Four-time NHRA Competition Eliminator champion and current FoxSports NHRA pit reporter Bruno Massel has a new sponsorship to carry him through his final two events this season, the weekend's Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd and the Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis. 

Outlaw Beer will serve as Massel's primary sponsor to finish the season. 

Credit businessman Mark Stockseth with the impetus to keep Massel on track. Stockseth has been instrumental in Massel's Pro Stock effort in the past years. 

"Mark and I had talked early in the season after I had lost my funding to chase the NHRA Comp Eliminator championship," Massel said. "He had inquired about why I wasn't racing, to which I responded, 'It's all about the dollars and cents."

Massel confirmed that Stockseth reached out to him recently with the offer for Outlaw Beer sponsorship. 

"It's just a cool thing because I've always wanted to have a beer sponsor," Massel said. "Ever since I was a kid, there was the Beer Wars; I thought, what is better than drag racing, and then have a beer sponsor on top of it?

"It's the ultimate in cool points. Outlaw Beer is doing a big promotion at Brainerd. They're going to be doing a lot of stuff out in the zoo and a lot of activation stuff that weekend. So just being involved with my program is going to help as a catalyst to further the promotion they're doing up in Brainard."

Massel has masterfully balanced the high-wire challenge of drag racing in competition and working with television broadcasts. He believes there are times he struggles to balance the two, but Massel has mastered the challenge so much that it's evident. 

"I still haven't figured out how to make it a delicate balance," Massel admitted. "It's like I'm a bull in a china shop trying to make it all happen in the same weekend. It's a lot going on. And I do a ton of research ahead of time for weather and all that stuff because I'm also tuning my car.

"If it was the Pro Stock car, I just hop in and drive. But with my stuff, I'm putting the tune-up. I'm following the ladder, doing all that stuff, and trying to do the Fox broadcast. So when Monday comes after a weekend of racing, I'm beat. Like I need the day off, I got nothing left in the tank. But it's just an incredible opportunity. It's like, how can you not want to do both? If you're getting the opportunity to do it."

Massel believes the support of his boss at NHRA's broadcast, Steve Reintjes, makes it all work.

"He is just tremendous," Massel said. "They give me some good leeway here and there when needed if we're in a bind, or late rounds, or something. They'll let me slip by and ensure I can get my job done in the race car. They value the fact that they got somebody out there racing, and is still connected, and is still active in the sport. They realize that it's important to have somebody on the TV side still out there doing it and fighting the good fight."

For example, two of Massel's championships came while working on the broadcast. Just because he makes it look easy doesn't mean it is. 

"It's really hard because, in the years past, I had weekends off where I just physically raced," Massel explained. "Then in '22 and last year in '23, money was tight, and I couldn't take the weekend off; I tried involuntarily doing it. So, I won three national events while racing and working. And it's a lot. It's challenging and stressful. It's really hard mentally to keep focused and to compartmentalize, and focus on what's going on with the track, and what's going on with the story time we're doing, and the next minute, have to sprint back to the car and focus on what's got to happen in the race car. I do a better job on some weekends than others; let's put it that way.

Massel may return to Pro Stock one day, but he doesn't have an idea when that might be. He adds that it would have to be an almost perfect situation for him to win. 

"As much as I would love to run a Pro Stock car, the novelty of doing a burnout and racing Pro Stock is over. It's like, I want to win. And if I don't feel I can go out there and win, I've just wasted somebody's money and my time."

Massel will race this weekend at a facility where he's compiled an impressive track record and a place he describes as just plain fun. 

"To me, it's like the second home," Massel said. I've won there a bunch of times. I'm the defending champ. I would do the zoo feature stuff. It's my favorite place to go to. Now that I've got my Outlaw Beer sponsorship, it's even more fun. Then we go to Indy, my last race. It's the 10th anniversary of winning with the COPO, and I got the first win for the COPO Camaro. 

"Now I'm running a Toyota. It's a Toyota race. It just doesn't get any better than these last two races."