Busch Light announced on Tuesday that it has struck a multi-year agreement to become the major sponsor of Ross Chastain and Trackhouse Racing beginning in 2024. Chastain becomes Anheuser-Busch’s new driver after the company’s brands sponsored Kevin Harvick for the previous 13 seasons, who will retire at the end of 2023.
Chastain’s new deal connects her with one of NASCAR’s most well-known historical brands. Anheuser-Busch has been a prominent NASCAR sponsor for almost 40 years, supporting Hall of Fame drivers such as Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip, Terry Labonte, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., as well as the annual Busch Light Clash.
For Chastain, the announcement of Busch Light as his major sponsor does more than simply cement his place in the brand’s NASCAR tradition. It also establishes him as a driver in high demand among the sport’s major sponsors, following a dozen years of attempting to get just enough funding to place him in a competitive car.
Sponsorship — or lack thereof — was a major hurdle in Chastain’s early career, as he raced for low-budget teams in cars with either barely enough sponsorship to support their racing expenses or no sponsorship at all. What was expected to be Chastain’s big break in a full-time Xfinity Series ride with Chip Ganassi Racing fell through in 2019 when the sponsor declared bankruptcy and was later discovered to be a Ponzi scheme, forcing the team to close just before the season began.
In an interview with CBS Sports, Chastain reminisced on how he got to where he is now after years of working in sponsorship searches, calling it everything he has ever strived for.
“This is exactly where I’ve worked to get to,” Chastain told CBS Sports. “It’s all about going to the racetrack with no plans and no race car to get inside. And then there were instances when I was urged not to take rides. All of the ups and downs, the journey, the pursuit for wins and checkered flags, 13 years of doing it when I first started in the sport, this is exactly where I wanted to be.
“I wanted to have a Cup team that was behind me and around me that was capable of winning, and a sponsor to go along with it.”
Busch Light is the latest major brand to join Trackhouse Racing, extending the team’s emergence as a disruptor that is now not only among the top NASCAR teams, but also luring some of the sport’s biggest companies. Earlier this year, the team revealed that Quaker State had become one of the principal sponsors of Daniel Suarez’s No. 99 Chevrolet. Trackhouse’s sponsors include major businesses such as Worldwide Express, AdventHealth, and Kubota.
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