Carl Long just wanted to get his vape on at the NASCAR track this weekend, but The Man has promptly shut him down. The NASCAR driver was forced to remove a weed vaping company’s logo from his car at this weekend’s Go Bowling 400 at Kansas Speedway.
Long’s car carried the sponsorship of Veedverks on its hood when he first arrived at the track. But the Colorado-based marijuana weed company’s logo was quickly removed before he was allowed to practice because it violated the racing association’s rules about paint schemes and sponsorships. According to The Associated Press, NASCAR said it had not “vetted” the sponsorship.
The logo for Colorado-based Veedverks was plastered on Long’s green and yellow No. 66 for tech inspection, but a NASCAR spokesman said it was never vetted and approved. And when officials learned of the hood logo, they had crew members remove it before the car went to the track.
NASCAR officials said it will not adorn the car the rest of the weekend.
On Long’s official Facebook page, he said the mistake was all his own: he misspelled the sponsor’s name when he submitted it to NASCAR.
“It is our fault we cant spell,” the message said. “We did no research on company, just happy to get a sponsor. The people running NASCAR have been very positive in allowing us back into cup. They are putting a ton of effort into building the sport back up.”
Long is expected to start 40th in Sunday’s race, as he had other technical problems and did not get in a proper qualifying run.
Long is a bit of a bad boy as far as NASCAR goes, so this sponsorship is actually a pretty great fit for him. Sunday will be his first top-tier NASCAR race since 2009 because he was banned from competition when he refused to pay a fine for breaking NASCAR rules. As Autoweek explains:
Long was fined $200,000 for an oversized engine back in 2009. Owning a team with virtually no budget, Long had no chance of paying, what was at the time, the largest fine in NASCAR history. NASCAR banned him from any Cup Series activity as a result of his failure to pay.
Never giving up, Long worked for years in the Truck and Xfinity series garages. This season, NASCAR, probably realizing that Long would never pay up, reinstated him.
Friday, he showed up in his No. 66 Chevy.
Long is still allowed to race, but he obviously won’t get any of that sweet weed vaping cash to fund his tires and gas this weekend. Or will he? According to Veedverks’ social media pages, they intend to pay Long despite not getting their logo on a car this weekend.
NASCAR is an expensive sport to participate in, especially for drivers not racing under the umbrella of large ownership groups. Still, sponsorships in NASCAR are sometimes tricky. The racing association built on moonshining had banned hard liquor sponsorships until 2004, and even today those are few and far between. The top tier of racing in NASCAR was once the Winston Cup, but tobacco sponsorships are a thing of the past now, too.
The top circuit is now sponsored by the energy drink company Monster, which probably won’t kill you any faster than weed vapes or cigarettes or Jack Daniels. I mean, maybe. Who can really say anymore these days? All we know is that Veedverks isn’t welcome at the track this weekend. And someone has a lot of paperwork to do to get them back on the car.
