Top-5 Worst Paint Schemes at Daytona

Monday was pretty slow for the first time in a few years at Daytona following the first weekend of Daytona Speedweeks. There were no cars to inspect and no penalties assessed.

For NASCAR officials, that was nice. For writers, well, I needed something to do.

So here's my take on the five ugliest cars to be on track this week at Daytona. A few may be surprised by the cars on this list. What say you?

All Photos by Jonathon Ferrey, Getty Images

5) Boris Said, No Fear Energy Drink/ 7-11 Slurpee No. 60 Ford --
This car looks like Boris decided on one of two options. Either he let Boris Jr. (yeah, with the really cool hair like his dad) design the car with nothing except crayons and a sheet of paper, or he took the idea for Tony Kanaan's ride in the IndyCar Series and smashed it on to his own ride with fenders.

The car will be lucky to make the race, but regardless, it will still take honors as one of the true uglies at Daytona. However, it does make me want to go buy a Slurpee. M'm Slurpees.



4) Dale Earnhardt Jr., AMP Energy/National Guard No. 88 Chevrolet --
Dale Earnhardt Jr. went from one of the simplest and best paint schemes in the entire sport with his No. 8 Budweiser car at DEI to one of the simplest and worst looking rides.

Apparently, Dale Jr. had a hand in creating the design of this ride, and that appears to have been a mistake. An attempt was made at making the car look similar to Darrell Waltrip's old Mountain Dew car, but in today's day and age, there needs to be a lot more than just green and white (or blue and white on the National Guard version). The AMP energy can is such a cool design, why not incorporate that into the race car?

Maybe 2009 will bring us something much, much cooler.


3) Kyle Busch, M&M's No. 18 Toyota --
It's a new driver, a new sponsor, and a new manufacturer. Somewhere in that process some critical designs flaws of the new No. 18 didn't get themselves worked out.

With M&M's jumping on-board with Kyle Busch in 2008, they seemed to return to a tried-and-true scheme that Elliott Sadler used to campaign for Robert Yates Racing. The yellow base with the M&M characters in funny situations has been a hit in the past, and it's not a bad looking scheme. Not bad, that is, until you look at one of the integral parts of any cars paint job -- the number.

For starters, the color is god-awful ugly and is nearly impossible to see. Normally, a car number stands out well. On Busch's, it doesn't.


2) Joe Nemechek, Furniture Row No. 78 Chevrolet --
Nemechek nearly put this car on the pole for the 50th-running of the Daytona 500, but that still doesn't make it any prettier.

The Furniture Row racing team is a low-budget, virtual upstart team that hails from Denver, Colorado. Furniture Row is a chain of furniture stores across the nation, and somehow the paint scheme that Nemechek has on his car is supposed to sell mattresses and couches.

I'm not getting that.

The use of white on most of the car is just plain boring and the numbers on the side of the car look like they came directly from a mail-order short track racing decal catalog. I'm just not a fan.


1) Ken Schrader, HealthLife.com No. 49 Dodge --
Somewhere, sometime in a far, far away land, these colors used to make sense. Pastel colors with an Easter Egg theme are popular in that land.

But they surely aren't on the side of a Sprint Cup Series car. I've never actually heard of the website HealthLife before setting my eyes on this terrible mirage of colors, so that marketing scheme may be working.

I can only imagine that Schrader is utterly stoked to drive the this ride with orange numbers on the side and purple ones on top. On a black base, that might look OK, but not a multi-colored pinwheel that is the body of the Dodge.

This likely won't turn into a full-season sponsorship for the BAM Racing team, which is unfortunate for them, but its very fortunate for NASCAR fans everywhere. The blaze of color on the car is just too overwhelming.