Texas A&M University will sponsor Felix Rosenqvist’s No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Honda for the inaugural Java House Grand Prix of Arlington, showcasing a bold Aggie maroon livery on a national FOX broadcast. Rosenqvist’s custom Troy Lee Designs helmet and firesuit complete the high-visibility presentation for Texas A&M’s motorsports initiative.
Credit: Texas A&M University Division of Marketing and Communications
Texas A&M University will take center stage at the inaugural Java House Grand Prix of Arlington on March 15, serving as a sponsor of the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Honda driven by Felix Rosenqvist in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES. The Aggie maroon livery will debut on a national FOX broadcast, joined by a custom Troy Lee Designs helmet created specifically for the race weekend. The Arlington race represents one of the most visible moments of Texas A&M’s 2026 motorsports program and launches a third year of sweeping activations across IndyCar and NASCAR that will place the Texas A&M brand in front of millions of Americans throughout the racing season.
Racing through November, the 2026 initiative combines season-long broadcast visibility with signature moments designed to build not only awareness, but relevance and recall through purposeful storytelling rooted in Texas A&M’s brand platform, A Force For Good. Throughout the season, Texas A&M will emphasize three themes that align naturally with the calendar and the sports: A Force For Good in Texas, in American innovation and in national service, security and defense.
In IndyCar, Texas A&M’s season-long presence is anchored by a helmet sponsorship with Rosenqvist, alongside a new season-long associate sponsorship of the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing entry. Designed specifically for how IndyCar is televised, the helmet placement is intended to appear repeatedly in FOX’s in-car cameras and tight close-up coverage, placing Texas A&M inside the broadcast during moments of performance, pressure and decision-making across 18 race weekends.
Rosenqvist, who also wore the Texas A&M logo on his helmet during the 2025 season, is one of IndyCar’s most popular drivers and finished sixth in the 2025 IndyCar Series championship, fourth at the Indianapolis 500 and second at Road America. His on-track performance and front-of-field visibility help amplify the impact of the helmet presence across race broadcasts.
For 2026, Rosenqvist’s season helmet will feature Texas A&M in a design created in collaboration with Troy Lee Designs, one of the most recognized names in motorsports helmet art and visual storytelling. The design will encompass the front and full top of the helmet to maximize visibility during in-car shots, where the helmet is often the most prominent surface on screen.
“I’m proud to continue my partnership with Texas A&M for the 2026 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season,” Rosenqvist said. “It’s been incredible to represent such a respected university with a passionate and engaged community behind it. The support from Aggieland has meant a lot to me, and I’m excited to keep building on what we’ve started together. We have a big season ahead, and I’m motivated to deliver strong results on track while continuing to connect with the students, former students and fans who make this partnership so special.”
On March 15, at the inaugural Java House Grand Prix of Arlington, Texas A&M will deliver its biggest IndyCar statement of the season, sponsoring Rosenqvist in the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Honda with a spectacular Aggie maroon livery that puts Texas A&M front and center on a national FOX broadcast. In a year when the university is building momentum toward its 150th anniversary, Arlington becomes a Texas-sized stage to reflect what Texas A&M represents for the state: a public research institution serving all 254 counties and the No. 1 research university in Texas, with $1.4 billion in annual research expenditures that account for nearly one out of every five research dollars invested across Texas public universities. The Arlington weekend also brings Texas A&M’s identity together in one unified system — the car, Rosenqvist’s firesuit and a Troy Lee Designs custom helmet showcasing the Aggie ring, Texas A&M scenes and A Force For Good branding — while engaging one of the university’s largest concentrations of former students in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.
Texas A&M will extend that Arlington storytelling beyond race weekend through a tangible fan and stakeholder collectible, as the custom Arlington helmet will be reproduced as a limited-run miniature replica for retail sale.
In May, Texas A&M’s season-long helmet presence reaches the most concentrated share of IndyCar’s national value with the Indianapolis 500, when practice, qualifying and race coverage collectively deliver the sport’s highest sustained level of attention. In that window, Texas A&M will emphasize A Force For Good in American innovation, connecting the brand’s presence inside the cockpit to the engineering, teamwork and performance innovation that define the Indy 500, and to the university’s broader national role as one of the most consequential research and talent engines in the country.
Cole Custer will be behind the wheel of the Haas Factory Team’s No. 41 Chevrolet Camaro for a season-long Texas A&M University associate sponsorship, culminating in a special military appreciation livery for the Anduril 250 at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego on June 21.
Credit: Texas A&M University Division of Marketing and Communications
In NASCAR, Texas A&M will again serve as a season-long associate sponsor of Haas Factory Team, driver Cole Custer and the No. 41 Chevrolet Camaro, providing continuity across the Cup Series calendar, from the season-opening Daytona 500, where Custer consistently ran in the top five, through the championship race in November. That season-long presence will culminate on June 21, when Texas A&M will serve as the primary sponsor of the No. 41 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet at the inaugural Anduril 250 at Naval Base Coronado in the San Diego region with a custom Texas A&M University military appreciation livery.
“I’m excited to have Texas A&M back onboard for the 2026 season,” Custer said. “This is their third year with our organization, and I continue to be impressed with their global impact, appreciation for our country’s military personnel and their commitment to leading America into the future. The Aggie Core Values align with our mission at Haas Factory Team, and we are always impressed with the presence of Aggies at every NASCAR event.”
The Coronado event will take place as the nation and the U.S. Navy commemorate 250 years, offering a once-in-a-generation stage to emphasize A Force For Good in national service, security and defense. The moment also arrives as Texas A&M builds momentum toward its own historic milestone, with the university’s 150th anniversary on the horizon. Texas A&M will also produce a die-cast version of the car to extend the story into a collectible item for fans and supporters.
Texas A&M is again investing in motorsports because it is one of the few national platforms that matches the university’s scale and mission while delivering consistent reach at efficient economics. In a fragmented media environment, higher education brands rarely earn repeated national exposure in live, high-attention settings. NASCAR and IndyCar do exactly that, week after week, in contexts that align naturally with Texas A&M’s strengths in engineering, research, leadership and service. Just as importantly, very few peer universities participate meaningfully in this space, which makes Texas A&M immediately distinctive when it appears and allows the university to pair visibility with purpose, connecting new audiences to how Texas A&M serves Texas and the nation.
“Now through November, Texas A&M will again show up where millions of fans are already paying attention,” said R. Ethan Braden, vice president and chief marketing and communications officer. “But the goal isn’t simply awareness. It’s building familiarity and meaning in places where performance, teamwork and love of country are already part of the culture. We’re pairing sustained visibility with a clear story: Texas A&M as A Force For Good in Texas, in American innovation and in service to the nation.”
Texas A&M’s motorsports activations leverage the consistent scale of two national broadcast ecosystems. Last season, IndyCar’s first season on FOX averaged 1.4 million viewers per race across its 17-race season, the most since 2008. The Indianapolis 500 remains the sport’s biggest stage, averaging more than 7 million viewers on FOX and peaking at 8.4 million, while also drawing an in-person sellout crowd of approximately 350,000 fans. NASCAR delivers even greater weekly scale, with the NASCAR Cup Series averaging 2.5 million viewers per event during the 2025 season and marquee events drawing substantially larger audiences.
Beyond the track, Texas A&M’s motorsports strategy supports workforce development by creating coveted educational opportunities for Aggie students. Through the partnership, Haas Factory Team is expanding its internship footprint with Texas A&M in 2026 to include six paid summer engineering internships, along with two paid summer internships for students in marketing and communications. Embedded inside a top-tier NASCAR operation in North Carolina, these students gain hands-on experience in a high-performance environment defined by precision, teamwork, deadlines and accountability, while building real-world skills and professional networks that translate into job opportunities after graduation.