“I started working on that in 2015 and they raced in 2016,” he says. Superman cars that garnered the most attention. “He’s the sport’s most popular driver, and the fact that I can work with a driver, a team and a sponsor that are so well known - it goes back to that childhood dream of one day having your work noticed by people.” Animated appeal in paint schemesĭroppo’s portfolio has grown to include multiple designs for Earnhardt Jr.’s car, including the 2016 patriotic paint scheme and the Nationwide Children’s Hospital cars for 20. “Working with Dale has been a lot of fun,” Droppo says. 48 cars in 2016 and also picked up another highly coveted gig: designing some of the paint schemes for Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Nationwide No. His distinctive work was so well received that he designed all but one of the No. It’s not like anything else out there.” Turning a corner with NASCAR art “Seeing your car, the one that you designed, battling for the lead in the race…It really is a feeling of your hard work paying off. 48 take to the track, and he says the feeling of that memory is hard to put into words. In 2015, he and his wife were at the Daytona 500 to see No. “My parents saw me trying for so long to make this happen, and to see that opportunity coming was great, but it was a bittersweet time.” “That was such an emotional time, because just as all of this was happening my mom became ill,” he says.
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It caught the attention of fans and drivers alike, and soon he was asked to design a new paint scheme for Lowes Racing and Jimmie Johnson’s No. 44 car, and that immediately put his designs on display. In 2013, he landed a contract to design the Xxxtreme Motorsports’ No. “I tried making them as splashy as possible, because I knew that made them more prone to getting attention.” “I stayed in touch with and kept showing them designs,” he says. It was the NASCAR Nationwide Series, and was on Chase Austin’s 07 car.” Rolling toward NASCAR successĪfter his Daytona art debut, Droppo continued his branding and design work with companies in his home territory of Ottawa but never gave up on the dream of designing paint schemes for racecars. “In 2009, I brought my dad to Daytona and we watched my first design run on the track. After doing “some logo work and paint schemes here and there,” he broke through to a national stage with the company, which now is known as Team Xtreme Racing. It was a turning point that would eventually open the door to the big leagues.
His first break came during his freshman year of college, when he received the chance to do logo work for a startup racing team named Xxxtreme Motorsports. “I would email and try to make contact with smaller racing teams and companies,” he recalls. Even while he was earning a degree in sports marketing and branding at the Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology in Ottawa, Droppo was working to find his place in the racing world. and Jimmie Johnson.īut it wasn’t sheer luck and constant dreaming that landed his work on such high-profile cars. While you won’t find his works of art in a museum, millions of fans during NASCAR races on cars driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr. As a kid, I would dream of seeing my own designs on the track.” “I fell in love with the fact that it was more than just a sports jersey with a number and a color. “Then I’d draw a second version with my own paint scheme,” he says. He was mesmerized by the many different colors and paint schemes after the races, the young artist would spend hours drawing pictures of the winning cars. As a boy, Brendan Droppo loved watching NASCAR races with his dad.