NASCAR: Another celebrity announcement looming?

After more than two years of speculation, could the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season finally mark the entry of Floyd Mayweather Jr.?

A year after the NASCAR Cup Series saw the addition of both Pitbull (Trackhouse Racing Team) and Michael Jordan (23XI Racing) as celebrity team owners, we could finally see legendary boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. enter the sport in a similar capacity.

Following more than two years of speculation, it appears that Mayweather is on the verge of joining the Cup Series.

According to Sports Business Journal’s Adam Stern, Mayweather’s The Money Team Racing appear to be trying to piece together a deal to make their Cup Series debut in the 2022 season-opening Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway next month.

Stern reports that the team have secured a car and a sponsor and that they have Kaz Grala lined up to drive their car, presumably the #50 car.

This speculation all started late in the 2019 season, when the team’s website provided several details about the team entering the Cup Series. But those details were later replaced by a single screen which read “More Info Coming Soon”.

The website now contains a team logo with the words “COMING SOON” underneath — just like it has for the last one year-plus.

Of course, we have seemingly been “close” to an announcement a few times before, but nothing has ever come of it. Will that be the case again this time around, or will the team actually make an appearance next month with Grala behind the wheel of the #50 car at the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) high-banked oval in Daytona Beach, Florida?

Ahead of the 2021 season, there were reports that the team had tried to bid on two charters that were for sale, and that when they did not land either one, they planned to co-brand one of Spire Motorsports’ two full-time entries before using one of the team’s three charters to run a full-time car of their own in 2022.

But Spire Motorsports ended up selling two of their three charters to Kaulig Racing for 2022, including the one that they had leased out to Trackhouse Racing Team. They replaced one of them by buying one from Rick Ware Racing, giving them two to again operate two of their own full-time entries for the upcoming season.

If The Money Team Racing do end up confirming a Daytona 500 entry for this year, it would make their entry the fourth non-chartered (open) entry, meaning that there would indeed be 40 cars for the 64th running of the “Great American Race” despite some speculation that the field would not be full for the debut of the Next Gen car.

The Daytona 500 is set to be broadcast live on Fox beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 20.