In 2015, Wendell Scott was posthumously inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Scott was the first Black driver to win a NASCAR race and the first to compete in the premier series; he was also a veteran of World War II and spent time running an auto repair shop. Scott is rightly hailed as a pioneer in NASCAR, though his family has still struggled to get some of his accomplishments fully recognized.
One might think that Scott’s life story would lend itself well to an adaptation on the big or small screen. Richard Pryor played Scott in the 1977 film Greased Lightning and Scott factored into the plot of an episode of the television series Timeless; otherwise, there hasn’t been much. Given the success of Ford v Ferrari, it certainly seems like there’s an audience for gripping real-life stories from auto racing’s history.
A deal recently signed between Lion Forge Films and Scott34 Racing — the latter of which is owned by Scott’s family — might get us a step closer to a high-profile telling of Scott’s life. At Jalopnik, Elizabeth Blackstock has more information on the deal, which includes the production of both a docuseries and a fictionalized miniseries.
Blackstock also notes that Hard Driving, Brian Donovan’s biography of Scott, gives readers a sense of the complexity of Scott’s life. It all sounds like a gripping story waiting to be told — and it sounds like we’re now one step closer to that.
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