NASCAR moves car numbers forward for 2022

23XI Racing

 This afternoon (8/27/21) NASCAR announced that teams will be required to move their “door numbers” forward come the begining of the 2022 race season.

 While heavily rumored for a few years, today’s news came with the announcement that Kurt Busch would be joining 23XI Racing to drive the No. 45 Toyota Camry. The Camry displayed in that video featured the new number placement (see below):

We got our guy.

Welcome to the family, @KurtBusch ✊ pic.twitter.com/COXghtHb1d

— 23XI Racing (@23XIRacing) August 27, 2021

 In the past the NASCAR has experimented with number placement and how that impacted a car’s marketability. The biggest example of this to today’s date was the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series All-Star Race at Bristol Motor Speedway, where cars had their door numbers slid backwards. While some of these cars were decent looking, others fell short and essentially looked sloppy (see below):

Jimmie Johnson’s decently designed Ally No. 48 Camaro [Patrick Smith/ Getty Images]

Kevin Harvick’s cluttered Busch Apple paint scheme [Jared C. Tilton/ Getty Images]

While fans will likely be disgruntled by this decision to move the numbers forward (not backwards) on NASCAR’s race cars, it’s important to realize stock car racing as a whole has not always had door numbers centered on their cars. For example see team owner Jim Coyle’s No. 1 race car that scored him 4 ARCA Championshipers (here piloted by Marv Smith).

Marv Smith coming to a race win in Jim Coyle’s No. 1 Riverside Auto Parts car [ARCA Racing]

Overall, yes this is a huge change for NASCAR. After more than half a century of (for the most part) centered door numbers, we will officially see an entire field of cars with their door numbers moved forward. I’m sure you, myself, and everyone else in the NASCAR world has their own unique opinion, but at the end of the day this new rule will simply different. It is not something we have control over.