The New Orleans Saints running back is sponsoring an Xfinity Series team for the Daytona road course race.
New Orleans Saints running back Alvin Kamara hasn’t been a NASCAR fan for all that long, but he said Friday: “I feel like I’m a part of it now.”
He really got into it toward the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, particularly after Bubba Wallace in June called for the sport to ban the Confederate flag from its events.
Four days after NASCAR officially banned the flag, Kamara was at his first race, which was at Homestead-Miami Speedway, decked out in Wallace’s apparel. And he said he was blown away by his first in-person experience at the track.
“The fast cars are definitely surprising,” Kamara said Friday during a Zoom press conference. “You think they’re going fast on TV, you can say 200 miles per hour, but when you see 200 miles per hour and you feel it and hear it, it’s totally different.
“It’s surprising to me because this is not a sport that, generally, someone I guess like me or looks like me would be into. I’m just being realistic. So for me, going and interacting with the people that are in the suites and that are actually real fans of NASCAR, it was just nice.”
And as of this week, Kamara is playing a literal part in NASCAR, beyond being in its fan base.
In the brief time since Sunday’s Daytona 500, which Kamara attended, the Saints star became a NASCAR team sponsor, putting his Louisiana-based juice bar chain The Big Squeezy on driver Ryan Vargas’ No. 6 JD Motorsports Chevrolet for Saturday’s second-tier Xfinity Series race on Daytona International Speedway’s road course.
The running back said he plans to attend this one too: “I wouldn’t miss that.”
On Twitter, Kamara is vocal about his NASCAR fandom, tweeting at drivers — he said he’s known Wallace since college — sharing what he’s learning as a new fan and making jokes. He even tweeted that he pushed back his return flight from the Daytona 500 during the nearly six-hour rain delay so he could see the race and offered mid-delay weather updates.
He’s shared his newfound love of NASCAR with other NFL players, including Saints linebacker Craig Robertson and former teammate Mark Ingram Jr., he said. When they ask him if he actually likes NASCAR, he emphatically says yes and offers to prove to them why.
“‘You’ve gotta come, I’m telling you,'” Kamara said he explains to them.
“Hopefully when this COVID thing the restrictions get a little more relaxed and things get a little more safer,” he continued, “I’m like, man, I will pay for everybody to come to a race and sit in a suite so you can see what’s going on, or go down by the track and really hear, or just sit in the grandstands and hear the engines start or see the laps. It’s different. It’s a different experience. … You gotta experience it, you gotta be there to really appreciate the sport.”
While Kamara described what he enjoys about the sights and sounds at the track, he also said he might not have gotten involved in NASCAR, had the mostly white sport not embraced a more inclusive approach, including banning the Confederate flag.
“It’s about diversity — just opening the gates to welcome in new fans and new sets of people that may have had interest, but … didn’t feel comfortable,” he said.
“I think there is people in the African-American community that are obviously interested. I think it’s more on our radar now because of what’s been happening over the past months. Bubba – the news of him has been everywhere. Obviously with NASCAR making the move to ban the flag from their events and from basically their culture and their footprint, that was one huge thing. I probably couldn’t bring myself to go to a race if that was something that I felt like they were supporting.
“So with that being gone, I think that there will be more African-American fans and people that are interested. And once that happens — once they see me and Michael Jordan and people that are actually interested in doing things — I think that just opens the door for more fans.”
Kamara also said he hopes to some day, maybe in a post-COVID world, get a chance to ride along with Vargas or another driver.
“I’m not scared of too much, but that right there, that might be something different,” he said laughing.
