Sixteen years into its partnership with the American Cancer Society, Chevrolet is running the same play it has since 2011: put a pink Corvette Stingray in front of the NASCAR Cup Series field every October and tie performance money to the effort. This year’s campaign is slightly bigger than last year’s, and the donation structure has been sharpened enough that the race results will move the needle directly.
The pink Corvette Stingray makes its 2026 on-track debut at Talladega Superspeedway on October 25, pacing the Cup Series field. It returns to pace duty November 1 at Martinsville Speedway for the penultimate round of The Chase. The campaign itself opens earlier: Las Vegas Motor Speedway hosts the South Point 400 on October 4, kicking off a five-race window that also includes Charlotte Motor Speedway and Phoenix Raceway.
Chevrolet has structured the donation program around two triggers. Every Team Chevy driver who finishes in the top 10 at any of the five races earns $1,500 toward the American Cancer Society, up to a program ceiling of $25,000. Separately, every caution lap the pink Corvette leads at Talladega or Martinsville generates $500, again capped at $25,000. The expanded five-race format is new for 2026; prior years ran a narrower schedule.
Last year, Chevrolet raised more than $1.7 million for the American Cancer Society in total, with $32,500 of that coming directly from the NASCAR campaign. The NASCAR portion is a fraction of the overall figure, but it draws the kind of visibility that charity dollars alone cannot buy: a pink pace car leading 40 Cup Series machines at Talladega is a broadcast moment, not a check.
The Corvette doing the pacing is the 2027 Stingray, which Chevrolet announced earlier this year with a 535-hp LS6 V8 and a $73,495 starting price. For pace car duty, the engineering spec is beside the point, but it does put a more powerful car in front of the field than the 2025 model’s 495 hp at a lower price point.
Chevrolet’s motorsports platform makes this kind of campaign unusually efficient: the brand is at Talladega and Martinsville regardless of any charity tie-in, and the incremental cost of running a pink pace car is far lower than buying equivalent broadcast exposure outright. The 16-year run with Making Strides suggests it has worked well enough to keep expanding.
Source: Chevrolet. Images courtesy of Chevrolet.
