Team Penske Honors Rusty Wallace With NASCAR Paint Scheme at Darlington

Brad Keselowski’s No. 2 team will honor one of its former drivers with its throwback paint scheme for the Southern 500.

byAmanda Vincent|
NASCAR photo
Share

0

Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 2 Team Penske Ford in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, will honor Rusty Wallace, a former driver of the No. 2, with his throwback paint scheme for the 2018 Southern 500. Even though Wallace is perhaps most commonly known as a driver of the No. 2 Penske livery, Keselowski’s paint scheme at Darlington will be reminiscent of another car Wallace drove for another team—the No. 27 team owned by Raymond Beadle in 1990. 

Team Penske announced the news via Twitter.

The 1990 season was Wallace’s final year driving the No. 27 for Beadle. He won two races that year, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, and a road-course race in Sonoma, California. Wallace won the premier-series championship in the No. 27 the previous season, his lone Cup Series title.

In 1991, Wallace moved to Team Penske to drive the iconic No. 2, bringing his Miller sponsorship with him. He remained the driver of the No. 2 with Miller backing through the remainder of his NASCAR driving career that ended with retirement at the end of the 2005 season. In a premier-series career that spanned 1980-2005, Wallace claimed 55 wins, the last coming in 2004 at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia. Wallace failed to win at Darlington.

The 2018 Southern 500 will be the fourth-consecutive edition of the race with a throwback theme. The No. 2 team is the second to reveal its paint scheme for this year’s race, following Stewart-Haas Racing’s No. 41 team of Kurt Busch. Busch’s car will carry a paint scheme reminiscent of one of Busch’s own former paint schemes; the No. 97 Roush Fenway Racing Ford he raced in to a second-place finish in the 2003 Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 at Darlington.  In that race, Busch battled now-retired driver Ricky Craven for the win in what is one of the closest finishes in NASCAR history.

The 2018 Southern 500 is scheduled for Sep. 2 at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina.

stripe
NASCARRacing