Ron Howard has been more involved with racing in the last year than he probably ever expected he would. He just completed filming his movie based on F1 drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda, which included plenty of racing, to say the least, including a controlled recreation of Lauda's famed Nürburgring crash.

Now Howard is taking a hands-on approach to racing, as he has agreed to drive in a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race. No, he's not hopping behind the wheel of a racecar, but rather he is hopping in the BigMachineRecords.com pace car and leading the way to the start/finish line.

Jeff Belskus made it clear that Howard's involvement in the filming of “Rush” had a lot to do with NASCAR inviting Howard to drive the pace car when he said “Ron has become immersed in motorsports'  culture and history through the filming of 'Rush,' so he's an ideal person to pace the field for one of NASCAR's biggest races at 'The Greatest Race Course in the World.”

So, the moral of this story is that if you are not skilled enough to make it into NASCAR, just take a left turn into the filmmaking business – that has to be easier to get into than NASCAR->ke3635 – make a movie about racing, and watch the pace car invites come rolling in. Easy enough, right? Yeah, that's called sarcasm...

We wish Ron the best and hope he has a safe journey around the track. You can catch Howard in his pace car on Sunday, July 29th.

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