(The Hill) — NASCAR is reportedly reviewing a deal it approved with racecar driver Brandon Brown to have a paint scheme on his vehicle featuring a cryptocurrency sponsor that references the anti-President Biden phrase “Let’s go Brandon.”
Brown’s publicist, Max Marucci, told USA Today Sports on Friday that the original paint scheme approved for Xfinity Series car was up in the air because NASCAR was “reviewing the details.”
“I don’t know what happened, any internal conversations,” he said. “But we’re just going to try to work through whatever happens next.”
Brown announced on Thursday that he had come to a deal with LGBcoin.io to sponsor his Xfinity Series car in 2022, unveiling a “red, white and blue livery with the logo and wordmark” of the company.
“Let’s go Brandon” became a national euphemism for “F— Joe Biden” after a reporter in October mistakenly assumed a NASCAR crowd was chanting the phrase for Brown during an interview — when the people were actually saying “F— Joe Biden.”
The deal would have allowed Brown to paint the words LGB instead of the entire phrase, but Brown reportedly “jumped the gun” on Thursday when he announced the move, a NASCAR official told Motorsports.com.
The debut for the painted Camaro was slated for Feb. 19 at the Daytona International Speedway.
Brown has pivoted from an earlier position on the phrase.
In a Dec. 19 piece in The New York Times, Brown said he had “zero interest in politics” and did not want to be associated with the phrase for fear of losing corporate sponsorship.
Last month, NASCAR President Steve Phelps said he does not want the organization to be associated with the phrase.
“I think unfortunately it speaks to the state of where we are as a country,” he told The Associated Press. “We do not want to associate ourselves with politics, the left or the right.”