5 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Days of Thunder,’ Tom Cruise’s 1990 Racing Movie

Four years after 1986’s Top Gun, Tom Cruise reteamed with director Tony Scott and producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer for another high-speed action drama — the NASCAR-racing pic Days of Thunder. (Around Hollywood, the production got the nickname Top Car, Slate reports.)

Released on June 27, 1990, Days of Thunder has Cruise playing young racecar driver Cole Trickle, who finds adrenaline, rivalries, and romance (with a neurosurgeon played by future wife Nicole Kidman) as he puts the pedal to the metal in NASCAR events. And as we race past another Days of Thunder anniversary, check out trivia about the film below.

1Characters were reportedly based on Dale Earnhardt and other real-life NASCAR figures

AFI Catalog notes the reported real-life analogs of Days of Thunder’s characters. For example, Trickle is believed to have been based on Tim Richmond, a high-profile NASCAR star of the ‘0s.

Robert Duvall’s Harry Hogge was a stand-in for crew chief Harry Hyde, who also served as a technical advisor on the film. Rowdy Burns (Michael Rooker) and Russ Wheeler (Cary Elwes) were reportedly inspired by NASCAR racers Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace, respectively.

And Fred Thompson’s Big John, who threatens Trickle and Burns with NASCAR dismissal over dinner, was reportedly inspired by former NASCAR president William “Big Bill” France Jr., who did the same to Earnhardt and fellow racer Geoff Bodine in 1988.

2The cast and crew shot at actual NASCAR events

For the filming of Days of Thunder’s race scenes, Rick Hendrick of Hendrick Motorsports constructed five “picture cars” with cameras mounted on the front and rear, according to the AFI Catalog.

And those picture cars raced in real NASCAR events, albeit under strict rules: They had to qualify in the preliminaries, they could only race in the first 100 miles of 500-mile events, they’d stick to the back of the pack, and they’d let other cars pass.

NASCAR drivers Greg Sacks and Bobby Hamilton drove two of the picture cars, for example, in the Autoworks 500 at Phoenix International Raceway in November 1989. But Hamilton apparently couldn’t help zooming into first place, leading to frantic calls from Hendrick, per The New York Times. “C’mon, Bobby, back off; let ’em go by,” Hendrick said over Hamilton’s headphones.

3The rental-car demolition derby really happened with NASCAR drivers

In the film, Trickle and Burns settle their feud after Big John’s dressing-down by smashing up rental cars on the beach. That aspect of the film, too, has real-life parallels.

Curtis Turner told Sports Illustrated in 1968 he and fellow NASCAR driver Joe Weatherly wrecked rental cars in an informal road race one night. “Just tore those U-Drive-Its all to pieces,” he said. “But they was still runnin’, and when we got to the motel where we wanted to stay that night, Joe just kept his engine wide open and went straight into the swimming pool — the deep end.”

4For such a high-speed film, Days of Thunder had a slow shoot

(c) Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection

Amid disagreements between Scott and Days of Thunder’s producers — and between the director and screenwriter Robert Towne — the film’s production ran months longer than expected, and crew members even joked they had racked up so much overtime, they could take 16 weeks of vacation, Spy Magazine reported. Legend has it the production was so plagued with problems that principal photography ended without a shot of Trickle’s car crossing the finish line, per Slate.

5The film may get a sequel — and maybe even an F1 crossover

© Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection

Cruise was in conversations with Paramount about a Days of Thunder sequel as of November 2024, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which added that the studio was reaching out to writers about the idea. “It’s going to be what comes together first in terms of a script,” a source told the magazine at the time. “It depends on the idea and, ultimately, the script.” (Cruise had previously shot down the prospect of a Paramount+ Days of Thunder TV show, according to THR.)

Then, in June 2025, filmmaker Joseph Kosinski, who directed Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick , imagined a possible crossover between Days of Thunder and F1, which he also directed, in an interview for GQ Magazine UK : “We find out that [Trickle] and Sonny Hayes [Brad Pitt’s F1character] have a past. They were rivals at some point, maybe crossed paths… I heard about this epic go-kart battle on Interview with a Vampire that Brad and Tom had, and who wouldn’t pay to see those two go head-to-head on the track?”