Actor Frankie Muniz wants to be in NASCAR for a long time. It starts in Daytona

Frankie Muniz has heard it all.

The racecar driver, who many know as an actor — one who starred as the lead in the hit TV show “Malcolm in the Middle” and movie “Agent Cody Banks” — heard that he’s running in the ARCA Menards Series because he “just wants to have fun” or because racing is “a hobby” or because “he has money, and he’s just going to go waste it.”

“Or whatever they want to say,” Muniz said with a trademarked charming chuckle on Wednesday, in the Daytona International Speedway media center.

But make no mistake: Muniz wants to be in NASCAR for a long time.

The 37-year-old renaissance man announced in January that he’d race in ARCA, a semi-professional league of stock-car racing that feeds into NASCAR’s three national touring series.

He has 20 scheduled races in 2023. The first is Saturday afternoon at Daytona.

Muniz has been a longtime racing fan. He woke up early for Formula 1 races as a kid, he said. He lived in Raleigh for a while, and his family would take trips to Charlotte Motor Speedway for NASCAR races. He drove the pace car for the 2001 Daytona 500 — one of the most tragically memorable races in NASCAR history.

He raced in the Atlantic Championship Series for three years, he said, until he got hurt in 2009. The recovery took “longer than I thought it would,” Muniz said, and for a while put his racing dream on hold. He started acting again. He played drums in a band.

Then his son, Mauz, was born.

“I have an almost 2-year-old,” Muniz said. “It hit me, I was looking at him when he was born, I was trying to think, ‘What is he going to think of me, of who his dad is? Everything I’ve done is in my past. I used to do this. I used to do that. But I wanted him to see me reaching for a dream, or reaching for a goal, and striving for that. How do you do that?”

He turned to racing.

Muniz said on Wednesday that his family has been supportive of this new endeavor. He played in Corey LaJoie’s Charity Kickball Klassic, and became friends with LaJoie and Noah Gragson there. He recently surprised Bryan Cranston, his “Malcolm in the Middle” co-star, who approached him like a father-figure would about doing something like this: Are you sure this is a good idea?

Muniz has answered in the affirmative with his actions. He said he has turned down acting gigs for this. He has spent time in the iRacing simulator. He has worked to help bring sponsorships to his team and car. He also appears to have a decent shot at winning this race in Daytona. His team owner, Mark Rette, has said that this is the best speedway car he has ever brought to Daytona — and that team has finished second and third there in the past.

But Saturday, whatever the result, isn’t the last you’ll hear of Muniz. It’s only the beginning, he said.

“Maybe some people think it’s just some kind of fluke, and I’m going to get over it, and do a couple races and leave,” Muniz said. “No, I’m here with the intention of being in the stock-car world for a long time as a driver, and then hopefully in the future as a team owner. That’s my end goal. But yeah, I’m 37, but I have a lot of good years in me still.”