Tyler Reddick‘s goal on Sunday? Defend the Death Star by taking out Rebel scum like Bubba Wallace. Not literally, of course, as that would ironically be friendly fire.
While Wallace will run Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series season finale at Phoenix Raceway in a #23 car themed after the X-Wing from Star Wars, Reddick’s #45 23XI Racing Toyota Camry will represent the franchise antagonist, the Galactic Empire, and its trademark TIE Fighter.
Much like the X-Wing, the TIE Fighter is one of the most iconic vehicles in the Star Wars universe since its début with the original film release in 1977. In that film, TIE Fighters—formally dubbed the TIE/ln space superiority starfighter—are deployed by the Empire at the Battle of Yavin, where the Rebel Alliance’s X-Wings and other craft seek to destroy the Death Star. As the main Imperial starfighter, it appears in all three original trilogy films while an upgraded model, the TIE/fo, is used by the First Order in the sequel trilogy. Since the design was introduced by the Empire, it did not show up during the prequel movies and the period of the Galactic Republic though the V-Wing served as a spiritual predecessor.
The joint paint schemes manifested via Wallace’s sponsor Columbia Sportswear, which is launching its annual Star Wars collaboration collection in November. For 2023, Columbia is releasing ski suits and jackets based on the flight suits worn by Rebel pilots.
“We wanted to take a different approach to not wanting to necessarily put a poster on the NASCAR, so it wasn’t going to be a billboard or an advertisement,” explained Columbia designer Chris Araujo to StarWars.com. “We wanted Bubba to feel like he was in an X-Wing and flying around the track. I decided that, ‘Hey, what if we translated all the elements of an X-Wing to a NASCAR, almost as if the NASCAR was built out of X-Wing parts?’
“We thought, ‘What would be better than an X-Wing going around the track, but that X-Wing being chased or in a battle with a TIE Fighter?’ So we were able to secure the other team-mate on the 23XI team, which is Tyler Reddick in the #45 car, to be in a TIE Fighter-based vehicle design.”
Unlike Wallace’s #23, which is directly modelled after an X-Wing to the best that it could fit on a stock car, the TIE Fighter design is sideways on Reddick’s #45 so that its ball cockpit appears on the door while its solar panels are on the car’s hood and rear.
The dual cars are the first Star Wars-related NASCAR liveries in nearly a decade, the last being Erik Jones‘ Star Wars: Battlefront car for the 2015 Xfinity Series season finale at Homestead. Ten years prior, to promote Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Robert Yates Racing had a similar arrangement to 23XI’s as Dale Jarrett and Elliott Sadler‘s cars sported paint schemes representing the light and dark sides of the Force, respectively. Coincidentally, the Yates sponsorship also took place at Phoenix, where Sadler finished ahead of Jarrett.
