Denny Hamlin’s recent hot form in NASCAR makes Pocono, a track where he has been historically good, an interesting watch. However, it is his No. 11 JGR Toyota’s King’s Hawaiian livery that has us recalling a similar theme from 2024 in Sonoma.

Brad Keselowski ran a Minion theme livery while being sponsored by King’s Hawaiian in 2024. But the story around that livery has now unraveled since JGR revealed Hamlin’s Pocono livery for this week.

NASCAR insider and former RFK Racing content and digital media strategist Elijah Burke shared a thread on X about the original plans for the Minions livery for Keselowski's car from 2024 and what happened. Burke wrote:

“Here’s a story. When this collab happened on Brad’s car, we had an entire rollout plan at RFK. Then, a couple of weeks before the race, Universal realizes they signed a deal with Volkswagen for the movie and have a problem with Brad’s car being a Ford.”

Burke revealed that Universal made an odd request to cover up for the mess, adding:

“They asked if we can refrain from posting about the car until the race on Sunday. They wanted us to remove every mention or visual of Ford, which was impossible. Heck, the car is a friggin’ Mustang!”

Burke and team pivoted to hyping up Chris Buescher's livery while blacking out Keselowski’s car apart from a King’s Hawaiian logo, putting it as a top secret reveal. The Despicable Me 4 livery finally appeared in public on Friday ahead of the race in Sonoma, but disappeared, never to be seen again, until it appeared on Hamlin’s car ahead of this weekend's Pocono race.

While the minions' livery is quite a story, the King’s Hawaiian crossover JGR story is even more interesting. 

Why King’s Hawaiian Pivoted From RFK Racing To JGR

King’s Hawaiian is a baked goods company based out of California, and they were partners with RFK Racing for 2 years as the primary sponsor for Keselowski’s car. But that ended when RFK confirmed a third charter for 2025.

Ryan Preece was set to drive the No. 60 Ford under the leased charter with Kroger as the primary sponsor. While King’s Hawaiian ran with Keselowski from 2022 to 2024, Kroger came with a deal that was hard to turn down.

Kroger came on as the primary sponsor from 2025 for all three RFK cars, but that was where the problems began for King’s Hawaiian. Kroger is a grocery chain that uses its primary sponsorship to rent out space across the car to various brands in its stores. 

One such brand was Bimbo Bakeries, a direct competitor to King’s Hawaiian. Once RFK confirmed its deal with Kroger at the end of 2024, it took just under two months for King’s Hawaiian to switch. 

At the beginning of 2025, King’s Hawaiian and JGR announced that they would enter into a multi-year partnership. The brand was the primary sponsor for four races for Denny Hamlin that year.

That for the California brand was a lucrative and economical deal, meaning they wouldn’t be paying as much as they were for the full-season sponsorship at RFK while still being part of a team that was dominant with ample screen time.

With Hamlin returning to a favourite hunting ground this weekend in Pocono, where he has seven wins, the most all-time, we can expect to see King's Hawaiian on victory lane.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Yash Kotak