Judge frustrated as NASCAR antitrust trial drags on with no end in sight

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) – The slow pace of the federal antitrust suit lodged against NASCAR continued Monday at the start of the second week of the trial, with high-profile witnesses not expected to make it to the stand anytime soon.

Jeffrey Kessler, lead attorney for the two teams suing NASCAR, indicated he plans to call NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps after an expected lengthy testimony from an accountant who will analyze team finances. After Phelps, Kessler said he will call Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress and finally NASCAR chairman Jim France.

But the case is moving far too slow for U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell’s liking and he’s repeatedly asked both 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports, as well as NASCAR, to speed it up. Monday was already off to a delayed start because Bell had to open court in the Western District of North Carolina early to address a slew of motions filed over the weekend.

He was particularly bothered by objections he received at 2:55 a.m. Monday and then 6:50 a.m. before the morning session. He took an hour to get through the rulings, and testimony resumed 30 minutes behind schedule.

It took until the first break of the day to finish testimony from Jonathan Marshall, the executive director of the Race Team alliance, a formal organization meant to represent all of the teams.

In his second day of testimony about the negotiations process on new revenue models, Marshall testified that a week before teams were given the take-it-or-leave-it final offer, a first version of the agreement was presented and team owners Joe Gibbs, Rick Hendrick and Roger Penske all indicated they planned to sign.

Marshall informed the other teams that the top three owners in NASCAR felt they had been presented with the best deal they would receive and planned to accept it, and he testified he believed all other team owners would follow the trio.

“There was a lot of discussion that these three men had been speaking to Jim France, trying to get accommodations on issues and it was clear it wasn’t going to happen,” Marshall said. “These were very friendly team owners with the France’s, in some cases over 50 years. Once those three signed, no one felt a better deal would be available.”

When Kessler gets to his final three witness, testimony should shed more light on the animosity between teams and series executives during the contentious two-plus years of negotiations on a new revenue sharing agreement.

Childress was the subject of derogatory text messages in which Phelps called the six-time championship-winning owner a redneck who “needs to be taken out back and flogged.”

The texts came out in the discovery phase of this messy saga in which Basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan refused to accept NASCAR’s final offer on a new charter agreement and decided to sue the Florida-based France family, which founded NASCAR in 1948 and privately owns the stock car racing series.

It took Jordan’s testimony Friday to bring the national spotlight to NASCAR, but not for its racing product or its competition. Instead, Jordan is out to prove NASCAR is run by a family of dictators enriching themselves at the expense of the teams and drivers. Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, along with Front Row Racing, were the only two teams out of 15 to refuse the new charter agreements offered in September 2024 with a six-hour deadline to sign the 112-page document.

A charter is similar to the franchise model in other sports, but in NASCAR it guarantees 36 teams spots in the 40-car field, as well as specific revenue.

NASCAR publicly admitted it wants to settle the case in comments made ahead of the November season finale by Phelps, but the first week of testimony revealed Jordan and Front Row owner Bob Jenkins want a combined $340 million in damages. Jordan has previously said he’s open to a settlement; several mediation sessions failed to find a solution.

The case had a dreadfully slow first week in which Bell told both sides to pick up the pace but it seems certain the trial will carry into a third week as NASCAR remains days away from beginning its defense.

Every twist in the yearlong court battle has been a setback for NASCAR, which maintains it did give teams an improved revenue model from the original 2016 charter agreement and everything it has done is for the benefit of growing the sport.

However, Jenkins has claimed he’s never turned a profit in more than two decades of racing and has stated losses between $70 million and $100 million. Jordan and Hamlin have admitted 23XI Racing has been profitable in its five years of existence, but largely based on Jordan’s ability to draw high-dollar sponsors.

Jordan, who testified he’s a lifelong NASCAR fan, felt as one of the newer owners in a sport in which the top teams have existed for decades, that he was the only one who could actually challenge the France’s on their way of doing business.

“Someone had to step forward and challenge the entity,” Jordan testified. “I sat in those meetings with longtime owners who were brow-beaten for so many years trying to make change. I was a new person, I wasn’t afraid. I felt I could challenge NASCAR as a whole. I felt as far as the sport, it needed to be looked at from a different view.”

Among witnesses NASCAR is expected to call are Hall of Fame team owners Hendrick and Penske, two of the most powerful figures in motorsports. Penske tried to set his court appearance schedule by telling NASCAR he was only available to testify Monday, but the plaintiffs objected to Penske being called in the middle of their presentation.

Bell sided with 23XI Racing and Front Row and told NASCAR to work it out with Penske, who as owner of Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IndyCar, which recently adopted its charter system, can testify to race sanctioning agreements, the revenue models and financial health of race teams.

Hendrick, a close friend of the France family for decades, is a car salesman and Charlotte local who can use his communication skills to support the theory everyone in racing understands the financials and willingly enters into NASCAR and the France’s business model.

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