, as All-Star Motorsports would pick up Jr for 2009, and where he would remain until he retired from full-time racing after the 2016 season. His first year at All-Star wouldn't be all that great. Whether it was due to a lack of self confidence, not-so-great equipment, bad crew chief decisions, or just pure bad luck, Jr would find himself outside the top 20 in points at season's end that year while his teammates would finish 2-3-4.

88ERJ_4_2009_AMP_Energy.png


2010 National Guard - Between 2009 and 2010, several changes were made at All-Star to try and get all 4 teams to fire on all cylinders, and to the team's credit, it almost worked. While the team as a whole took a few steps back in terms of performance, it was Jr's team that saw forward progress despite this, finishing 14th in points and just barely missing the Chase. Over the course of the next 3 years afterwards, the #88 team continued to make steps forward.

88ERJ_5_2010_National_Guard.png


2013 Diet Mountain Dew - Following the 2011 season, PepsiCo began yet another restructuring of the Amp Energy brand, which included bringing it back under the Mountain Dew fold like it was initially prior to 2006, and as a result, Eric Jr. saw the number of races with the Amp Energy logo on the hood cut down to just a few races. In it's place, Diet Dew was adorned on the now silver and green Chevy driven by the third generation driver, becoming yet another driver (kinda) in a long list of those who have driven the Dew colors proper. Despite 2013 being yet another winless season - his 4th of the 5 seasons he had raced at All-Star Motorsports up to that point - it would wind up being the closest he would come to winning a championship while in the #88.

88ERJ_6_2013_Diet_Mountain_Dew.png


2001 Eric Jr. - As the world entered the 21st century, and the NSCA was thrust into the forefront of American culture, naturally it saw a rise in merchandise and licensing deals for it to appear in other aspects that shaped how fans interacted with the sport. Enter the realm of video games. As developers and publishers such as Papyrus and EA Sports started to delve into making NSCA racing games, the obvious appeal to kids made it clear that if you wanted to sell a game to everybody, you couldn't have any tobacco or alcohol branding in your game, thus game publishers (and die-cast car creators) had to work with teams that had "adult" products as sponsors to create alternative, kid-friendly/censored cars to avoid any potential issues. As Eric Reinhardt Inc. was one of those teams, a creative use of the Budweiser name font was used to instead display Eric Jr.'s name on the car in Budweiser's place. Due to criticism over people feeling the logo was "too close" to looking like Bud's, the team switched to using Jr's personal branding in 2003, and switched it again in 2005 to just the team branding.


88ERJ_7_2001_Eric_Reinhardt_Jr.png



(ignore the fact that the #88 cars still have the Hendrick logo on them, they were updated after I rendered them)
 

jacobc62

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Hot Pass Member
Jun 25, 2017
565
93
#56 | John Mullen
Team:
Wolfpack Racing
Seasons: 21 (20 full-time)
Active Seasons: 2002-2016, 2018-2022 (Debuted in 2001)
Starts: 688
Wins: 18 | 2011 Daytona 500 Champion
Championships: 1 (2017)
Top 5s: 87
Top 10s: 131
First Race: 2001 Daytona 500
Last Race: 2022 Hooter 500

Son of the late Elana Mullen, John started his NSCA days for Ying Yang Racing in the late 1990s in the Truck Series. Out performing in the equipment, he caught the eye of Dillon Grayson, a former crew chief of Prince Racing, who went on to form his own team in 1999 - Wolfpack Racing. In 2000, Grayson hired Mullen to race for him in the National Series, with a part-time jump to Cup happening just the next year with a debut in the 2001 Daytona 500. In 2002, John went full-time with Wolfpack..... And as they say, the rest is history. Unfortunately, the team would begin to struggle financially in 2005 following the death of the team's founder, and after the 2005 season John moved on to different and (arguably better) opportunities. In 2008, the team was on the verge of shutting down and out be bought out by Blastham Motorsports, which then shut down only two years later itself. The tale of Wolfpack Racing is a tragic one, with many highs and lows, but it was where the career of one of the NSCA's modern day legends started, and that can never be tarnished by everything else surrounding the organization.

Schemes:
2002 Circle K - When Wolfpack Racing started out in the Cup Series, John obviously would need a sponsor. When Circle K stepped up, they thought it would last a while, but unfortunately, it only lasted a single season. The reasons behind the split were never made public, but it's rumored that one party didn't like how the other handled things, and the story on what things were being handled or which party disliked who changed from source to source. It looked like a decent partnership from the outside though, and it did give the team the opportunity to attract larger and better partners......

56JM_1_2002_Circle_K.png


2003 Coca-Cola - And attract a bigger partner Wolfpack did! Coca-Cola would come aboard the #56 Dodge for 2003 and 2004, despite Pepsi being the "official soft drink of the NSCA" at the time. At the time, fans would joke about how John was the "kid-friendly" version of Eric Reinhardt Jr., being that they both drove candy-red colored cars with a beverage sponsor on it, due to Eric having Budweiser (Beer) while John ran with Coca-Cola (Soda).

56JM_2_2003_Coca-Cola.png


2003 Goodyear - Coke wasn't the only sponsor for John to nab in 2003. Goodyear also decided to expand it's partnership with the NSCA by sponsoring John for the 2003 season. Unlike Coke, this would only last the one year. This wouldn't be the last time an NSCA partner would sponsor John, though. The team also saw a couple of associate sponsors leave, though despite this, the organization thought nothing of it at the time.

56JM_3_2003_Goodyear.png


2004 Coca-Cola - Despite starting 2004 on a high note with several good finishes, the season fell apart as the Cup Series rolled into the summer months. Tragically, the owner and founder of the team - Dillon Grayson - would also pass away after suffering from cardiac arrest in early October. This left the team under the reigns on William Grayson, Dillon's son. Without his mentor and now having to fight to be heard within the team that brought him up to Cup, John's season closed out as his worst career points finish - 27th. Following the end of the year, Coke cut back to only an associate sponsor, and the team saw even more sponsors leave entirely.

56JM_4_2004_Coca-Cola.png


2005 EA Sports - Going into 2005, it became clear that Dodge had started to reduce manufacturer support to Wolfpack in favor of other teams. The organization was hurting badly...... Thankfully for them, they found a new sponsor.... Unfortunately, it was Electronic Arts.... EA needed a new method to advertise to the motorsport market, seeing as how they had just lost the licenses to both Indycar and Formula 1 over the past couple of years, and really only had the NSCA left. Thus, they jumped aboard the #56, and later in the year would advertise that year's game on it: NSCA 06: Chase for the Cup (though the 2024 Legends version is from earlier in the season). It was a bad year for everyone involved, continuing a further spiral downward that eventually killed the team.

56JM_5_2005_EA_Sports.png
 

Rollo75

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Hot Pass Member
Dec 1, 2018
1,403
113
No.
That Coca-Cols schemed car is a pretty solution to the problem. Usually "Hail Corporate!" puts you within a bound box with regards devices but this I think plays with the element nicely.
 

jacobc62

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Hot Pass Member
Jun 25, 2017
565
93
Surprise! It's been... a month since I last posted! The Legends set is complete, BTW, I'm just gonna take my time releasing these though. The set shall also come around at some point in the near future!

#20 | Evan Miller
Team:
Jan Tammus Racing
Seasons: 16 (15 full-time)
Active Seasons: 1996-2010 (Debuted in 1995)
Starts: 526
Wins: 71
Championships: 2 (2005, 2006)
Top 5s: 278
Top 10s: 397
First Race: 1995 New England 300
Last Race: 2010 Ford 400

In 1989 and 1990, Jan Tammus led the San Fransisco 49ers to back-to-back Super Bowls. In 1992, he opened his own NSCA race team, and in 1995, he won the Daytona 500 with Randy Carpenter as his driver. However, late into the season, after a multitude of issues both on track and behind closed doors, Carpenter wound up walking away from the team with a few races remaining in the season. Enter Evan Miller, a hotshot Champcar driver who was successful in that series, and got bored with it. So when a team in the top level of stock-car racing had a sudden vacancy, he put his name into the hat. After a couple of races with other drivers, Evan got the call, and immediately blew away any and all expectations with a 2nd place finish in his first career start. As they say, the rest is history, with Evan Miller racing for JTR until the end of 2008.

Schemes:
1999 Interstate Batteries - Ahead of the 1997 season, JTR found new sponsorship in the form of Interstate Batteries. The team saw success the during the few years that Interstate was primary sponsor. In the first three seasons, the team ran with NFL logos on the hood of the car as well, though a rule change headed into the 21st century did nix that.

20EM_1_1999_Interstate_Batteries.png


2001 Home Depot - Going into 2001, Interstate moved over to the team's other car while The Home Depot took over full season for the #20. The season started big for Evan Miller, and not in a good way. Being sent for a violent and spectacular flip late into the 2001 Daytona 500, Miller was taken to the Halifax medical center a couple miles away from Daytona. While there were rumors that he would miss the next couple of races, he would be back the very next week at Rockingham, and would nearly win the race, being beat out by Buck Taylor for the victory.

20EM_2_2001_Home_Depot.png


2004 Home Depot - The partnership would continue through into the mid 2000s, and a new scheme was brought into the fold for 2004. Gone were the blocks/stripes, in were spiky swooshes, and a more saturated orange color. This is also the scheme that he would be behind the wheel of for his 2005 and 2006 championships before the scheme changed again.

20EM_3_2004_Home_Depot.png
 

jacobc62

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Hot Pass Member
Jun 25, 2017
565
93
So because Discord decided "Oh, we're going to break literally every image link possible in one of the worst decisions we've ever made", pretty much every single image here is now a busted link.....


..... So now I'm going to have to find the time to replace every single image here. Now that's not going to happen overnight, it's gonna be a process.... So please be patient as overtime the broken links are replaced with actual images again.
 

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