On Sunday afternoon, Ben Blessing was in his home in Tennessee, running around his living room screaming, “I ain’t paying him a cent.”
Blessing is referring to Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr., the NASCAR driver that Blessing’s company Blue-Emu agreed to sponsor for the virtual iRacing event on Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
During the race, Wallace crashed into Clint Bowyer to which Bowyer told the announcing team, “I got Bubba’d.”
Wallace responded by tweeting the following, “That’s why I don’t take this s*** serious. Bye bye. Peace out!” and promptly quit as his stream went dark. (Wallace has since deleted this tweet.)
Blessing is the executive vice president of pain-relief brand Blue-Emu, which was sponsoring Wallace.
“We aren’t sponsoring Bubba anymore,” Blessing told The Action Network. “Can you imagine if he did that in real life on a track?”
After Blue-Emu had to stop sponsoring Richard Petty, because of a non-compete with Goody’s, they started sponsoring races of Petty drivers starting in 2015 and had done 10 real races over the past five years.
Blessing said that an official with Richard Petty Motorsports reached out to Blessing after the race and said they wouldn’t be invoiced for Bubba’s virtual sponsorship on Sunday.
See more at Action Network.