Milestone birthdays are tricky for any sport. How do you honor the past without seeming stuffy? How do you look to the future without minimizing everything that came before?

Following the NFL’s 100th and NBA’s 75th anniversary campaigns, it’s now Nascar’s turn to celebrate. The auto-racing league turns 75 this year and is launching its own birthday campaign, beginning with a commercial that stylishly revisits its history—all the way back to when they raced on the actual beach in Daytona.

The 75th anniversary theme line is: “Always forward.”

Nascar worked on the creative with 77 Ventures, its external agency partner for the past six years. Mark Jenkinson of Imperial Woodpecker was the director.

The 60-second spot will air Sunday, Feb. 19, during Fox’s broadcast of the 2023 Daytona 500. And it won’t be limited to a commercial break. The ad will also be played on-site during the pre-race festivities, so those in attendance at the race will see it, too.

“With this campaign, we didn’t want to be overly clever,” Pete Jung, chief marketing officer of Nascar, told Ad Age. “We just wanted to feel the gravitas, and be true to who we are as a brand and a sport, and really lean into the storytelling of our 75-year history.”

Nascar’s origins at Daytona—the league emerged from the racing scene at the beach there in the 1930s and 1940s—are referenced in the ad’s opening scenes, where a No. 75 stock car screeching along the sand suddenly morphs into a pre-war No. 22 Ford. (The lightweight Fords performed well on the beach in those early years.)

From there, the No. 75 car reemerges and leaps forward in time, eventually to the present day. The spot notably makes a pit stop for a reenactment of the famous 1979 on-track fight between Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough at Daytona, which followed a collision that knocked both men out of the race—and which received so much attention that it significantly boosted Nascar’s popularity.

The history-laden anthem should appeal to Nascar’s older fans, but Jung said the unique origin story and the passion on display should also draw in Gen Z, who are always in search of authentic experiences—but who usually discover Nascar through different media than this.

“The on-ramp for a lot of our new fans is different. They’re engaging with our content on YouTube or TikTok, or they're placing sports bets, or they're engaging with eNascar,” said Jung. “But this is an opportunity for our new fans to have a look back at the earliest days of cars racing on the beach.” 

While this first spot is legacy-driven, the 75th campaign will focus on the present and future of Nascar as the year progresses. A spot called “Present” will launch in the second quarter, showcasing stories of today’s young Nascar drivers. A third spot in the summer will look at innovations driving the sport forward.

This brand work will be part of a two-tiered approach, with separate event-driven creative featuring a call to action to attend or watch races. For the brand spots, Nascar will be looking for a boost in metrics like awareness and affinity, while the KPIs for the event spots will be attendance and viewership driven.

Along with the 60-second anthem on Fox, a 30-second cutdown will air across other broadcast and cable media.

The 2023 Nascar season got underway Feb. 5 with the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum in Los Angeles. But this Sunday’s 65th running of the Daytona 500 is the league’s marquee event. In addition to playing the anthem, the pre-race festivities will also feature a No. 75 Chevy Camaro as the pace car, along with a number of legends from various decades who will be giving the command, “Drivers, start your engines.” 

“It’s going to be very goosebump-worthy and really symbolize the official start of our 75th anniversary,” said Jung.

Nascar’s TV ratings were up 4% in 2022 versus the year before, and its Gen Z social following has increased 29% since 2020, according to the league. The 2023 schedule will also see Nascar hold its first-ever street race, taking place in downtown Chicago on July 2-3.