NASCAR: Corey LaJoie drives Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine at Martinsville

NASCAR driver Corey LaJoie drove the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday.

NASCAR driver Corey LaJoie traded in his usual No. 32 Ford Mustang for something a little more interesting this Sunday in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series’ First Data 500 at Martinsville Speedway – the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine.

Okay, he didn’t actually drive the Mystery Machine van, but his Go Fas Racing ride was wrapped in the same paint scheme for Halloween, which is a pretty cool idea.

This was done with the blessing of longtime team sponsor Keen Parts, a supplier of parts for Corvettes, who have been behind some inventive paint schemes over the years, particularly during the throwback weekends at Darlington Raceway for the Southern 500.

According to TJ Keen, who owns and runs Keen Parts along with her husband Tom, there were a few extra hoops to jump through besides the usual process of getting a potential paint scheme okayed by NASCAR.

“We had to go through Warner Brothers for permission on everything we did,” Keen told Dog O’Day in an email. “They had final say on the design before we could use it.”

The team went all-out in the lime green, teal and orange colors, as even their pit sign played along:

Corey LaJoie also told Frontstretch reporter Michael Massie which Scooby-doo character he thought he would best play, and what driver in the garage would be the unexpected villain (Chris Buescher of JTG-Daugherty Racing).

“I’d try to be Fred, but I’d probably be Shaggy,” LaJoie admitted, hastening to add that it would a cartoon version of Shaggy, not the Freddie Prinze Jr (I Know What You Did Last Summer) version from the live-action movies with Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)  and Linda Cardellini (ER).

For what it’s worth, Buescher was thrilled with the idea of playing a Scooby-Doo villain.

In the race itself, LaJoie finished on the lead lap in 18th out of 38 cars, his second-best finish of 2019 at a track that isn’t Daytona International Speedway or Talladega Superspeedway.

For the season, he has two top 10s and seven top 20s through 34 races.

This is likely the first time Shaggy and Scooby have been on a race car since the late 1990s, when Jeff Green and Robert Pressley shared the purple Cartoon Network-sponsored No. 29.

This is at least the second time that a Keen Parts-sponsored car has featured a beloved cartoon doggo, as Go Fas ran a Halloween-inspired Peanuts car with Snoopy last year with Matt DiBenedetto behind the wheel.

“We are already working on the 2020 Halloween car and we are just as excited about it,” Keen said.

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