02/27/2022
It was announced in late 2021 that long-time NASCAR sponsor M&M’s, which had been with Kyle Busch for two Cup championships, will be leaving NASCAR after the 2022 season – ending a partnership on the No. 18 Toyota that began in 2008 with Joe Gibbs Racing and Mars Inc., the brand’s parent company.
So rang the general press blurb, however, many fans know that M&M’s had been in Cup long before Kyle Busch made his mark with the iconic candy brand. Starting in 1999 through the 2002 Cup season, M&M’s was the full-time, primary sponsor prominently displayed on Nelson Bowers’ Pontiacs piloted by Ernie Irvan, Dick Trickle, and Jerry Nadeau (1999) and finally Ken Schrader (2000 thru 2002) before departing to Robert Yates Racing in the Ford camp.
The very first M&M’s appearance, however, was not in 1999 but in early 1998 as part of toe-in-the-water approach by Mars, Inc. Nelson Bowers corralled M&M’s sponsorship for the 1998 Las Vegas 400 held on March 1, 1998, with Ernie Irvan behind the wheel. While the results were not spectacular (Irvan started 18th and finished 30, 3 laps off the pace in a race where Fords swept the top 7 finishes), by virtue of the late 1990’s being part of NASCAR’s expansive glory years, Mars decided to ride the booming NASCAR exposure train (like many other blue chip companies) and began a partnership that eventually will have lasted an incredible 23 seasons.
The first M&M’s sponsored Cup car, the 1998 Nelson Bowers Pontiac at Las Vegas Motor Speedway –
Pontiac Racing 