CARS Tour champion Brenden Queen reveals true origin of 'Butterbean' nickname with "nothing to do with racing"

CARS Tour Champion, Brenden Queen, recently shared the origins of his famous nickname, Butterbean. He explained the origin of his name in an episode of Harvick Happy Hour.

The CARS late model stock car series champion of 2024 was Brenden Queen. He made the move to a full-time CARS Tour program with Lee Pulliam Performance, where he won two races, made 11 top-5s, and four poles out of sixteen starts in the championship season. Queen has also been celebrated as a fighter who survived cases like throttle problems when he was already in the late final race to take the title home. His tenure with Lee Pulliam Performance also saw him win several races, and this was the inaugural CARS Tour title for his team.

Queen began racing at the age of six at Virginia Langley Speedway. There, he won 3 Late Model Stock titles (2022, 2021, 2020) and other tracks such as East Carolina Motor Speedway and Dixieland Speedway. He made his first full season at the CARS Tour in 2023 and was second in points. Through consistent work, race wins, he claimed the tour championship by 2024. Queen will take his next step in his career by completing a full-time ride in 2025 in the ARCA Menards Series with the No. 28 Chevrolet, racing with Pinnacle Racing Group, with victories already in that series.

"Well, so the butter bean thing came from when I was a baby. Uh, my granddad, uh, called my mom and was like. Turn the TV on, like your son's on TV. And she turned it on, and it was butter bean, a boxer. Oh, wow. And I looked like him as a baby, like just had the same, yeah. Yeah. So like my whole life, uh, my mom called me butter or butter bean," Queen said (13:03 onwards).

"Just half the time I didn't even respond to my name. It just always was butter or something like that. And honestly, it was just kind of between family. And then my friends found out, the teachers found out, the school called me by it, like so it had nothing to do with racing, nothing."

Kevin Harvick is a very successful American NASCAR racer who is recognized as the winner of the NASCAR Cup Series Championship in 2014. His career best victories are 60 in the Cup Series, 47 in the Xfinity Series, and 14 in the Truck Series, a total of 121 wins across the three national series of NASCAR, the most of any driver, though he still ranks third all-time in combined wins behind Richard Petty and Kyle Busch.

Harvick, particularly, has been the most successful racer at Phoenix Raceway in all kinds with a total of nine victories and has won several prestigious races, such as in the year 2007 in the Daytona 500.

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Brenden Queen conquers chaos in Iowa race to claim maiden ARCA short track victory

Brenden Queen claimed his fifth ARCA Menards Series victory of the 2025 season and his first on a short track at Iowa Speedway during the Atlas 150 race. He took the lead mid-race from Brent Crews on a restart and managed to hold off Crews, who finished second, despite the two making contact with eight laps remaining while navigating lapped traffic. Queen’s strategic choice of the outside lane during restarts played a key role, as it was the first time a leader chose that lane all night, and it helped him maintain position.

Throughout the race, Queen controlled the early stages but lost the lead briefly to Crews before reclaiming it on a well-timed restart. The battle between Queen and Crews was intense, particularly in the closing laps when they made contact through lapped traffic, yet Queen never relinquished his position.