It doesn’t get much more American than football and NASCAR, so why not put the two into the same venue? Well, in the only way that’s logistically possible.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. made an early return to his Sprint Cup Series car for the TaxSlayer Bowl on Saturday, driving onto the field for the coin toss prior to the game. This year isn’t the first time he’s participated the coin toss, but the team did show off Earnhardt’s 2016 TaxSlayer paint scheme in doing so.
Here’s the in-car view from Earnhardt’s Chevrolet, which usually consists of other cars rather than a crowd of football photographers and band members:
Even though he’s driven this route before, Earnhardt wasn’t totally sure he’d get to flip the coin once he got to the center of the field. From :
In the past Earnhardt has driven the TaxSlayer XFINITY Chevrolets onto EverBank Field prior to the coin flip. This year before the game, Earnhardt plans to debut the new paint scheme that will be on his Sprint Cup ride for one race this season.
“The last couple years they have had me driving the car out there and flipping the coin,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “A couple times the refs will forget to give you the coin and they’ll flip it and you are just standing there so we’ll see how it goes.”
Those referees don’t play when it comes to game time. (Ha, ha.) Luckily, they didn’t forget about Earnhardt this time around.
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