A sequel to Days of Thunder is coming, complete with the return of original lead Tom Cruise. The long-time movie star is famous for his commitment to doing his own stunts, and doing them as realistically as possible, so it comes as no shock to find out that he wants to drive a race car or two for the movie. What might be more shocking is that he, apparently, asked about actually running a professional race.
NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell said in a recent interview with Front Office Sports that was brought to broader attention by Jalopnik that Cruise told him that he “wanted to go race” in an ARCA event. The ask would have put Cruise, 64, directly up against competitors in NASCAR’s fourth tier of national-level competition.
While Cruise has some past racing experience, he has never competed at any level of NASCAR competition. His ARCA debut would be one of the most compelling stunts of his career, even if it never actually made its way into any movie. O’Donnell says that he’s “not sure that’s going to happen,” but he stopped short of directly declaring that Cruise would not be able to race in the division at some point.
The new Days of Thunder sequel is expected to follow the original, as well as productions like like F1: the Movie and Cruise’s Top Gun films, with extensive use of real-world race cars, and potentially even real races, filmed for action sequences. We should know more about those plans once filming starts, but it seems unlikely that Tom Cruise will have to actually race in ARCA to get the film made.
Fred Smith's love of cars comes from his fascination with auto racing. Unfortunately, that passion led him to daily drive a high-mileage, first-year Porsche Panamera. He is still thinking about the last lap of the 2011 Indianapolis 500.
