Bandero Premium Tequila didn’t just renew a sponsorship for the biggest race on the NHRA calendar. It split itself in half.
At the Cornwell Quality Tools NHRA U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park, the brand will run a Bandero Café Funny Car with Alexis DeJoria behind the wheel and a separate Bandero Premium Tequila dragster in Top Fuel with Ida Zetterström driving. Same logo, same marketing banner, Team Bandero, but two cars built in two different shops, tuned by two different crew chiefs, and entered by teams that have nothing to do with each other outside of this one race weekend. DeJoria’s Funny Car comes out of John Force Racing. Zetterström’s dragster is fielded by Shawn Reed Racing, running GlobalSKU branding alongside Bandero’s.
That structure is more interesting than a standard renewal, because it isn’t how nitro sponsorship usually works. Most spirits, energy-drink, and lifestyle-brand deals in Top Fuel and Funny Car attach to one team for a season, buying space in an existing shop’s program so the logo rides on whatever chassis that shop fields. Bandero instead built two independent driver relationships, one per nitro category, at organizations that share no equipment or personnel, and lined both appearances up for the same weekend because that weekend outperforms every other date on the calendar.
Bandero co-founder and CEO Jonathan Kendrick put the reasoning simply: “Indy is where you show up in a big way.” The math backs him up. The U.S. Nationals draws NHRA’s largest crowds and heaviest media coverage of the season, so a single-race buy at Indianapolis Raceway Park returns more exposure per dollar than a mid-season national event ever could. Fielding one car in each nitro class doubles that footprint without doubling the cost of a season-long commitment to either team.
The DeJoria half of the deal shows how sponsor loyalty in this sport tends to follow the driver rather than the car number. Bandero has backed DeJoria since 2021, when she still ran her own operation. She spent 2025 as a teammate to Zetterström at JCM Racing, then moved to John Force Racing ahead of this season, a significant team change for a driver who already owns a U.S. Nationals Funny Car title, won in 2014. Bandero didn’t stay behind with the old team. It moved with her, which says the brand is investing in DeJoria as a spokesperson first and a particular paint scheme second.
Zetterström’s side of the deal is the more unusual piece. She isn’t running a full Top Fuel season; Indianapolis will be her second outing in Bandero and GlobalSKU colors in 2026, after the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte back in April. That’s an increasingly normal shape for nitro sponsorship: instead of funding an entire multi-race championship campaign, a sponsor buys into a handful of marquee weekends, and a driver without a full-time ride still gets seat time in one of drag racing’s fastest and most expensive categories. Zetterström’s résumé fits that selective schedule well. She’s a 2023 FIA European Top Fuel champion and a two-time FIM Super Street Bike champion, a title-winner on two wheels and four, in disciplines that demand very different reaction windows off the starting line.
Sponsorship math has been a running theme in nitro racing all season. Jim Campbell’s Funny Car deal showed that a hometown gas-station brand can still buy real space on a nitro car, and Bandero’s two-team split shows the opposite end of the same market: a sponsor with enough budget to be in two garages at once. Drag racing’s business side has been loud in general this year, right down to the ownership and track-closure fights playing out at facilities like Maple Grove.
None of this changes what actually happens on the track. For that, the U.S. Nationals field is what will decide who’s celebrating in the winner’s circle over Labor Day weekend. But it’s worth remembering that this deal, however it plays out on the scoreboards, puts two teams that don’t share a garage wall, a tow rig, or a single line on a budget sheet into the same sponsor’s victory photo if both cars perform. That’s less a reunion story than a reminder that in NHRA’s nitro classes, the money now moves independently of the machinery.
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