NASCAR dug its own hole with ‘Let’s go Brandon’

It was always going to get ugly, just as we witnessed earlier this year after NASCAR did not approve Brandon Brown’s initial sponsorship for the 2022 Xfinity Series season. Fortunately for Brown, things have turned around since.

NASCAR is set to return to Talladega Superspeedway for the first time since last October, when that trip became one which fans will remember for a long time due to an incident that had nothing to do with the race itself.

Over the offseason, Brandon Brown, otherwise known as the “Let’s go Brandon” guy because of a mistake that he had absolutely nothing to do with, appeared to have overcome one key struggle he had faced ahead of the 2022 Xfinity Series season.

Due to the 28-year-old Woodbridge, Virginia native’s association with the “Let’s go Brandon” phrase, which has effectively become the SFW replacement for “F— Joe Biden” because of how it originated after he won the Xfinity Series race at Talladega Superspeedway last October, he struggled to find sponsors.

But LGBcoin, a cryptocurrency meme coin on the Ethereum blockchain playing off the viral meme, stepped up to serve as the primary sponsor of Brown’s #68 Brandonbilt Motorsports Chevrolet for the entire 33-race season.

It provided a boost for the young driver and his team ahead of the season, and it was seen as a way to turn a less than ideal situation into an opportunity for a man and organization that had absolutely nothing to do with the mistake made by the reporter who incorrectly told viewers that the “FJB” chants were really “Let’s go Brandon” chants after his victory.

NASCAR, which reportedly told the team that they would not be able to use “Let’s go Brandon” in connection with the sponsor, still originally approved the sponsor, according to an email shared by James Koutoulas, the founder of Typhoon Capital Management and an LGBcoin investor.

However, this was apparently due to some form of miscommunication/oversight, as NASCAR later ended up saying that it wasn’t actually approved.

So the driver who supposedly couldn’t find sponsorship because of “Let’s go Brandon” actually had a sponsor lined up despite the ongoing controversy, and NASCAR decided to cancel it anyway — for that very reason, no less.

In NASCAR’s defense, given their stance on the “Let’s go Brandon” chant, which they made clear toward the end of the 2021 season, the cancelation of this sponsor, in itself, wasn’t all that surprising.

Plus, once it emerged that approval was actually still pending and hadn’t been confirmed, it was quite clear what was coming next. And when that was revealed, this situation promised to get ugly.

That’s ultimately where things ended up.

But the fact that the sport decided not to approve it after the team were led to believe otherwise (unless “the sponsors are approved” has some sort of deep state meaning nobody else knows about) did not go over well, and that was not surprising.

It’s not hard to see why it generated even more criticism than it would have had NASCAR simply not indicated approval in the first place. Even the “Let’s go Brandon” critics will admit that NASCAR kind of dug their own hole on this one.

At the end of the day though, LGBcoin was never going to end up on the car no matter what.

But the bigger focus in the aftermath of this whole process, one which resulted in the common theme of Brown becoming the victim of somebody else’s mistake/miscommunication yet again, became what would happen next.

Fortunately, Brown and the team have been able to land multiple new sponsors for the 2022 season, more than enough to keep the team afloat and competing on a weekly basis.

As Brown enters this Saturday’s Ag-Pro 300 at Talladega Superspeedway looking to defend his October win at the track, he sits in 14th place in the point standings, 27 points below the playoff cut line, with two top 10 finishes, including a top finish of eighth at Richmond Raceway earlier this month.

Tune in to Fox at 3:00 p.m. ET this Saturday, April 23 for the live broadcast of the Ag-Pro 300 from Talladega Superspeedway. If you haven’t yet started a free trial of FuboTV, don’t miss your opportunity to do so now!