Insider Hints at HMS’ Clever Plot to ‘Cheat’ NASCAR as He Shreds Apart William Byron’s Axalta & Raptor Scheme Reveal

The off-season has been blessing fans with some eye candy and exciting goodies! From Dale Earnhardt Jr’s iconic Sun Drop livery car making its way onto Christmas wishlists to Hendrick Motorsports giving us a big race-worn hat collection giveaway, the teams, and drivers are hard at work to give the community a winter to remember. But that plan might have backfired for William Byron and Hendrick Motorsports.

Earlier this week, Hendrick Motorsports revealed their 2024 liveries for the #24 Chevrolet Camaro. Featuring long-time sponsors Axalta and RaptorTough, the team came out with two contrasting designs that featured the return of the iconic flames on the Axalta car. However, the NASCAR community soon entered a frenzy after spotting the strange ‘black patches’ all over the rear pillars of the cars. But there may be a sneakier reason behind it than just poor design!

Is Hendrick Motorsports up to no good with their new livery reveal?

The Raptor livery features a distinct yellowish-green base color that bleeds to white. The car also features raptor claw decals throughout to add some aggression. On the other hand, the Axalta livery marks a return to the iconic ‘Flames of Independence’ colors from 2019. However, the C pillar of both cars features a weird black patch, and the Raptor car has some funky black lines running through the entire front end, which many pointed out to look like a mustache!

While the community wasn’t big fans of the new liveries, notable paint scheme designers had the opinion that the odd black patches were yet another attempt by a team to fool and get around NASCAR’s optical scanning system. The system is NASCAR’s way of inspecting whether the cars’ bodywork is correct down to the nearest millimeter. The cars are blasted with neon lasers to get a full scan of the body, but the all-black paint messes up its calibration.

NASCAR insider Eric Estepp dove deep into the accusations and the topic on his YouTube channel. Estepp had a gut feeling that the designers were right on this one. He added that these systems were first introduced a handful of years ago, and there were reports at the time that the system could measure and map darker colors differently than lighter ones. And in a sport where the teams and drivers are hell-bent on doing anything that isn’t in the rule book, the first exploits were soon out of the door.

He further elaborated on how teams have been showing up with small black patches on quarter panels for years, with the clear intention of sneaking past a millimeter or so in the scanning bay. Estepp believes Hendrick Motorsports could be applying a similar strategy this time around.

He also shared the example of one of our favorite racers: “Remember Denny Hamlin a couple of years ago? This is what his Sport Clips Cup car looked like, you know, clean, some white, some red, black, a good-looking paint scheme. Then last year he showed up with these new dark stripes – oddly shaped decals above the headlights. Clearly, Joe Gibbs Racing thought they could maybe sneak something past the optical scanning system.”

Turning his attention to William Byron, Estepp hilariously shared that since Byron is going to be in the vicinity of winning quite a few races next year, doing so with such ‘ugly’ cars would kill the point of marketing. He concluded, “Oh gosh, we talk all the time about how important the paint scheme is to a driver and team’s brand, their marketability, and trying to play games with the scanning system is getting in the way of good cohesive paint schemes; that’s my only point I’m ranting about.”

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It’s safe to say it wasn’t just Eric Estepp and graphic designers who were disappointed with HMS’ big reveal. The NASCAR community had some choice words of their own to describe the new paint schemes.

The NASCAR community pulls no punches against the new HMS liveries!

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As soon as Axalta, RaptorTough, and Hendrick Motorsports flooded Twitter with their livery announcements, there were immediately fans who took it upon themselves to improve on the livery and the jarring black patches. But even those just witnessing it all unfold didn’t pull back any punches!

Swinging out of the gates with some honest criticism, a fan shared, “Congrats on creating what is potentially the worst scheme of 2024,” and it wasn’t until fans began noticing the black patches that they figured out why it was so displeasing. A user added, “What the hell is the blackout on the quarters for? It looks like the artist was trying to cover a bad tattoo and just blacked it out. Kill the flames; that was Jeff’s thing. Why not give Byron a scheme he can make his own? This one is already famous for being horrible.”

Others also joined in to question the teams and the designers on the implementation of the black panel. While Eric Estepp had given Hendrick Motorsports the benefit of sneaking things under the rug, fans who expected a dazzling livery for William Byron were disappointed by the get-go. A Twitter user added, “All they had to do was make the letters on the quarter panel black and it would be so much better. It’s like they asked themselves how they could ruin the scheme and they decided to throw a random black box in.”

While the RatporTough livery got let off the hook by fans relatively unscathed, the case wasn’t the same for the white Axalta livery. The community began picking apart the nod to the flames of independence too! A user exclaimed, “The white with red flames is fine, but what’s with those big black triangles on the quarter panels and rear?” Another had free advice to give to the designers, “If y’all make the Axalta letters on the quarter panels black to match the hood and get rid of that ugly black shape over the back, the scheme would be so much better… free advice.”

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While the 2023 season wasn’t exactly up to standards for Hendrick Motorsports, William Byron and the team will be hopeful the black patches were worth the trouble given to them by the fans!