President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend Sunday’s Daytona 500 race, marking the second major sporting event he will attend in about a week since returning to the White House.
The iconic 500-mile race, held in Daytona Beach, Florida, opens NASCAR’s season, with the green flag dropping at 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Trump previously attended the event in 2020, taking a lap around the track in The Beast.
Trump also gave the command for racers to “start your engines” at the start of the 2020 race.
Ahead of Trump’s expected attendance, NASCAR racer Bubba Wallace said he “couldn’t care less” whether the president attends, adding that he and the other racers are “here to race” and “not for the show.” Wallace and Trump previously feuded on social media in 2020 when the president accused the driver of pushing “a HOAX,” referring to Wallace saying he found a rope shaped like a noose in his garage. The black driver said people should “always deal with the hate being thrown at you with LOVE,” even if it is “HATE from the POTUS.”
Trump made his comment toward Wallace after the FBI found that the racer was not a victim of a hate crime and that the rope had already been inside the garage at Talladega Superspeedway for some time.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) attended the Daytona 500 last year, joined by Florida first lady Casey DeSantis and their three children.
Trump’s anticipated attendance at the annual race comes right after he made history on Sunday by becoming the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl. The president also conducted a pre-Super Bowl interview on Sunday.