On Thursday, May 25, The Athletic reported NASCAR co-owner and CEO Jim France had been in talks to fund a Spire Motorsports entry into the NASCAR Cup Series race at Sonoma Raceway.
According to the report, France would have put up the money for Spire to enter a fourth entry into that race as well as supply the driver: 29-year-old Jack Aitken, already running full-time for the France family-owned Action Express Racing in IMSA.
Ultimately, the idea was shelved after many in the garage took issue with it, reported The Athletic.
And thank goodness it was.
I don’t fault Spire one bit for going along with the idea. After all, these teams are here to make money and race by whatever means necessary. I also feel bad for Aitken, who was probably looking forward to making his Cup debut, only to have the rug pulled out from under him. We’ve seen road course ringers do well before, most recently Shane van Gisbergen winning at the Chicago street course in 2023, and there’s no doubt this entry would have been a formidable one.
But it would also have been terrible optics for the sport. For France, the whole idea, if true, shows an alarming disconnect with his fellow NASCAR team owners and the fanbase itself.
Conflicts of interest are more commonplace in motorsports than anywhere else. But when the man who literally owns and leads the series has a car competing, it raises the stakes to a whole other level. It’s not like you have to look far to see this type of example hurting the integrity of the sport.
The NTT IndyCar Series is working through those very consequences right now.
The Team Penske cheating scandals within the last two IndyCar seasons wouldn’t have been half as damaging had Roger Penske not owned the series. Three other cars failed technical inspection after the Indianapolis 500, which I would argue is a bigger deal than failing before Fast 12 qualifying, but no heads are rolling for those infractions like they did at Penske.
I’m sure France was enamored with the idea because of the success of Action Express in IMSA. France has owned that team, along with the series, for many years. That conflict of interest doesn’t seem to have caused too much of a stink, although admittedly, I do not know enough insiders within the IMSA garage to know for sure one way or the other.
But IMSA has a fraction of the popularity of NASCAR, which means its leaders will always be under far less scrutiny. Fair or not, as long as Cup is the top series of American motorsports, it will always have the largest magnifying glass on it, which leaves no room for situations that could potentially lead to its integrity being questioned.
If France fielded a Cup team, there’s no doubt we’d see that. Fans and the garage alike would call into question every inspection they went through as well as every penalty or caution that might benefit a France-owned race team in the slightest.
Look at the 2023 Indy 500. When a late caution came out, rather than finish under yellow with leader Marcus Ericsson winning, INDYCAR officials elected to red flag the race and restart it as the field took the white flag. It was an unprecedented move, resulting in Penske’s Josef Newgarden getting the win.
Now, I don’t think INDYCAR was rigging the race to help a Penske car win at all! There’s zero evidence to show it — but it didn’t change the optics. A move made by officials to help the sport get a green-flag finish still endured criticism, perhaps unfairly, from those claiming race manipulation.
How can France look at that current situation in a rival league, especially this month, and not realize team ownership is not in the best interest of the sport? It puts NASCAR’s integrity unnecessarily at risk. And if you lose that? You lose the fans and everything that comes with them.
France putting Aitken in a Spire car for one race wouldn’t destroy NASCAR overnight. But it could set a precedent for future series-based ownership, potentially full time, an iceberg with potential to sink the ship.
So thank you to those in the garage who spoke up. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, and we’ll likely never get most of them on the record. But their actions prevented a self-inflicted wound just days after the sport received positive publicity from both the Coca-Cola 600 itself and Amazon Prime Video’s streaming coverage.
Another layer to this situation is that certain factions of the fanbase and within the industry believe NASCAR to have a Chevrolet and Hendrick Motorsports bias. Be it true or not, that image was not helped when NASCAR partnered with each to put an entry into the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2023. Representatives of both Ford and Toyota spoke about their displeasure about when it was announced.
The Athletic‘s article noted that France wanted to partner with Hendrick at first but could not due to the team already having four cars. But Spire is an ally of HMS, and both teams are Chevy-aligned. It means France entering this partnership would’ve, once again, provided poor optics to those same Ford and Toyota sources concerned about favoritism among manufacturers.
The Sonoma deal may not have gone through, but all of the points above still need to be hammered home in private conversations. There is no rule against series-based ownership on the books; in fact, the current charter deal permits it.
That means there’s nothing stopping France from pursuing a partnership again down the road. The France-Spire-Aitken deal could even take place at another road course this season; perhaps Sonoma was a trial balloon to gauge pushback going forward now that the deal isn’t hitting everyone out of the blue.
And if it happens for a race, that’s one thing. But the scarier prospect that should concern fans and those in the industry is there is a provision in the new charter agreement giving the France family the ability to not just run races but own charters guaranteeing a spot on the grid.
Should the day come when the Frances own full-time race teams that can compete for a championship in a series it owns? The blowback it received in the last 24 hours will pale in comparison.
NASCAR doesn’t need that day of reckoning. What they should do instead is make every effort internally to ensure this idea stays sitting on the shelf.
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.
Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.