From actor to NASCAR: Frankie Muniz out to prove

Frankie Muniz will be the only actor who has been nominated for an Emmy award and pushed in a NASCAR occasion at Daytona. But if Muniz had been previous enough to get a driver’s license before he moved to Hollywood, there could never have been a “Malcolm in the Middle.”

“When I’m in that race car and I put my visor down and I drive out of that pit lane, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be,” he mentioned. “That’s what I’m supposed to do and that’s what I’m doing.”

And appearing?

“I don’t feel like I’m a good actor,” he mentioned. “I know I can act. But when I look at good acting, I go ‘dang, I could never do that’.”

That’s not true, of course. Muniz, who began appearing when he was 12, has been credited in 26 movies and 37 TV exhibits, including the title position in “Malcolm in the Middle,” which earned him two Golden Globe nominations and one Emmy nod during its seven-year run on Fox.

But appearing was a career. Racing is a ardour.

“Excitement and all the emotions. That’s what I love about racing,” he mentioned. “The highs are so high and the lows are unbelievably low. It’s awesome.”

Muniz positioned twenty eighth in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Indianapolis Raceway Park on Friday. He is twenty third among the 64 drivers listed in the sequence factors standings, with his one top-10 end coming in the season opener at Daytona.

Muniz, 39, isn’t the first actor to attempt racing. Paul Newman was a four-time SCCA national champion who completed second in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1979 while Patrick Dempsey (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Can’t Buy Me Love”) has pushed sports activities vehicles at Le Mans and in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, in addition to different sequence.

But driving isn’t a facet hustle for Muniz, who final October signed with North Carolina-based Reaume Brothers Racing to be the full-time driver of the crew’s No. 33 Ford in the truck sequence. Muniz also raced twice final yr in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

“When I originally started racing, I was kind of at the height of my [acting] career. I had tons of offers to do movies and shows and all that,” mentioned Muniz, who made his stock-car debut in the autumn of 2021 in Bakersfield, then accepted an offer to drive full time in the ARCA Menards Series in 2023. “Very easily could have stayed in that business. But I wanted to give racing a try. And to compete at the top level, you have to put in the time and effort that professional race car drivers are doing, right? You can’t do it halfway.”

Muniz was into racing before he even thought about appearing. Growing up in North Carolina, he remembers waking early on the weekend to watch IndyCar and NASCAR races on TV. No one else in his household shared his curiosity in motorsports, so when his dad and mom divorced shortly after Muniz was found appearing in a expertise show at age 8, his mom moved to Burbank, where he made his movie debut alongside Louis Gossett Jr. in 1997’s “To Dance With Olivia.”

Two years later he was forged as the gifted center little one of a dysfunctional working-class household in the profitable sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle.” Motorsports continued to tug at him so after operating in a few superstar occasions, Muniz twice put his appearing profession on maintain to race, first in 2007 — shortly after “Malcolm” ended after seven seasons and 151 episodes — when he began a three-season run in the open-wheel Atlantic Championship sequence.

Still, Muniz, who lives with his spouse Paige and 4-year-old son Mauz in Scottsdale, Ariz., is dogged by criticism he’s little more than a weekend warrior who is utilizing his substantial Hollywood popularity and earnings to reside out his racing fantasies.

“I don’t spend any of my money going racing,” he mentioned. “I made a promise to my wife that I would not do that. So I can kill that rumor right there.”

But those whispers persist partly because Muniz hasn’t utterly cut ties with appearing. Because the truck sequence doesn’t run every weekend, racing 25 instances between Valentine’s Day and Halloween, Muniz had time to tape a “Malcolm in the Middle” reunion miniseries that is scheduled to air on Disney+ in December.

He has also appeared in two different TV initiatives and two movies since turning to racing full time. But his focus, he insists, is on driving.

“If I wanted to go racing for fun,” he mentioned, “I would not be racing in the truck series. I’d be racing at my local track or I’d be racing some SCCA club events. I want to be one of the top drivers there are. I want to make it as high up in NASCAR as I can. And I’m doing everything I can to do that.”

Fame exterior of racing will be a double-edged sword in the high-cost world of NASCAR. It can open doorways to a journey and sponsorships others can’t get, but it will probably also trigger jealousy in the storage, with drivers crediting that fame and not expertise for a rival’s success. And Muniz isn’t the only rookie driver who has had to deal with that.

Toni Breidinger, who completed twenty seventh in Friday’s race and is one place and eight factors forward of Muniz in the season standings with 9 races left, is a model who has posed for Victoria’s Secret and been featured in the pages of Glamour, GQ and Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit version. She’s also a good driver who has been going fast on a racetrack far longer than she’s been strolling slowly down a catwalk.

Toni Breidinger prepares for NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series follow at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park on Friday.

(Justin Casterline / Getty Images)

“I was definitely a racer before anything. That was definitely my passion,” mentioned Breidinger, who began driving go-karts in Northern California when she was 9. “I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do modeling to help support that passion. But at the end of the day, I definitely consider myself a racer. That’s what I grew up doing and that’s the career I’ve always wanted do to.”

Still, she sees the 2 pursuits as being complementary. When Breidinger seems on a pink carpet, as she did before this month’s ESPY Awards in Los Angeles, it helps her modeling profession while at the identical time giving the sponsors of her racing crew — which incorporates 818 Tequila, Dave & Buster’s and the fashion model Coach — added worth.

“It’s all part of the business. It all goes back into my racing,” mentioned Breidinger, 26, who is of German and Lebanese descent. “The side hustles, I like to call them. I don’t think that takes away from me being a race car driver.”

Breidinger, who gained the USAC western asphalt midget sequence title as a teenager, raced in the ARCA Menards Series for 5 years before stepping up to truck sequence in 2021, making NASCAR historical past in 2023 when she completed fifteenth in her first race, the best-ever debut by a feminine driver. That helped her land a full-time journey this season with Tricon Garage, Toyota’s flagship crew in the truck sequence.

Like Muniz, Breidinger sees the truck sequence, the third tier of NASCAR’s national racing sequence, as a steppingstone to a seat in a Cup car.

“I want to climb the national ladder. That’s what I’m here to do,” she mentioned. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have long-term plans and long-term goals. I’m a very competitive person, especially with myself.”

Kyle Larson, who climbed to the highest of that ladder, operating his first NASCAR national sequence race in a truck in 2012, then successful the 2021 Cup championship 9 years later, mentioned the trail he took — and the one Muniz and Breidinger are following — is a well-worn one.

“Anybody racing in any of the three series has talent and ability enough to be there,” he mentioned.

Funding, Larson mentioned, and not expertise and capability, usually determines how fast a driver could make that climb and that is likely to be a drawback for Muniz since Josh Reaume, the proprietor of the small three-truck crew Muniz drives for, has complained about the price of racing. It can price more than $3.5 million a yr to subject one aggressive truck in the 25-race sequence — and that price is rising, threatening to price many out of the game.

But having drivers like Muniz and Breidinger in NASCAR will help everybody in the sequence, Larson mentioned, because it would deliver in followers and sponsors that may not have been attracted to the game in any other case.

“I just hope that he can get into a situation someday where you can really see his talent from being in a car or a truck that is better equipped to go run towards the front,” Larson mentioned of Muniz. “You want to see him succeed because if he does succeed, it’s only going to do good things for our sport.”

And if it really works out the way in which Muniz hopes, maybe he’ll sometime be the reply to one other trivia query: Name the NASCAR champion who once labored in Hollywood.