On Tuesday (Nov. 4), NASCAR and two of its race teams finally met in court to argue their cases for and against a preliminary injunction.
After reading the arguments made in court between NASCAR and 23XI Racing/Front Row Motorsports, and after a month of lawsuits and responses and all of the legal documents, my initial feeling on this case continues to bear fruit.
NASCAR is a monopoly. Throughout its history, it has used a number of anti-competitive measures that, while not directly counter to a specific competitor, have stopped one from rising up.
And I mean throughout its history. The 1950 NASCAR Cup Series championship is generally considered illegitimate because a number of drivers such as Lee Petty had their points taken away.
Why was this? Because NASCAR had a rule on the books at the time that dictated any drivers that competed in another stock car series would have all Cup points forfeited from them at that point of the season.
NASCAR was not the behemoth it is now in 1950, which was just its third year in operation. There were a number of stock car series throughout the southeast, some of which competed well with NASCAR. Arguably the two largest series were NASCAR and the Sam Nunis-led AAA stock car series.
Nunis is an extremely important figure in NASCAR’s history because he was the person who once told Bill France years earlier to stop declaring individual races as national championships. Instead, he argued, France should distribute points to decide a champion at the end of the year.
Those other stock car series essentially went away following the first Southern 500 late in the 1950 season. Following that race, NASCAR was the biggest series that promoted the biggest race in the South, with the second biggest being the traditional Daytona Beach and Road Course races held in the late winter.
After AAA and then USAC started fizzling out its stock car series and ended in 1984, there have been just two stock car series counter to NASCAR that have had any year-to-year success.
The Superstar Racing Experience lasted three six-race seasons from 2021 to 2023. All of SRX’s point people throughout its existence were adamant that they were not competition for NASCAR.
Still, the SRX business model failed to work out. Fans liked the series when they gave it a chance, but it was never going to grow into a series comparable to NASCAR. Staying at the level it was did not work out, and with no NASCAR support, it did not make it to 2024.
SRX built itself up as a return to short track racing. This is why it’s very interesting that, in 2022 and 2023, NASCAR added two short tracks to its Cup schedule, the quarter-mile Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the legendary North Wilkesboro Speedway. These were the first tracks under a mile added to the schedule in over 50 years.
The other series was the ARCA Menards Series. ARCA has always been the clear minor league to NASCAR, even before it was purchased by NASCAR in 2018. Still, purchasing ARCA meant that nobody could ever potentially take the foundation of the series and grow it into something more than it was. And if they did, they likely would have to have moved to different tracks, as a lot of the schedule’s venues were owned by NASCAR.
When the ARCA sale happened, I wrote in my weekly column at the time that the France family now had a monopoly. And with SRX coming and going in the years since, that is once again the case.
And then we get to the preliminary injunction hearing on Monday. NASCAR’s open team contract, beginning next season, waives the rights for those teams to sue NASCAR.
This is incredibly laughable. Race teams have made a gigantic investment in their operations that cannot magically be turned around, especially for open teams that do not have a charter they could flip.
But NASCAR has an answer for that, both to the court and potential investors: go put your money somewhere else more secure.
Yes, I’m sure Rick Ware could just go buy the Detroit Pistons whenever he wanted to.
Go invest in NASCAR? How do you do that? I don’t remember hearing the France family was accepting new co-owners. Maybe the family of Bill Tuthill should have the first offer to buy back some of their stock in the company that “only Bill France” founded.
One of the main points the team side has raised is that the vast majority of major racetracks in this country are controlled by NASCAR. This is absolutely the case.
There have been 37 racetrack facilities that have hosted Cup Series races since the start of the modern in 1972. Seventeen have been owned or have had races promoted by NASCAR itself.
Twelve more have been owned or promoted by SMI, which just kicked the NTT IndyCar Series from Texas Motor Speedway to go along with NASCAR not re-booking IndyCar at Richmond Raceway after the 2020 date was canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of the eight independently owned race tracks since then, three are currently on the schedule. Four have been closed for years. One of them, Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, has had SMI attempt to take over its operations in the last few years.
Show me a way to have a major stock car racing series in this country without NASCAR’s de facto approval as track owner. It’s terribly hard to imagine.
More than anything, the best argument for why 23XI and Front Row must be granted this junction is that there are jobs at stake.
If Tyler Reddick and any of the team’s sponsors decided to exploit that exit clause in their contracts, 23XI is going to stop fielding that car. Ditto for Bubba Wallace. Consider, too, that if 23XI were to shut down, that’s a lot of jobs that are displaced.
The argument against this preliminary junction is just another attempt for NASCAR to control teams and drivers. Because that’s all it has ever tried to do. Like a true monopoly does.
About the author
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.
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It’s a family owned business. If it was a shoe store the family could build or buy a store in other towns, with their money. Would the France family shoe store and it’s family owned shoe stores be considered a monopoly. Nobody is forcing people or teams to play in Nascar’s game. Take your ball and go home if you don’t like it. Someone will take your place. I’m just stating the facts. And the other article today finally shed light on concessions Nascar was actually willing to extend.. it’s their privately held family business. Hamlin and MJ don’t have to play, they chose to.
Glad to see an armchair lawyer expressing their “views” . Yes, NASCAR is a privately owned company! However, they are still governed by Federal rules and regulations for ALL businesses! Your example of a France shoe store is ridiculous! You don’t understand how monopolistic their practices are.. these issues in the lawsuit didn’t just pop up recently…they’ve been around for years and years! Maybe if you would take the time to actually read the lawsuit, you would find this is involving more than just a charter system dispute. I could explain it to you, but I refuse to take the time to educate people who are ignorant of the law.
No need for the hostility, Gary. A discussion forum involves: opinions and comments about the articles we read. I get the shoe store analogy.
Instead of denigrating us, feel free to educate me on the finer points of this particular lawsuit.
And I don’t like the France family or Nascar. PT Barnum was right.
Hey – Mike, Denny – I have a few racetracks I own if you’d like to buy them. They are worth nothing. Tricky making some of these arguments when stock car racing is demonstrably in decline, and racetracks not viable (without being subsidized in some way). It has been now shown how unnecessary it really is to have a ton of fixed specific facilities when you can drop a track into the middle of a stadium or throw some Jersey barriers out and about and bingo – Chicago! I dislike the France family as much as anybody – but stock car racing probably would have failed long ago without them.