Twenty Years Of Racing For Progress
NASCAR’s Drive For Diversity program marks a milestone with some major reasons for optimism but plenty of work still to do
WHEN RAJAH CARUTH took the checkered flag at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March, it represented a monumental moment for NASCAR during a celebratory year.
On top of Caruth becoming just the third Black driver in NASCAR national series history to win a race, his victory in the Craftsman Truck Series came in the 20th anniversary year of the Drive For Diversity program that he was a part of in 2020 and ’21.
That program — which identifies potential drivers and pit crew members with diverse backgrounds and provides funding for training, as well as opportunities for experience — has made an impact on and off the track. Four drivers from the program have won races in NASCAR this season, including one, Kyle Larson, who is also a past series champion. The circuit’s research shows that 46% of fans who claim to have followed the sport for three years or less identify as “not White.” That same research showed that last year, Black viewership of NASCAR races hit its highest levels during its current TV deal that started in 2015.
But the property still has areas where it needs to catch up, in some cases dramatically, according to both drivers and industry executives. Perhaps most notably, amid spiking interest in women’s sports, NASCAR hasn’t had a female driver compete in its premier Cup Series since Danica Patrick retired in 2018, and it is facing newfound competition from Formula 1 for rising female driving talent.
“We’re on the right track — I don’t think anybody is doing anything wrong. Do I think we can do things better? Yeah, of course there is always room for improvement,” said Daniel Suárez, the Mexico-born driver who is another graduate of the Drive for Diversity program. “Diversity is something that is very important not just for NASCAR, but for the entire country, and it’s something we have to continue to pursue and it’s not going to happen overnight.”
The Drive for Diversity program was first created in 2004 under then-COO George Pyne and CEO Brian France, as the traditionally male, white and Southern sport looked to grow from its origins. According to a report at the time, Pyne framed it as NASCAR’s bid to find for racing what Venus and Serena Williams were doing for tennis. It was originally a partnership between NASCAR and Access Marketing & Communications, which was a firm founded by an Omnicom agency and Calhoun Enterprises.
The program supplies an unspecified dollar amount to its members, helping defray the costs of a sport that can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars even at the junior levels.
Initial progress was slow, at least on the driver side; in 2009, ESPN ran a story with the headline, “Drive for Diversity stuck in neutral,” claiming that results were sparse after half a decade. But that same year, NASCAR announced major changes to the program by hiring former Dale Earnhardt Inc. President of Global Operations Max Siegel to take over the program. Siegel formed a team called Revolution Racing, now known as Rev Racing, which remains NASCAR’s exclusive partner on the Drive for Diversity program.
NASCAR has seen more success on the pit crew side. That portion of the program boasts a job placement rate of 100% for those who complete it, according to Brandon Thompson, NASCAR’s first vice president of diversity and inclusion, a role created during the pandemic and social justice reckoning of 2020. The success of the pit crew program has been so immense that there are now pit crew members who are Drive For Diversity alumni — and so are their backups. Some pit crew members make sixfigure salaries.
Within a couple years of Siegel founding Rev Racing, some serious prospects started to emerge. Bubba
Wallace, a member of the 2010 class, has played a pivotal role in NASCAR’s embrace of diversity, including the banning of the Confederate flag in 2020. He became the second Black driver in NASCAR history to win a Cup Series race in 2021 when he won at Talladega Superspeedway, ending a drought of 58 years.
The four graduates to win this year are: Caruth; Larson, class of 2012 and the first driver from D4D to win a premier series championship when he did so in 2021; Suárez, who was part of the 2013 class after moving to the U.S. from Mexico and has won twice in the premier series; and Nick Sanchez, part of D4D from 2017-22, who won this year’s seasonopening event in the Craftsman Truck Series.
“You’re not just talking about one driver in the Cup Series who represents these different demographic sets,” said Thompson. “Now you’re talking about folks who are layered and have depth, which is awesome.”
Other rising drivers in NASCAR with diverse backgrounds include two members of the 2024 class in Nathan Lyons, who is part of the Legend Car Series, and Lavar Scott, who is competing in the ARCA Menards Series, as well as Isabella Robusto, a 2021 Drive For Diversity graduate who finished sixth in her ARCA Menards Series debut.
Caruth’s story is proof that it’s finally getting easier to become a racer regardless of financial status. He got started in the sport via the iRacing simulator racing product, which NASCAR executives envision as their way to finally make racing more accessible to the masses because of the relative bargain versus the cost of racing (and sometimes crashing) real-life cars.
Female drivers are one part of the diversity spectrum on which NASCAR wants to pick up the pace. Patrick was one of NASCAR’s most most well-known drivers when she competed in the series, and NASCAR’s two current most-followed drivers on Instagram and TikTok are women, Hailie Deegan and Toni Breidinger.
But winning races is seen as something that’s table stakes for a driver becoming a star, and like Patrick, neither Deegan nor Breidinger has won a national series race yet, which has seemed to limit NASCAR’s marketing of them. Breidinger has brought in several big-name sponsors nonetheless and was recently featured in a nationwide in-store campaign by Raising Cane’s, underscoring how corporations want to work with female athletes in today’s marketing landscape.
Yet while NASCAR wants to see more progress with getting women into its upper echelons, Thompson said that the sanctioning body believes its Drive For Diversity model will produce them in due course. In the meantime, F1 formed the all-women’s series F1 Academy, which has started to find clear momentum as a concept.
While the idea of putting women into their own series draws criticism from some quarters, F1 believes that this will allow it to accelerate its goal to get a woman onto its grids — including F2 and F3 — where men and women would compete together, making it unique versus stick-and-ball sports. Only two women have ever started a grand prix in F1, which was founded in 1950.
Leveraging its network of blue-chip partners and global reach, F1 has gotten its teams officially involved with F1 Academy and brought in sponsors such as American Express, QVC, Puma and Tommy Hilfiger. It is producing slick, cinema-grade content around the series and recently unveiled its own deal with Netflix for a docuseries.
“I know there is some chatter around what that may look like for other sanctioning bodies, but I think for us, the D4D program and that model has proven to work,” said Thompson.
While much attention is on the drivers and pit crews, the diversity effort is having an effect industrywide, including on the business side. Michael Jordan is now a team owner and just celebrated his sixth win with 23XI Racing last month. There were four Black team owners whose cars participated in the 2022 Daytona 500, a record for the sport.
NASCAR also has made strides with its recent hires. On top of creating the first executive-level role focused on diversity with Thompson, several hires at the track president ranks have been women: Latasha Causey, hired in November 2022, became the first Black female track president in NASCAR history at Phoenix Raceway, replacing Julie Giese, a longtime NASCAR executive who is now the president of the Chicago Street Race; Lori Waran (hired in June 2022) took over at Richmond Raceway; and Dawn Burlew (December 2023) did the same at Watkins Glen International. In addition, John Ferguson, NASCAR’s senior vice president and chief human resources officer, came to the series in 2021 from Monumental Sports & Entertainment, and he’s NASCAR’s highest-ranking Black executive (and an SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree this year). The sanctioning body also has organized several employee support groups internally related to diversity, and an industry council related to it.
Still, drivers and executives acknowledge a need to do more in the coming years, especially as those drivers became more familiar to fans and the industry. Caruth, in particular, has long had high expectations; in 2021, Phelps said at an industry conference: “Rajah is going to be a star at NASCAR. … You can take that one to the bank.”
Caruth hails from Washington, D.C., a market that isn’t exactly a stock car racing hotbed. In fact, he pointed out that in D.C. last month, a Red Bull Racing F1 car demonstration event shut down Pennsylvania Avenue. “Obviously none of that is free and it costs money to NASCAR and teams, but even if you can’t do a street course race at a city like D.C. or New York City or L.A., to do activations like that [would be positive for NASCAR],” he said. Caruth added that NASCAR’s work on providing the best on-track product possible is important because “if the races are boring and it’s not entertaining, then what are we doing?”
NASCAR has done activations such as “Bubba’s Block Party,” which it has taken into the markets of Chicago and Richmond, to put on an event in an urban community with Wallace. Thompson said “Bubba’s Block Party” has introduced the sport to almost 20,000 people. NASCAR and one of its four premier partners, Coca-Cola, also work with Suárez on a program called “Daniel’s Amigos,” bringing Hispanic fans to races, and Thompson said NASCAR is approaching a similar number of people who have been part of that program.
One area where Thompson wants to see further improvement is in the role of crew chief, a team-side job that he compared to the head coach of a stick-andball team.
“As we start to reach out and eventually work with the industry a bit more closely on these things, there’s a couple areas that aren’t lost on us and are in our sights to see some improvement and growth in over the next 10 to 20 years,” he said.
“You’re not just talking about one driver in the Cup Series who represents these different demographic sets. You’re talking about folks who … have depth, which is awesome.” — Brandon Thompson, NASCAR vice president of diversity and inclusion