by Julian Spivey It occurred to me recently with the 2022 NASCAR season beginning this weekend that there has been an influx in celebrities joining NASCAR as team owners lately. This is something that I’m not sure many novice followers of the sport really knew about so I wanted to profile some of the big names owning teams within the sport. Joe Gibbs Joe Gibbs isn’t new to NASCAR. He’s been around so long and so successful that he’s actually already been inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame making him the only person on this list to appear in two professional sports hall of fames, as he’s also enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Gibbs led the NFL’s Washington football franchise to three Super Bowl titles during the ‘80s and early ‘90s and is one of the greatest coaches in NFL history. Gibbs created his NASCAR team Joe Gibbs Racing in 1992, one year before his first retirement from the NFL, and hired future Hall of Fame driver Dale Jarrett as his first driver. Jarrett would reward Gibbs with the 1993 Daytona 500. Gibbs has won five NASCAR Cup Series championships with three different drivers (Bobby Labonte, Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch) and likely isn’t done winning titles as a NASCAR owner. He currently fields four cars in the Cup Series driven by Busch, Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. Brad Daugherty Brad Daugherty is another celebrity team owner that has been involved with NASCAR for a while now as co-owner of JTG Daugherty Racing, which fields the No. 47 Chevrolet driven by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. The team began racing in the 2008 Cup Season and has been active ever since with one win as a team coming in 2014 with A.J. Allmendinger at Watkins Glen Raceway. Daugherty may not be as big of a household celebrity name as the other celebs on this list, but he was college basketball star at the University of North Carolina and the No. 1 overall NBA Draft pick in 1986 for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Daugherty was a five-time All-Star for the Cavs and his jersey No. 43, which he selected as a lifetime fan of Richard Petty, is retired by the organization. Michael Jordan Speaking of All-Star NBA players from the University of North Carolina, Michael Jordan entered the NASCAR Cup owner fray in 2021 after being a life-long fan of the sport, which calls North Carolina its center and home, when he joined NASCAR Cup superstar Denny Hamlin to form 23XI racing. The 23 in the team, of course, comes from Jordan’s retired Chicago Bulls jersey number. The XI being the roman numeral of 11, Hamlin’s career-long car number. The team enlisted Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr., the Cup Series only African-American driver, as its driver for its inaugural season and he rewarded the team with its first win (and the first of Wallace’s Cup career) late in the 2021 season at Talladega Superspeedway. 23XI racing has added veteran and former champion Kurt Busch as a second car for the 2022 season in the No. 45 Toyota. No. 45 was the second jersey number Jordan wore in the NBA when he returned from his first retirement in 1995. Pitbull Pitbull, the Miami-born Latin hip-hop star known as “Mr. Worldwide,” signed on as a co-owner of the Trackhouse Racing Team with former NASCAR driver Justin Marks before its inaugural season in 2021. The hitmaker with known for No. 1 songs like “Give Me Everything” and “Timber” co-owns the No. 99 Chevrolet driven by Daniel Suarez, the Cup Series’ only active Hispanic driver. In late 2021 Trackhouse Racing Team bought assets from the folding Chip Ganassi Racing Cup team and have added the No. 1 car driven by Ross Chastain for the 2022 season. Floyd Mayweather Jr. Floyd Mayweather Jr. is one of the greatest boxers of all-time and known for his perfect 50-0 career record. The 44-year old is also known for his love of making money, which has earned him the nickname “Money” Mayweather and has become the name of his NASCAR Cup Series team The Money Team, which is making its debut in the Daytona 500 on Sunday, February 20 with driver Kaz Grala who’s making his second career Daytona 500 start after a 28th place finish for Kaulig Racing in last year’s event. The Money Team has been rumored for multiple years now, but never got things together until formally announcing a run for this year’s Daytona 500 title just 15 days before qualifying for the event. TMT Racing plans a part-time schedule in 2022 with hopes of becoming a full-time Cup Series team for the 2023 season. Emmitt Smith
There are many athletic legends and even a globally popular hip-hop superstar owning rides in the NASCAR Cup Series, but there are also big names giving love to teams in the Xfinity Series, which is kind of a minor league feeder series to the Cup Series. This season NFL Hall of Famer and the league’s all-time rushing leader Emmitt Smith is partnering with Jesse Iwuji Motorsports for a full season run in the No. 34 with Iwuji, a Navy man currently serving in the Navy Reserve, behind the wheel. The team initially wanted to run the No. 22 in recognition of Smith’s Dallas Cowboys jersey number, but the number was owned by another team. But with Iwuji being the only full-time African-American driver in the Xfinity Series the team decided the No. 34, which was the number driven by Wendell Scott when he became the first African-American driver to win a NASCAR race in 1963, was a fitting option.
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