K&F Show #356: Dallas Race Week, Florida Speed, and Daytona Fever // NASCAR Movie Review + Days of Thunder

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Welcome to the official Kibbe and Friends Show with myself, Justin “Corndog” Cornette, and Show Producer Bernie McPartland! With this show we’re basically setting up the Boars Nest for the entire automotive media world to swing through for a couple watered down beers, stale popcorn, and fantastic waitresses. You can find every episode here on The MuscleCar Place as well as iTunes, Pandora, iHeart Radio, and Google Play. From time to time we’ll also be posting video clips and full shows to The Kibbe and Friends YouTube channel. If you click the “Download” link at the top of this post you’ll be able to stream it on your phone directly. You can also pull the RSS feed as well.

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Kibbe E-mail: robert@themusclecarplace.com

Thanks!

-Rob Kibbe

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Dallas in Florida: “Race Week” mode

So here’s the deal: Dallas and I are down in Winter Haven, Florida at Auburndale Speedway, and if you’re not from here, just picture a place perfectly located between Tampa and Orlando where the air smells like sunblock, burnt rubber, and bad decisions. This is a five-day tournament-style Legends race week—practice, qualify, race… every single day, Monday through Friday, and at the end of it you’ve got a winner. It’s a national event, real deal, and Dallas is running Semi-Pro in the white #13, rocking a paint scheme we absolutely and shamelessly stole from the Subaru Gymkhana/Hoonigan universe because… why wouldn’t you?

And big picture, this isn’t just “go race and have fun.” This is step-one in the plan: graduate out of Legends Cars by running the biggest Legends events we can, and then… move up into “the next thing.” I’m not spilling the beans yet—because I don’t want to jinx it—but let’s just say the goal is forward motion, bigger stages, and more seat time where it matters.

If you want to watch it, you can—USLegendsCars.tv is where it is. Not free. But honestly? The coverage is shockingly legit. Real cameras, real announcers, actual production value. I bought the membership so family can watch from home, and if you’re curious, you’ll be able to find the white #13 out there mixing it up.

Movie Review:
“Days of Thunder”

Now… we did this episode the way we did it for one reason: Daytona week deserves Days of Thunder. It’s tradition. It’s sacred. It’s basically church—but with more tire smoke and less emotional maturity.

There are only a handful of weekends each year when racing breaks through into the mainstream conversation. The Daytona 500 is one of them. It’s the one race where even people who don’t follow NASCAR suddenly know what’s happening. And when that week rolls around, there’s one movie that belongs on the screen. It’s not optional. It’s not up for debate. It’s Days of Thunder. And if you’ve never heard me say it before, I’ll say it again: Days of Thunder is Top Gun in a stock car. And that’s not an insult—that’s the design. That’s the blueprint.

You take a wildly talented but undisciplined hotshot—Cole Trickle. He’s fearless, fast, and completely unaware of the depth of the world he just stepped into. He doesn’t know what wedge is. He doesn’t understand chassis adjustments. He doesn’t even fully understand the culture. He just knows he can drive. Then you pair him with a grizzled mentor—Harry Hogge—a man who has seen talent before and seen it wasted before. A man who understands that driving fast is easy… but driving smart, disciplined, and humble is rare. Then you add Rowdy Burns. The rival. The measuring stick. The guy Cole wants to beat so badly that he can’t see past his own ego. And that’s where the movie gets it right. Racing isn’t just about horsepower. It’s about headspace. It’s about respect. It’s about knowing when to push and when to back up.

And then you break the hero. Not just physically. Mentally. You put him in the wall. You shake his confidence. You make him question whether he can still live on the ragged edge. Because the ragged edge is where the magic happens—and it’s also where the fear lives.

That’s why this movie works!

Underneath the Hollywood gloss, underneath the dramatic crashes and perfectly timed music cues, Days of Thunder understands something real: racing is communication and trust layered over pure speed. It’s a driver finally admitting he doesn’t know what the car is doing. It’s a crew chief teaching vocabulary before he teaches setup. It’s ego colliding with experience. It’s a father figure and a son figure learning how to trust each other at 190 miles per hour. And yes—the racing is exaggerated. The cars get dirtier than they should. The contact is more aggressive than modern NASCAR would ever survive. The “one car for the whole season” vibe is pure movie fantasy. But the feeling? The feeling is absolutely dead-on. If you’ve ever turned a wrench in the garage at midnight. If you’ve ever argued over tire pressure like it was a theological dispute. If you’ve ever thought you were invincible until something humbled you—you understand this movie.

And the lines? They’re permanent.

“Rubbin’, son, is racin’.”

“I want you to go back out there and hit the pace car.”

“You’ve got to drive on the ragged edge.”

Those aren’t just movie quotes. Those are cultural phrases. They’re shorthand for the entire mentality of stock car racing. And of course, the film also proves an undeniable law of the universe: to get the girl… you’ve got to go fast. What makes it even more powerful is that this story isn’t fiction pulled from thin air. Cole Trickle carries more than a little DNA from Tim Richmond—the California open-wheel talent who stormed into NASCAR with swagger, speed, and controversy. Harry Hogge is clearly inspired by legendary crew chief Harry Hyde, a man known for shaping drivers into champions. And the Hendrick Motorsports connection to the film is well documented—real race cars, real equipment, real NASCAR involvement. That authenticity is part of why the movie still resonates with drivers and fans decades later.

And that leads us to one of the coolest parts of this episode. After revisiting the movie review, we roll straight into our interview with Joe Jackson—the guy who quite literally went down the rabbit hole and started finding the actual screen-used cars from the film. Joe didn’t just buy a replica. He didn’t build a tribute. He tracked down original production cars—cars that were repainted between scenes, cars that were crashed for filming, cars that sat buried in the woods for decades. He found them, dragged them out, and instead of restoring them into polished showpieces, he chose to preserve them exactly as they were found.

And that decision matters. Because once you strip and repaint a movie car, you erase the fingerprints of history. Joe understood that these cars are artifacts. If Tom Cruise touched that dash. If a stunt rig was welded to that frame. If special effects drilled into that panel—that’s part of the story. In the interview, Joe walks us through how he located the #51 Mello Yello car sitting half-buried in Florida. How a handwritten letter led to a phone call. How he towed it out of the woods not even fully knowing what he had. And then how that discovery led to another—tracking down the #18 Hardee’s car and eventually the Superflow flip car used in the movie’s most dramatic crash scene. He talks about finding remnants of stunt hardware. Evidence of smoke rigs. The hastily modified gas pedal likely extended for a shorter driver. The layers of paint revealing the different roles each chassis played throughout production. It’s the kind of story that only happens when obsession meets opportunity. And what I love most is that Joe isn’t doing this to flip the cars. He isn’t restoring them into sterile museum pieces. He’s preserving them. Letting them exist as they are—scarred, weathered, authentic. Because they’re only original once.

That interview alone is worth the episode. So whether you’re here for Daytona week hype, for nostalgia, for racing psychology, or just to yell “Rubbin’ is racin’” at your friends one more time—this one’s for you.

Movie stats & history (because yes, this matters)

Let’s get the official stuff on record, because it belongs in any proper write-up:

Released: June 27, 1990
Runtime: 108 minutes
Director: Tony Scott
Budget: about $60 million
Worldwide box office: about $157.9 million
Stars: Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Nicole Kidman, Michael Rooker, and a young John C. Reilly

And yes—there’s been recent reporting that a sequel has been in development conversation. Whether that ever happens is another story, but it tells you something: this movie still has a heartbeat in pop culture.

National Parts Depot Presents: Bernie on the News

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