Where Do 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports Go From Here?
Unless you’ve been under a rock the entirety of 2025, the ugly underbelly of this season has been going on in a courtroom instead of on the racetrack. That’s where 23XI Racing, owned by Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin and six-time NBA champion Michael Jordan, along with Front Row Motorsports, who boasts a driver roster of Todd Gilliland, Noah Gragson and Zane Smith, are fighting tooth-and-nail to maintain their charter status beyond the 2025 season.
NASCAR struck a big blow in the case in early June, with a judge ruling that NASCAR no longer had to treat the two organizations as chartered teams. Thus NASCAR said that they wouldn’t, and decided to remove the charter status of the two teams. That led to a wave of appeals and injunctions that, ultimately, came to a head last week. For the next two weeks, at least, both teams will race as open entries into the event as opposed to chartered members.
That’s got us up to speed, but it doesn’t answer the bigger question – where do the two teams go from here? The pulling of the two teams’ charters means that they are back in NASCAR’s possession, but they’ve promised not to sell them away in the meantime. In fact, the judge ordered that if NASCAR plans to do anything with the charters, it has to let the court know first. There has to be some comfort in that for 23XI and FRM, but not much.
The reason that the two teams find themselves in this position to begin with is their refusal to sign the charter agreement that every other competitive NASCAR Cup Series team did sign, citing that it limits competition amongst all teams. If we’re being honest here, it doesn’t look great for the two teams. NASCAR now has the power to sell off their charters at some point, which is essentially the master key to this entire operation.
Realistically, it looks like 23XI will either have to double back and sign the charter agreement after the completion of this season, or see how long they can make it as an open team. Unfortunately, the latter means that their established budget will be sliced into small pieces, burned and promptly scattered from the top of the nearest mountaintop. The same can be said for FRM, who don’t have names like Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan to pull in sponsorship money. As of right now, it seems like the two teams will have to officially bend the knee to NASCAR or die trying to stand on their own two feet.
William Sawalich Put it All Together at Sonoma; Could He Do it Again This Week?
You have to hope so, right? William Sawalich, on average, finishes 10 spots back from his usual qualifying spot each race. I can’t make a stat like that up — he holds an average starting position of 11.5 and an average finish of 23.4. Certainly, he’s young enough to improve at just 18 years old. However, improve he must.
His third-place finish at Sonoma Raceway last weekend could be a sign of just that — improvement. His 2024 ARCA Menards Series win total should speak on his talent behind the wheel more than anything, but it takes a bit more than talent to compete in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, so can he keep putting it together?
Yes, he can. I fully expect the nightmare of a 2025 season thus far to begin to turn a corner towards the closing months. Many times, it takes Xfinity rookies that long to truly get used to the way the car handles on different tracks. Now, with three ovals to go before another road course opportunity, Sawalich needs to at least snag a top-10 finish on an oval to keep the momentum going until Watkins Glen International.
If he can do that and head into the closing moments of the 2025 season on a high note, the sky’s the limit for the talented young driver out of Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
What he cannot afford, though, is to end this season on a low note and lament on it all offseason. A good end to 2025 means that the future gets a lot clearer at Joe Gibbs Racing, and with all of the potential shakeup coming to the NASCAR Cup Series, they sure could use some shoring up in the developmental side of the organization.
What Can Be Expected Out of Jake Finch in His First Xfinity Race This Weekend?
Jake Finch won’t be a name many NASCAR fans expect to hear on Saturday when the teams take the track for the BetRivers 200 at Dover Motor Speedway. However, that doesn’t mean they won’t hear a lot of it during the race.
Back in April, Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced on his podcast, the Dale Jr. Download, that Finch would make his Xfinity Series debut in 2025 with Hendrick Motorsports. That was confirmed earlier this month when the team announced that Finch planned to run at Dover this weekend. So, what’s the need-to-know on the young man from Lynn Haven, Florida?
Well, he’s got two race wins in the ARCA Menards Series between the main series and ARCA Menards Series East, one of which came at — you might have guessed it — Dover. The other was at Talladega Superspeedway, for those curious.
If you keep up with the larger local short-track racing scene, Finch might ring a bell. For instance, he’s won the last two Baby Rattler 125s at South Alabama Speedway, which is no small feat. He’s seen success on short tracks around the southeast, and now, he’ll have the chance any young driver dreams of: to see that same success in one of NASCAR’s premier series.
The young driver might not lead the most laps this weekend, and he may not even finish inside the top five. However, he’ll be sitting in the rocket ship that is the No. 17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevy Camaro, meaning that he’ll have all the equipment he needs to hunt the front of the pack on a track he’s already familiar with.
Should Corey Day Have a Full-Time Ride?
Speaking of development drivers, Corey Day comes to mind after finishing inside the top 10 in the ARCA Menards Series West race at Sonoma. What is his most realistic shot at a full-time seat, whether it’s Xfinity or in the Craftsman Truck Series?
Realistically, Day needs to find himself in a Truck more often before anyone talks about elevating him to the Xfinity Series. That’s not to say that he isn’t talented enough for it and that the cars are even remotely close to the same, but at the moment, there’s more momentum there than in Xfinity with Dodge deciding to rejoin the fray.
He’s ran more Truck Series races than any other this year, too, with a grand total of six to his credit in 2025 alone with Spire Motorsports. One of those six races was a top-five finish at Nashville, if only just, but does one good race a full-timer make?
Simply put, no. It does not. Day needs a few more good finishes under his belt before I’m ready to make that decision. He and Spire announced that there were eight races planned for him on the 2025 schedule, meaning that only two remain. If he can continue his momentum from Nashville, Day should find himself running full time in the Truck Series sooner rather than later.
Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated’s OnSI Network, a contributor for TopSpeed.com, an AP Wire reporter, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host and master's student at Mississippi State University. Soon, Tanner will be pursuing a PhD. in Mass Media Studies. Tanner began working with Frontstretch as an Xfinity Series columnist in 2022.