In a world of terrible NASCAR sponsorships, one stands tall. This weekend, NASCAR Xfinity driver Bayley Currey will be running a Ghost livery on his No. 4 JD Motorsports machine. And folks: It is good.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing Ghost, then I recommend you take a moment to hit up the YouTube machine and enjoy some music. Ghost is a Swedish metal band with a frankly incredible stage presence and physical presentation. It is also pretty much exactly the antithesis of how most people imagine NASCAR, which is part of what makes this sponsorship so great. It’s kind of like me, the ultra goth kid in my rural high school, hanging out with my redneck friends. It’s great.
The sponsorship is designed to promote Ghost’s new album, Impera, which will be released on Friday, March 11 — one day before the March 12 Xfinity race at Phoenix Raceway. I don’t really know how big the crossover crowd between Ghost fans and NASCAR fans, but you know what? I won’t look this gift horse in the mouth. The livery is cool as hell. The black, gold, and white kind of reminds me of another, less savory motorsport sponsor.
This isn’t the first metal band livery proposed for NASCAR. Back in 2019, Slayer was a proposed sponsor for the Rick Ware Racing team, but the team ultimately dropped the sponsor because “Slayer’s brand image and beliefs and Rick Ware Racing and our long time partners’ image and beliefs do not align.” That’s corporate speak for “we’re soft as hell.”
Anyway, I’ll always take a Ghost sponsorship over some of the other nonsense that gets thrown around the racing world these days. Someone tried to roast them for performing a cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” during concerts — but any time Ghost plays that song, all the royalties go to Camp Aranu’tiq, a summer camp designed for transgender teens to get together and have some time to be themselves and relax.
Fuck yeah, Ghost.