Looking Back at 2022’s Racing Films

We sit just under a month away from the 95th Academy Awards, which will honor a year’s worth of incredible films.

From a blockbuster sequel I personally saw multiple times in theaters in Top Gun: Maverick, to creative masterpieces like Everything Everywhere All At Once, to passion projects in The Fabelmans and Babylon and more, it’s been a pretty great year for movies. Films not nominated for anything have stood out as well, including The Northman, The Menu, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and Terrifier 2.

Included in the overlooked category, as always, are our friends, the racing movies. It goes without saying that these were also not nominated for anything, as we’re accustomed to with the subgenre (Ford v Ferrari being the exception).

2022 was a bit of a down year for racing movies, however. We got three (for Dale, I guess), and while all three were documentaries and ranged from solid to excellent, it felt like there was the opportunity for more. Let’s also mention that the Netflix series Race: Bubba Wallace was released, which we’ll touch on by itself further down the road.

NASCAR engines fired a week and a half ago (appropriately for movies) in the LA Coliseum, with plenty of stars showing up, including Maverick‘s Glen Powell, absolute legend (and one of my all-time favorite stars) Kurt Russell, the Fast and the Furious franchise’s Sung Kang, icon Danny Trejo and many more.

The Oscars are a month away and Daytona is less than a week away. As Alice in Chains’ classic track “Would?” so succinctly puts it: “Into the flood again / Same old trip as it was back then,” we embark on a similar journey this time each year, though both are bound to take unexpected twists.

So, given all that, it only seems appropriate that we check out the year that was in racing movies.

1. Rowdy

Ranking high with the likes of Senna, Blink of an Eye and The Last Race as one of the best racing documentaries to date, Rowdy chronicles the tumultuous career of two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch as told by the man himself, plus brother Kurt, fellow competitors and owners.

Likely the most divisive figure in the sport this century, Busch made his share of enemies on-track and off- early on as he debuted with Hendrick Motorsports in Cup, even scuffling with his brother in the 2007 All-Star Race. Other run-ins include the obvious incidents…