Kyle Busch and his Kyle Busch Motorsports are in the midst of a lawsuit – though they’re not on the receiving end. Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Camping World Truck Series team had sued former driver Justin Boston and sponsor Zloop after the company reportedly skipped out on payments to keep Boston in the No. 54 on a full-time basis.
According to the lawsuit, Zloop missed $650,000 in payments toward an annual contract of $3.2 million, with money missed out on in May and June. Boston was out of the ride after nine races, with performance an issue, too – he had scored just four top-10 finishes all season.
Zloop certainly isn’t the first in NASCAR to experience this problem: the money promised isn’t what ends up showing up in the check by the end of the year. Sometimes, checks don’t appear at all, and a team that was once expecting to run the full season with a given driver is suddenly out after five races – or less.
Perhaps you’ll recall a few of these other sponsors that didn’t quite live up to what they originally announced when it came to branding a NASCAR race team – or so it was alleged.
Big Daddy’s BBQ Sauce
The Yukon, Oklahoma-based barbecue sauce company first appeared in NASCAR in the late 1990s, its biggest package being a sponsorship of Mike Harmon for Donlavey Racing in 1999 for rookie of the year in the Winston Cup Series. But according to the Baltimore Sun, Big Daddy”s never paid – nor did it supply funds to some of its other racing ventures – and Harmon never took the track at Daytona. Interestingly, Big Daddy’s ended up sponsoring other cars that season and helmed South Boston Speedway in the early 2000s as a title sponsor.
Lycos
There was a time when Google wasn’t virtually the only search engine the majority of Internet users utilized, especially in the late ’90s and early 2000s. One of those was Lycos, which was also a web portal that owned websites like Angelfire, Matchmaker.com and more. Lycos initially came to NASCAR fans’ eyes as sponsor of Matt Kenseth‘s Busch Series ride, but then leapt to Cup aboard Johnny Benson‘s No. 10 for Tyler Jet Motorsports in 2000. However, Lycos decals were off the car by July, team owner Tim Beverley claiming the company had not come through on banner advertising online, saying that the ads the team sold were never actually displayed and were worth around $5.5 million. The Indy Racing League’s TeamXTreme joined a lawsuit Beverley helmed, claiming it had a similar experience.
Speedblock/Hechinger/Builders Square
Speaking of Tim Beverley: in 1998, Beverley bought Darrell Waltrip’s old self-owned race team after Waltrip was forced to scale back the schedule of his No. 17 early that season. The reason? Speedblock, which signed on as sponsor for the season, could only pay portions of the sponsorship dollars it promised, the company claiming a fellow sponsor, Builders Square, did not pay as it had promised, something the other called false allegations. Either way, it was the end of Waltrip’s No. 17 in NASCAR.
OXYwater
In early 2013, the news was out: FAS Lane Racing’s No. 32 would be sponsored for three years by up-and-comer OXYwater, beginning with 24 races that year and expanding to full seasons the next two years. Then the IRS caught up, and the Columbus, Ohio, company was convicted of fraud, misusing millions of dollars from investors. The sponsorship was pulled from the No. 32 after the Brickyard 400, the company filing bankruptcy. Earlier this week, one man behind OXYwater was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Kevin Rutherford is the executive editor of Frontstretch, a position he gained in 2025 after being the managing editor since 2015, and serving on the editing staff since 2013.
At his day job, he's a journalist covering music and rock charts at Billboard. He lives in New York City, but his heart is in Ohio -- you know, like that Hawthorne Heights song.