Bringle's sponsorship reached "peak pork" with this striking paint job.
If you’re watching the qualifying or the actual race this weekend at the Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon, you might see some familiar names plastered on two of the competing cars. Both Peg Leg Porker and Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery officially have horses (er, cars) in the race as sponsors of two of the drivers.
The first relationship is a long one, as Carey Bringle has been a supporter of Josh Williams since the driver was still competing on the lower-level ARCA circuit at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, way back in 2016. Not too many years after opening his first barbecue restaurant with Peg Leg Porker, Bringle received a call out of the blue from the manager of the Williams team asking if he would be willing to provide meals for the crew in return for a sticker on the race car.
A tray of sandwiches only got Bringle a little bit of real estate in the early days of the sponsorship.
That early in his restaurant career, Bringle had never thought about this sort of sponsorship, but when the manager pointed out that Williams was an independent driver that had to scrape together sponsorships and support at every race on the circuit, the restaurateur saw a little of that same independent spirit in himself. As a pediatric cancer survivor, when Bringle heard that Williams made it a point to visit childrens’ hospitals in every town where he raced, that really resonated with him. He was in!
Since then, Bringle has maintained his sponsorship on the Williams team for eight years now, a commitment of several thousand dollars that has meant the Peg Leg logo has grown a lot bigger than just a sticker. The pair of rebels grew together, with Bringle opening up more restaurants and entering the whiskey business while Josh moved up to the Xfinity series, one step below the biggest drivers in NASCAR. This also meant that sponsorships were a little pricier, but Bringle remained unfailing in his support.
Racing fans might remember an incident last year where Williams demonstrated his independent spirit in the Atlanta race after he felt slighted by a penalty assessed by the race officials. He parked his car on the start-finish line in the middle of the race and defiantly walked across the infield back to his pit. As a person with a reputation of speaking his truth to power, Bringle remained 100 percent on board with Williams.
The current Williams car design.
The driver has also received praise for his charitable work visiting children's hospitals in person and remotely. He's even brought a robot with video capabilities into the pit so he could interact with the kids he has met in the hospitals and show them around his workplace. For his efforts, Josh was a finalist for the Comcast Community Champion Award last year.
Josh plans to visit the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital while he’s in town this weekend, and Bringle will be there to support him. If you need a reason to root for a car in the lower lever race, the Tennessee Lottery 250 kicks off on Saturday at 2 p.m. with driver introductions. Look for the No. 92 Chevy Camaro!
NGB now stands for "not gonna brake!"
For the first time this year, Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery has entered the car sponsorship game with an agreement to back the No. 07 Camaro of SS GreenLight Racing driver Stefan Parsons. If you’re an old-school NASCAR aficionado, you might recognize that last name, since Stefan’s dad is Phil Parsons and his uncle was Benny Parsons.
Green Brier’s sponsorship includes a pretty cool paint job for the Camaro, featuring the distillery’s trademark color scheme on both rear quarter-panels and the front hood. (Skoal got the trunk.) The pairing makes sense given the fact that Andy and Charlie Nelson are following in generational footsteps in their industry much like Stefan. Plus, whiskey and fast cars have gone together since the bootleggers used to race their machines against each other between runs carrying moonshine to see whose car was the fastest.
Hopefully, both of these drivers will bring some extra local color to the Saturday race thanks to the support of two Nashville businesses, and maybe even one of them will end up in victory lane. Boogity, boogity, boogity! Let’s go racing, boys!
