Vielight Partners with Haas Factory Team (NASCAR) to Bring Brain Health Into the Sports Conversation

Why a Neurotech Company is on the NASCAR Track

From the cockpit of a 175 mph NASCAR racecar to the playing fields of every contact sport, the brain does the heaviest lifting in athletics. It is time it got the attention it deserves.

When most people picture an elite athlete, they picture the body: reflexes, strength, stamina. The organ quietly running the whole operation is the brain. It reads the field, anticipates the play, and makes the split-second decisions that separate a great performance from a costly mistake. In many sports, it is also the part of the body most exposed to forces we are only beginning to understand.

That is the idea behind our new partnership with Haas Factory Team in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series: to move brain health closer to the center of the sports-performance conversation. Racing is the perfect place to start.

It Starts in the Cockpit

A NASCAR driver spends a race threading a 3,400-pound car through traffic at speeds north of 175 mph, often inches from the cars around them. Heart rates sit at roughly 65–85% of maximum for the duration of the event. Every corner loads the body with sustained G-forces. And underneath the physical strain runs a continuous stream of high-stakes cognition: reading the track, anticipating rivals, and making decisions where the margin between a clean pass and a wreck is measured in fractions of a second.

“NASCAR drivers face extreme physical demands, sustained high G-forces, and rapid-fire decision-making environments where cognitive sharpness is everything,” said Joe Custer, President of Haas Factory Team. “Vielight represents the absolute cutting edge of neurotechnology. By focusing on brain health and recovery at a cellular level, this partnership gives me a powerful tool to maintain peak performance, accelerate recovery, and build long-term neurological resilience.”

Researchers who study driver-athletes describe a task that demands complex motor skill, high-level executive function, and emotional control, all performed in an extreme environment. In other words, racing is as much a cognitive sport as a physical one: a point drivers have made for years, even as the wider world has been slow to recognize it.

The Vielight team trackside at Pocono, bringing the brain-health message to a new audience.

Driver Sheldon Creed, who pilots the Vielight-backed No. 00, sees the appeal in practical terms. “Vielight is working to bring more attention to brain health, which is so important to us drivers,” Creed said. “By focusing on brain health and recovery, this partnership gives me a way to think about long-term performance and resilience — not just for race day, but for the long haul.”

The partnership made its debut with Vielight as the primary partner on the No. 00 Chevrolet at Pocono Raceway, where Creed brought the car home with a top-five finish, a spectacular result with 38 cars participating. Vielight branding will remain on the car as an associate sponsor through the balance of the 2026 season.

A Conversation Bigger Than One Sport

The demands racing places on the brain are not unique to motorsport. Across athletics, the brain is both the engine of performance and, in many sports, the part of the body most worth protecting.

In the sports where contact is part of the game – football, hockey, soccer, boxing, rugby and more – the conversation has grown more urgent. A substantial body of research now links repetitive head impacts to long-term changes in brain health. Work funded by the National Institutes of Health and led by researchers at Boston University found that more than 40% of contact- and collision-sport athletes who died before age 30 and were studied in a dedicated brain bank showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a finding the lead researcher called remarkable, while cautioning that symptoms are shaped by many factors, not CTE alone. Scientists also increasingly point to sub-concussive impacts: the routine, lower-level hits that never produce obvious symptoms as a meaningful contributor to cumulative effects on cognition.

At the same time, researchers note that participation in sport delivers real benefits for cardiovascular fitness, psychological resilience, and cognition itself. The goal is not to discourage athletes from competing. It is to take the brain as seriously as we take every other part of the athletic body: to fund the research, build the awareness, and give athletes at every level a fuller picture of how to care for the organ that makes them who they are.

“Racing places real neurological demands on drivers, and brain health deserves a larger role in that conversation.” Dr. Lew Lim, Founder & CEO, Vielight

“Our partnership with Haas Factory Team helps bring greater visibility to non-invasive technologies designed to support performance, cognitive function and recovery, both on and off the track,” said Dr. Lim. “The athletes are already telling us this matters. Our role is to keep advancing the science and to help make brain health a normal part of how athletes think about their careers and their lives afterward.”

Watch the full race here

About Vielight

Vielight’s presence in motorsport sits on top of more than a decade of published science. The company’s technology has been studied by research teams at institutions including the University of Toronto, the University of Utah, Harvard Medical School, the University of Sydney, and others, across a range of areas: cognition and memory, brain network connectivity, creativity, mobility, and general wellness, alongside ongoing clinical work in several conditions.

For readers who want to go deeper, our research library brings these published studies and active clinical trials together in one place, with summaries and links to the original papers.

Vielight devices are general wellness products intended to support cognitive function and overall well-being. They are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition, including traumatic brain injury, concussion, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The research referenced regarding contact sports and brain health is provided for general educational context and does not describe the intended use or claimed benefits of any Vielight product. Statements have not been evaluated by the FDA or Health Canada. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding head injuries or neurological symptoms.