Trackhouse chief fuels Max Verstappen rumors after – Sports News
Trackhouse Racing proprietor and founder Justin Marks has inadvertently additional stoked the flames of hypothesis surrounding Red Bull Formula 1 star Max Verstappen and a potential NASCAR Cup Series run.
In 2022, Trackhouse introduced that it was launching PROJECT91, a part-time car supposed to race sporadically with some of “the world’s best drivers” on the wheel, in response to the group.
Since then, the No. 91 Trackhouse Chevrolet has taken to the observe on 5 events, with former F1 World Champion Kimi Räikkönen the primary to take benefit of the project, racing as soon as in each 2022 and 2023, with a best end of twenty ninth at Circuit of the Americas.
Three-time Supercars Championship winner Shane van Gisbergen then took the project to a complete new degree later in 2023, successful his NASCAR debut on the Chicago road course earlier than ending tenth on the Indianapolis street course.
In 2025, the No. 91 appeared simply as soon as, with four-time Indianapolis 500 and three-time 24 Hours of Daytona winner Hélio Castroneves taking up the Daytona 500, ending thirty ninth after crashing out.
Recently, Marks quelled any potential issues that this system was set to be dropped, as an alternative hinting that a sponsorship deal is within the works. “No – it’s never dead, never ever ever dead, ever dead,” he mentioned, through the Sports Business Journal.
“Where Project 91 is now is we go promote the program in the sponsorship market and sign a sponsor, and then we try to work with the sponsor on what kind of athlete they’d like to see. I would bet on it coming back in ’26, and we’re pretty close to getting that deal done. There’s some good opportunities.”
Perhaps purely coincidentally, Marks additionally addressed their partnership with Red Bull, which started in 2025 because of van Gisbergen, who’s sponsored by the Austrian model and joined the group full-time after a 12 months within the Xfinity Series.
As such, Red Bull grew to become Trackhouse’s official vitality drink in addition to van Gisbergen’s sponsor in 5 races. The model additionally sponsored teen and fellow Red Bull athlete Connor Zilisch during his maiden Cup Series voyage at Circuit of the Americas – a race which sadly noticed him wreck out.
Marks informed SBJ that Red Bull is now eager to develop its partnership with Trackhouse to different collection – a purpose which appears simply attainable on condition that the group additionally races in MotoGP and IMSA.
“This company is as good of a brand as there is in motorsports, and a tremendous amount of assets across the world,” Marks mentioned. “They know everything about racing that you would want a partner to know about.
“They’ve got a very ambitious and robust plan for activation and promotion around the partnership and there’s a lot of opportunity to scale it beyond just the NASCAR team, so there’s a lot of really great conversations happening there.”
Marks added that with NASCAR seeking to take a step ahead “into popular culture,” he believes the vitality drink model “can really grease the wheels of that because everybody knows Red Bull,” occurring to say “they want to make big moments happen just like we do.”
One transfer Red Bull may push for, which will surely fall within that “big moment” class, could be getting four-time World Champion Verstappen behind the wheel of the No. 91.
Already a pal of van Gisbergen, Verstappen has beforehand admitted to watching NASCAR. However, it could seem the most important hurdle between getting the Dutchman to swap his sofa for a NASCAR seat could be the kind of observe, having just lately made it crystal clear he doesn’t intend to attempt ovals.
“I like watching all different kinds of racing. For me, it’s just that on an oval, I don’t want to do it just for the risk of injury, you know, when you hit the fence,” the 28-year-old informed the ‘Pelas Pistas’ podcast.
“It’s not worth it, also if you have done your stuff in Formula 1, and yeah, I mean maybe you can win more there, and I mean that would be something that I would love, but it’s not worth the risk of having a really bad accident and hurting yourself really badly.
“And I know in F1 that can happen as well, but they’re hitting the wall at 370 or whatever is not something I am planning to do, but it’s sometimes not even your fault, right? Anything can happen. But to sometimes avoid a little bit of the risk, if you can, I would do that.”
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