Among his many other accomplishments, artist Sam Bass has been designing and painting covers for Charlotte Motor Speedway’s race programs for 30 years.
The program for Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 was particularly significant, because it commemorates Jeff Gordon’s last trip around the 1.5-mile speedway as a full-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver.
“They wanted me to sum up Jeff Gordon’s career in one painting,” Bass told the NASCAR Wire Service. “I would have needed a canvas the size of that wall right there to capture it, and that probably wouldn’t have been big enough.
“I wanted to use the Jumbotron as a vehicle to show a young Jeff Gordon and his first (Sprint Cup) car, which I designed for him. I showed the young Jeff Gordon with the moustache and the mullet and his first ride kind of looking at himself in the future and seeing the 3M-clad Jeff Gordon and his car of today, waving good-bye to the crowd.
“That juxtaposition of today and yesterday really worked out nice.”
Source: Reid Spencer / NASCAR Wire Service
