For the fourth straight year, a NASCAR national series will undergo a rebrand. Unlike the previous three instances, all of which were confined to the Camping World Truck Series repeatedly changing its title sponsor and the Cup Series switching to a new sponsorship model, the Xfinity Series will just be turning purple. On Tuesday, the series confirmed it will align with naming rights holder Xfinity‘s own image redesign, changing its main colour from red to purple, for the 2022 season.
Xfinity, a telecommunications service owned by Comcast, replaced Nationwide Insurance as title sponsor of NASCAR’s second-tier national series in 2015. In changing sponsorship, the series also replaced its primary colour with red from Nationwide’s blue, a change that is reflected in advertisements and imagery such as red windshield banners, splitters, and rear spoilers for playoff drivers. The lone “image change” to come out of the Xfinity Series since then came in 2018 when the oval logo was replaced by a rectangular one to align with the other series.
In late August, Xfinity began its redesign by unveiling a new logo designed in collaboration with branding agency venturethree. The logo features just the company’s first letter “X”; according to venturethree, the X represents “the ultimate symbol of connection [as] it brings fresh meaning and vitality to the brand. We built the new Xfinity around inclusion, creating a less masculine look and championing accessibility.” Despite the change, the revised Xfinity Series logo continues to feature the full name, though a rectangular emblem with a single letter would likely not be aesthetically impressive.
Besides the new colour, the logo also tweaks its graphics by switching from the round wave-like corners to a set of four lines next to the NASCAR logo and “Series”.
The redesign means 2022 will be the first season in which no national series uses red as a primary colour since the expansion to three divisions in 1995. The Cup Series, which currently uses white and silver, sported red during its four-decade run as the Winston Cup Series until 2003, followed by yellow under Sprint Nextel until 2016 and Monster Energy’s green to 2019. From its inception in 1995 to 2008 under Craftsman sponsorship, the Trucks were red before switching to blue as Camping World and its subsidiaries took over.
The final Xfinity Series playoffs with red branding will begin on Saturday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
