Artistic License Sports / Cars

The racing here is most loosely based on NASCAR, and artistic license abounds.

• The plot is kicked off by a three-way tie which results in a tiebreaker race scheduled for a week later. Prior to the introduction of the playoff format in 2014, if two drivers tied for the points lead at the final race, such a tiebreaker would be broken by number of total race wins then total number of top-5 and top-10 finishes.^ExampleIn 2011, when Tony Stewart won his third Cup championship, he and Carl Edwards tied for the Sprint Cup points lead at the Homestead-Miami season finale. While they had the same number of points, the championship was rewarded to Stewart because he had won five races, while Edwards only had one. This also happened for the runners-up in the final points for 2005 (incidentally Stewart's second Cup championship), where Edwards and Greg Biffle tied for second, with Biffle being ranked higher due to more wins
• Most notable is the fact that rather severe wrecks happen and the races just keep going, when a real organization would immediately throw a caution flag, if not a red flag.^note Though NASCAR has been noted to exercise lots of discretion with caution flags, so it isn't uncommon to see crashes happen on the last lap where no caution was thrown. Or single car spins where a caution isn't thrown if the car is able to refire and drive back to pit road.
• NASCAR's contact rules are practically non-existent in the Piston Cup; bear in mind that circuit racers are zipping around those ovals in excess speeds of 100-200mph, and the tiniest bump can put the drivers at lethal risk. Even accidental contact is looked down upon, with the very least resulting in the bumped driver being pissed at you, and at the worst you can get penalized, especially if you are found at fault for a pileup. Not to mention that any driver that deliberately rams other cars and purposefully triggers a crash the way Chick did would be parked and potentially given a suspension after the race (see incidents with Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch as demonstrations).
• The field is shown being filled with stock cars from various different eras, right down to the three main racers who get focus: The King is Richard Petty's 1970 Plymouth Superbird, Chick Hicks is a 1979 Pontiac Ventura, and Lightning is a cross of cars from several different types of auto racing.^note The only exception in real life is the ARCA Menards Series (both the national series and the East and West regional series). Even then, it's not as extreme as Cars, as they can only use either the older Generation 4 bodies (mostly from the last five years of their usage) or the current, Generation 6-styled (specifically the 2013–14 Gen 6 cars) composite bodies made by Five Star Race Car Bodies; and said Gen 4 bodies are mostly used by underfunded teams or teams that did not run the full season since all cars are required to be equal.
  • Interestingly, Lightning McQueen is both an exception and the embodiment of this — being one of the few (if not only) characters not modeled after a real car. His base design is from a NASCAR Gen-4 stock car, with features of the more curvaceous Le Mans endurance racers, and a bit of Lola and Ford (GT40) influence. However, considering these cars are from 3–4 different distinct types of racing, such a car would never be suitable for any of these leagues.^note His front profile is way too wide to be useful as a stock car, which is more or less straight-line racing on wide, flat tracks and inclined turns meaning you want as small a profile as possible to for the best aerodynamics; not to mention it would make any attempt to draft useless since he would be wider than almost every other racer on the track, negating any advantage the low pressure zone bought him. At the same time, his chassis is too much like a stock car to be useful on a Le Mans circuit, with a back spoiler too small and a mass too big to allow him to keep traction on sharp turns. Interestingly, in Cars 2 this somewhat is played more realistically, where Lightning is unable to keep up with the more specialized F1 and Le Mans racers on the circuit, but is able to excel on dirt track portions thanks to his teachings from Doc and the fact that aerodynamics play less of a role at lower speeds.
• The fact that in this universe the cars are the athletes is a fairly decent Tire Wave for why the rules wouldn't be exactly the same, but whether the rules make more or less sense because of such a setting is best not thought about too hard.
• After Doc Hudson recovered from a season ending injury, when he went back expecting he could race again, the sponsors told him he was history. As CinemaSins pointed out in their sins video, it's incredibly unlikely that an athlete in his prime would be completely ignored because of a season ending injury and that most would at least participate in their sport in one way or another. Especially when you consider just how many retired NASCAR drivers remain very much active in the sport in a supporting capacity, whether that be as a team owner (Dale Earnhardt, Sr. and Jr., Richard Petty, and Richard Childress come to mind), or broadcasters (Darrell Waltrip, Dale Jr., Jeff Burton, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Petty, Regan Smith, Clint Bowyer, Kevin Harvick, etc.), or, hell, Lightning's decision to become Cruz's racing coach at the end of Cars 3.
• Lightning McQueen is being identified as the first rookie to ever win the Piston Cup, however, when Doc Hudson's trophies were discovered they are engraved "1951, 1952, 1953". Doc's license plate identifies him as a 1951. That would have made him a rookie when he won his 1951 Piston Cup. However, since most car models are released about six months before their model year (examples are the Chevrolet Lumina and the current Ford Fusion and Toyota Camry models), it is plausible that Doc was a rookie in 1950 with enough starts to not be classified as one in 1951.^note In NASCAR, rookies must attempt seven or fewer events in the season of their first attempt for them to retain rookie classification the next season. Since 2011, you also have to declare eligibility for points in the series you raced in to be able to run for Rookie of the Year. If you're ineligible for points as a rookie, you're still eligible for rookie classification when you finally decide to declare eligibility for points as long as you don't run too many races beforehand (the limit is around 50–60 races, as Trevor Bayne experienced in 2015 when he was declared ineligible for rookie classification in the Sprint Cup Series having run a total of 52 races in the previous five seasons with Wood Brothers Racing, including his win at the 2011 Daytona 500.
• On the last lap during the first race, one of Lightning's tires blows; in NASCAR, if there's an accident on the last lap where other cars and/or safety personnel might be at risk, the race is declared immediately over. Therefore, Lightning would've won the race anyway since he was in the lead, though it would've probably been met with controversy akin to Greg Biffle's win at the 2007 Lifelock 400 in Kansas.
  • Also during the final lap of the tiebreaker race, Chick purposefully makes The King crash in the infield. Since Lightning was way ahead of them, if the caution had been thrown right away, Lightning technically won the Piston Cup anyway since the video evidence would show he was in the lead even before willingly letting Chick cross the finish line. The field would be frozen at the instant of caution, but his efforts to get The King back to the finish line would be unchanged, and in fact would still have as much weight as in the actual film since it would be viewed as rather gentlemanly sportsmanship.