Posted on 12/19/2025 6:36:04 AM PST by MtnClimber
The sport itself is changing for each of the three major racing leagues.
In decades past, when Michael Jordan took to the court, everyone knew the inevitable result. This fall, not so much.
The change has much to do with the type of court where Jordan has more recently “competed.” As the majority owner of a stock-car racing team with driver Denny Hamlin, Jordan and another team spent nearly two weeks inside a federal courthouse in Charlotte during the trial of their antitrust suit against NASCAR.
Both parties ultimately settled the suit mid-trial for an undisclosed sum, making it more difficult to ascertain exactly whether and how Jordan “won.” The settlement marks a series of important developments over a normally quiet offseason that will affect how major motorsports leagues operate.
Monopoly Allegations
The suit, originally filed in October 2024 amid contentious negotiations between all NASCAR teams and the sanctioning body, alleged that the league abused its monopoly position — NASCAR owns many of the tracks on which the series runs, and tracks hosting events (whether NASCAR-owned or not) cannot host other stock-car racing series — to “low-ball” the amount of revenue teams received. While most teams signed a renewal of their charters (the sport’s equivalent of a franchise) that fall, Jordan’s 23XI team and Front Row Motorsports refused to sign, and went to court.
Both entities took a major gamble, as a defeat in court likely would have caused financial losses leading to the dissolution of their teams. But Jordan, who personally came to the courthouse every day of the trial (causing a minor media circus), thought the sacrifice worth it to help grow the sport over the long run.
While the financial terms of the settlement with the two suing teams weren’t disclosed, all NASCAR teams won “evergreen” charters, a move toward giving the teams more stability. The move was one that the France family, which controls NASCAR, had previously refused to contemplate. Teams will also have more input on car design changes, in an attempt to keep team costs manageable.
Will Scars Linger?
Those and other changes will, as Jordan stated, grow the sport, but they came at a steep cost — and arguably an unnecessary one. Because Jim France, son of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., refused to sign off on permanent charters, the sport ended up going through a 14-month-long soap opera, with the financial details of the teams and the league on public display.
Apart from the costs associated with the high-priced litigation teams, the optics of groups of millionaires battling it out over pieces of the pie never look good to ordinary sports fans, whether in labor disputes or, as here, in court. The defensiveness of NASCAR executives on the witness stand and the way they took potential competitors as a threat meant they came out on the worse end of the public relations battle.
Then there were the text messages. Among the most inflammatory were several from NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps regarding Richard Childress, who owned the car driven by NASCAR icon Dale Earnhardt. In a series of angry texts from 2023, Phelps called Childress “not smart … a dinosaur, and a malcontent,” a “total a—clown,” and “a stupid redneck who owes his entire fortune to NASCAR.”
Those aren’t the kinds of statements that either Childress or NASCAR fans will necessarily forget, let alone forgive. Some have called for Jim France to step down as the league’s CEO, rightly noting that just about any publicly held company would have axed its chief executive after a court debacle this bad. Only time will tell if he or others go, and whether time can heal these wounds.
Open Wheel Changes Also Afoot
Beyond NASCAR, other motorsports leagues also face major changes this offseason. After a cheating scandal just before last year’s Indianapolis 500, IndyCar announced a new independent officiating system for 2026. The change is designed to alleviate the fact that the owner of the league (that is, IndyCar) also owns one of the league’s competing teams — Roger Penske, whose cars were sanctioned for major rules violations twice in as many years.
Meanwhile, Formula One ended its campaign with Lando Norris narrowly defeating Max Verstappen for the championship, with the Brit winning his first title in Abu Dhabi and denying Verstappen his fifth consecutive title. But the closeness of the 2025 title fight doesn’t necessarily portend outcomes in 2026, with so many changes taking place — new regulations for engines, chassis, and a new 11th team (Cadillac) adding two more cars to the grid. Even the terms used to describe the cars’ aerodynamics and the Formula 1 broadcast partner in the United States will sound and look different.
Offseasons in motor racing, as in most sports, see new faces going to new places. But for each of the three major racing leagues, the sport itself is changing. All of which suggests fans have much to anticipate when cars get back on track next spring.
NASCARs DEI push didn’t help them any with their fans either.
The Wood Brothers team had to deal with some of this.
They were my late father-in-law’s brothers.
The woods in Patrick County are full of Woods.
But they seem to have convinced themselves fans lost interest in the sport after the popular drivers of the early 2000’s retired. I haven’t seen an explanation about why that didn’t happen after greats like Junior Johnson, Richard Petty, and more retired.
Living 80 miles from Daytona I was heavy into Nascar from the 80s into the mid 90s.
When they let toyota in and for several other reasons I lost interest......glad I enjoyed it before it went woke and started kissing the ass of a certain ethnicity.
It was a defining period in my life and I really enjoyed everything about motorsports until NASCAR set it all on fire. NASCAR sucks.
Human beings refuse to learn from history. The wheel will not ever be re-invented.
there are areas on the planet where the wheel has YET to be invented
Exactly.
When it changed to NASCARDEI I’d had enough. I know several guys who turned it off when Dale Earnhart died but I felt there was something off when they put that skateboard spoiler on the Car of Tomorrow. NASCAR couldn’t figure out why the cars were wrecking like they never had when it was obvious the ridiculous wing on the back was the whole problem.
I was a huge motorsports fan from a young age but like all sports these days I no longer follow it. This article told me who won the F1 championship this year so that is how out of it I am. FR posts are pretty much all the sports news I get. This is also the first I have heard Jordan was even involved in all this.
NASCAR team payouts changed with the unified media deal in 2001 and further in 2016 by Rob Kauffman, who pushed for the current changes via the Race Team Alliance regarding how teams are paid. Kauffman was directly responsible for dissolving two Cup teams (Michael Waltrip in 2013 and Chip Ganassi in 2021). He wanted the system to remove merit and replace it with a franchise system to guarantee teams’ entrance into events. Kauffman’s Race Team Alliance then sold the teams’ media channel. The RTA wanted more cut of NASCAR’s media rights deal, especially with reduced viewership of premium pay races and fewer network television races, and in the settlement NASCAR will pay teams a cut of international media rights money.
Prior to this, merit paid teams, and teams that were the winningest teams of the past season were paid the most and had to make appearances for the tracks. The current franchising system eliminated the Plan 1A, 1B, and Winner’s Circle bonus plans. Winner’s Circle resulted in drivers making public appearances for circuits to collect the bonus money. That disappeared and it’s hurt the sport. NASCAR responded this year by having the Driver Ambassador Program, based on the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program.
The franchise system is their equivalent of a Concorde Agreement.
We see where in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, where there is no charter system and merit is used, drivers actively make appearances on Nexstar (The CW and NewsNation) programming, which is the series’ media rights partner. Drivers there are appearing on WWE NXT because of the requirement for the series and its media partnership. Drivers are appearing at ACC basketball games to be part of the media agreements.
He is in NASCAR as an owner. He was trying to get Bubba Wallace a championship as part of the race war.
“there are areas on the planet where the wheel has YET to be invented”
Do you happen to know the demographic of those areas?
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