Days of Thunder might have been sold as “Top Gun with race cars,” but behind the scenes, it became one of the wildest blockbuster productions of the 1990s.

We’re revisiting Tony Scott’s NASCAR classic, breaking down Tom Cruise’s iconic performance as Cole Trickle, Robert Duvall’s Harry Hogge, the incredible racing sequences, Hans Zimmer’s score, and why the movie has only gotten better with age. We also dive into the insane story of how the movie was made: Cruise hitting nearly 175 MPH at Daytona, real movie cars qualifying for NASCAR races, Robert Towne rewriting scenes while Cruise was literally driving around the track, dozens of real cars being wrecked, and a production that ballooned toward $60 million while racing to finish just weeks before release.

Plus, we explore how Days of Thunder helped change the way racing is photographed on film and why it may be one of the most important early movies in the evolution of Tom Cruise’s obsession with putting actors inside the action for real.