The 2019 Nascar Cup Series season was supposed to be a comeback year for Jimmie Johnson, who appeared to have started on the right foot (well, unless you’re Paul Menard) with a win in the Advance Auto Parts Clash exhibition race. However, this year has been thrown into question as Johnson’s car has been impounded by Nascar officials due to the overall ugliness of its primary paint scheme.
“We don’t take situations like this lightly”, said Nascar spokesman Ron Mastrio. “However, we felt that the 2019 48 car paint scheme was so egregiously awful that we had no choice but to ban it from competition for the rest of the year.”
Mastrio continued that “…Hendrick Motorsports is more than welcome to come back to the track next weekend, as long as its with something that looks less like a printing error on a 7th-grader’s Trapper Keeper and more like a dignified race car.”
Jimmie Johnson had established himself as a relatively staid driver with tasteful, understated paint schemes for longtime former sponsor Lowe’s. However, the introduction of new sponsor Ally brought with it a new look that has been roundly rejected by fans.
“It looks like something you’d see in a bad video game”, one fan said at the track. “I was getting ready to cancel my tickets for the season, but thanks to them banning that ugly, ugly car, I’ll hold onto them. Well, at least until the next thing happens that annoys me, then I’ll threaten to cancel them again.”
Nobody from Ally, an online bank, was willing to comment on the record as to the thinking behind such a bizarre look for the company’s debut in Nascar. However, rumors have persisted that such a paint scheme may have been the work of a marketing executive’s child, or perhaps a combination of committee thinking and a bad batch of seafood at a company meeting.
“You know, I don’t really think it looks all that bad”, Johnson said upon seeing his car being loaded up into an official Nascar hauler, presumably to be destroyed. “In fact, I have a big announcement coming up regarding these penalties.
“OK, here it is—we’re appealing them.”