USA TODAY International Edition
Pitbull, Suarez hope to start a ‘ revolution’
By his own admission, Pitbull believes in the laws of attraction.
The international superstar musician – whose real name is Armando Christian Perez – said he believes those laws led to him first hearing about driver Daniel Suarez 10 years ago and ultimately united them on a new NASCAR Cup Series team, Trackhouse Racing.
Pitbull and former race car driver Justin Marks are the co- owners of the team, which will make its NASCAR debut in the 2021 season- opening Daytona 500 with Suárez as the team’s first driver behind the wheel of the No. 99 Chevrolet.
The news of Pitbull’s ownership stake in the premier series team was announced in January on his 40th birthday, and the Miami native said he’s committed to using NASCAR to continue bringing people together – the same way his music and philanthropy do.
“In the same way that music is a universal language, I also see NASCAR as a universal language,” said Pitbull, who will be the grand marshal for the Daytona 500 on Sunday. “Everybody loves a fast car and a great story.”
Pitbull said he always wanted to be the owner of a team; the sport didn’t matter. But after watching the 1990 Tom Cruise flick “Days of Thunder,” he was hooked on NASCAR, calling it “the ultimate underdog story” and describing himself as the ultimate underdog.
He pointed to his humble Miami upbringing as the son of Cuban immigrants before becoming a superstar entertainer with millions of fans around the globe. It’s like Suarez’s story, Pitbull said, with the now- 29- year- old driver leaving Mexico to race in the U. S. and becoming the first foreign- born NASCAR champion when he won the 2016 Xfinity Series title.
Together with Marks and Trackhouse Racing, they’re again underdogs with a new team attempting to compete against the powerhouses and attract new fans to the sport.
“NASCAR has no limits,” said Suarez, who is entering his fifth Cup Series season with his fourth team and still looking for his first win. “Already we want to make this sport as wide as possible. We are not just talking about Mexico. We’re not just talking about Latin America. We’re talking about worldwide. Actually, that’s Pitbull’s nickname, Mr. Worldwide. So why not?”
“Seven, eight years ago,” Suarez added, “I was thinking to myself: ‘ OK, I’m the only Mexican, the only Latino in NASCAR, the only guy that can speak Spanish. If I don’t try to do something to bring Latinos to the racetrack, who is going to do it?’ ”
Both Pitbull and Suarez said they were specifically interested in Trackhouse Racing because of Marks’ commitment to promoting education in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, for Latinx communities and people of color.
But pushing education is not new to Pitbull. In 2013, he opened a public charter school in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood where he grew up. It’s called the Sports Leadership And Management, or SLAM, and according to the SLAM Foundation, there are 10 schools in Florida, plus one in Atlanta and another near Las Vegas.
Both Pitbull and Suarez want to be competitive on the track and contend for wins and maybe eventually championships.
But that, combined with the greater initiative of advancing STEM education, is why they’re all on the same team going into the 2021 season. They said without Trackhouse’s bigger- picture initiative, they wouldn’t be involved.
“This is deeper than sponsorships; this is a movement,” Pitbull said.
“This is a revolution/ taking a sport and creating a culture, because when we first opened SLAM, we had brought a NASCAR car to SLAM the first day eight years ago,” he continued. “If you would have seen the look on those kids’ faces when they saw that car, they just had no clue that it was actually something that was tangible.”
With Pitbull’s help and international platform – including more than 52 million Facebook followers and 25.5 million Twitter followers – Suarez said they’ll be able to “make this team something different, something young, something cool, something modern.”
That’s just what Marks hopes for too. In trying to build a foundation for Trackhouse Racing to have a successful, long- term future, Marks said any philanthropic work has to be a priority rather than an afterthought. So even though it’s still in the early planning stages, the organization has a responsibility to assemble a legacy that empowers future generations, he said.
“The definition of success, at least early on, will be a STEM discipline experience set up at each and every one of Armando’s schools,” Marks said.
“Having thousands and thousands of kids be able to be exposed to this and use NASCAR to say, there is so much opportunity in this world. You can be engineers, mathematicians, scientists, you can build things. And not just STEM, but design, finance, entrepreneurism, all that.”