In what is believed to be an industry first, a streamer and social media influencer will serve as a team\u2019s primary partner in a NASCAR Cup Series race.<\/p>\n
Rexzilla, whose real name is Andrew Rex Lisle, is a Kick streamer with a social media following of more than a quarter million. And while it will be Cody Ware\u2019s name above the driver\u2019s door, it will be Rexzilla\u2019s name emblazoned on the No. 51 Ford Mustang Dark Horse of Rick Ware Racing (RWR) in the Xfinity 500 Sunday at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is more than just a sponsorship. It\u2019s a way to show that creators can play a major role in mainstream sports,\u201d said Rexzilla as he recently discussed the promotion on Kick. \u201cWe\u2019re bringing the energy of the Kick community straight to NASCAR.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kick is a live-streaming platform that offers a creator-friendly environment with better revenue sharing, fewer content restrictions and a rapidly growing user base. Rexzilla has been on Kick since 2024, but has been streaming for over a decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cRexzilla is a professional gamer and streamer, and he\u2019s been doing this for the last decade of his life. He\u2019s on the Kick.com platform, which is a relatively new streaming service,\u201d Ware said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe first got to know each other through an introduction from my brother, Carson, when Rexzilla attended this year\u2019s Daytona 500. Rexzilla is a big-time NASCAR fan. In fact, he\u2019s been following NASCAR since he was a kid growing up in Arkansas.<\/p>\n
\u201cGaming is a hobby of mine, and our worlds just naturally collided. He came out to the Coca-Cola 600 earlier this year, and his last race was just a few weeks ago at Kansas. Over time, we started talking about what a partnership could look like, and here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a symbiotic partnership. Rexzilla wanted to reach a new fanbase via the tangible world of NASCAR. RWR wanted to expand its reach into the digital space and, more specifically, the gaming community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s uniqueness to both sides of this,\u201d Ware said. \u201cFor me as a driver and for the race team as a whole, tapping into a huge online presence in way that hasn\u2019t been done before is a great way to broaden our reach and help grow the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first time a streamer has been a primary partner on a NASCAR Cup Series stock car. Rexzilla gets to combine two of his passions \u2013 gaming and racing \u2013 onto a national platform. He\u2019ll be front and center, literally, on our racecar in a race that\u2019ll be nationally televised on NBC. It\u2019s a really strong cross-promotion that benefits both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s appropriate that Sunday\u2019s Xfinity 500 is on NBC for it will be must-see TV. The penultimate race of the 2025 Cup Series schedule serves as the cutoff race for the Championship 4 season finale Nov. 2 at Phoenix Raceway. Eight drivers enter Martinsville still eligible for the year-end title, but when the checked flag drops, only the top-four drivers will be vying for the championship a week later in the winner-take-all format.<\/p>\n
\u201cMartinsville is probably the most interesting race of the year,\u201d Ware said. \u201cFour of the eight guys still competing for the championship get eliminated. Meanwhile, the rest of the field is still trying to get all they can with just two races remaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an electric atmosphere where, even when the race is over, there\u2019s an air of uncertainty of who\u2019s racing for a championship next week at Phoenix and who isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s everyone\u2019s last chance, even for guys like me who aren\u2019t in the title hunt. We know the season\u2019s coming to an end and the opportunities to make something happen this year are becoming fewer and fewer. It all tends to breed a little chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Five hundred laps around Martinsville\u2019s flat, .526-mile oval is tough enough. Drivers have to pull their steering wheel hard to the left 1,000 times while stabbing their brake pedal at the end of each, 800-foot-long straightaway. Whether one\u2019s car is lightning quick or could use a jolt of lightning, Martinsville pushes the boundaries of human performance as much as a car\u2019s mechanical limits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of strength needed for driving a racecar, especially when it comes to braking,\u201d Ware said. \u201cIt takes a lot of brake pressure to extract 700-800 pounds of braking force into the corner. And at Martinsville, we\u2019re doing that a thousand times over the course of 500 laps. It\u2019s about being on your game from start to finish, where you\u2019re as good on lap 500 as you were on lap one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ware\u2019s first laps at Martinsville come Saturday when practice starts at 4:30 p.m. EDT followed by qualifying at 5:40 p.m. TruTV and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide live coverage of both. The Xfinity 500 goes green Sunday at 2 p.m. with flag-to-flag coverage delivered by NBC and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.<\/p>\n
RWR PR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In what is believed to be an industry first, a streamer and social media influencer will serve as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,925,19546,10221,634,7817,582,721,722,82,348],"class_list":{"0":"post-232861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-daytona","11":"tag-daytona-500","12":"tag-ford","13":"tag-nascar","14":"tag-nbc","15":"tag-racing","16":"tag-series","17":"tag-speedway","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}