As with many other athletes, car racers have some unusual superstitions. Cars with the number 13, fifty dollar bills and eating peanuts at the track are among them. But there is one that has been part of the sport for over a hundred years – green coloured race cars. History tells us that two notable early twentieth century car crashes sealed the superstition. In 1910, at New York State Fair in Syracuse, NY, driver Lee Oldfield left the track and killed several people in the grandstands. Oldfield was driving a green car. Then in 1920, at a race in Beverley Hills, California, Gaston Chevrolet (the brother of the Chevrolet car company founder – Louis Chevrolet) died in a car crash. The car he was driving was also green. Since these two accidents, green race cars have been considered, by many, to be unlucky.
Nonetheless, race team sponsors whose brands embrace the colour green, like Mountain Dew, BP and Go Daddy have convinced modern day drivers to speed around the track in green vehicles. Mostly it has to do with the lucrative sponsorship money corporations offer teams. "I don't get it,” says Grey Warren of Bill Davis Racing, "It's been that way for years, the way people felt about green in racing. Beats me. Green is what we race for. Why should green race cars be a problem?” A colour that is lucky for some (think four leaf clovers) has experienced a checkered past in the world of auto racing.