RELATED: See all the Martinsville paint schemes
This weekend at iconic Martinsville Speedway, the “Gray Ghost” will ride again. This time Dale Earnhardt Jr. will indeed be behind the wheel.
Junior’s personal history with this particular paint scheme dates back to 1980. Buddy Baker won the Daytona 500 that year in a black-and-silver entry that a young Earnhardt Jr. (he was 5 at the time of Baker’s win) never could quite get out of his head.
The car was named the “Gray Ghost,” a reflection of its color scheme, which blended in with the racing surface of the track and its apparent ability to appear out of nowhere, speeding past unsuspecting rivals at a moment’s notice.
“He just seemed to be a great match with the car,” Earnhardt Jr. said last year. “They were just so good, so fast. When they won the Daytona 500 after such a devastating loss after 1979 — they were the greatest thing down there, nobody could touch them throughout the entire weekend and then they didn’t even really get to race.
“And then they went back in ’80 and won, it was pretty neat; I know that was pretty special for Buddy to get that win. You can tell in some of the interviews from back then how important the Daytona 500 win was to him.”
Prior to the 2016 Darlington throwback race, Earnhardt Jr. unveiled a Nationwide-sponsored car that paid homage to the “Gray Ghost.”
He never got to run it.
Lingering effects from a concussion forced the Hendrick Motorsports driver to sit out Darlington that year. Instead, Earnhardt Jr. watched as Jeff Gordon drove the No. 88 to a 14th-place finish in a substitute driver role.
For his final full-time season as a driver, Earnhardt Jr. and Nationwide held a fan poll to determine Earnhardt Jr.’s livery for the Martinsville fall race (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The winner? The “Gray Ghost,” which would appear to delight Junior, who responded to a @NASCAR Instagram post in kind — check out his comment below (we’ve highlighted his user name).
“Martinsville this weekend should be a lot of fun. We’ve got the Gray Ghost — I appreciate everybody voting for that paint scheme so I can run it,” Earnhardt Jr. said earlier this week on his podcast. “I didn’t get to drive that car last year and I love that car,
The old-school, black-and-silver scheme belongs perfectly at the oldest track on the NASCAR circuit, a facility that celebrates its 70th anniversary this year.
Imagine how it would look under the lights …