Traditionally, the winning driver wears a black cowboy hat and fires a couple of six-shooters in the air on victory lane.The first two runnings of the race were controversial, crash-strewn affairs, with universal criticism that the track's design was one groove; Kenny Wallace argued, "They're so busy building condos they don't have time to fix the racetrack."This list includes Texas native Terry Labonte, who won in 1999, Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning his first race in 2000, and Tony Stewart's 2006 fall victory despite missing the Chase that year.[6][7][8][9] Because of the sponsorship, Senator Chris Murphy asked Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns Fox Sports, which was scheduled to air the race, to not broadcast it.However, Fox only used the official sponsored name once per hour (the minimum mandated by NASCAR) and otherwise referred to it generically (in this case as the "Texas 500"), the network's usual practice when a race's title sponsor does not buy ads during the race broadcast; the NRA reportedly did not seek to purchase any such ads.
Autotrader and EchoPark, the current title sponsors of the race, were the title sponsors of the race when it was 500 miles from 2020 to 2022