With new information out in the open, does NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell look like a hero or the villain?
Another day, another NAScourt update unfolds.
Earlier this week, 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports filed a response to NASCAR’s latest summary judgment request. In the filing, the teams essentially reiterated their old arguments. However, there was a twist: a new message exchange between NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell and EVP Ben Kennedy as O’Donnell watched the PGA Tour/LIV Golf drama play out in real time.
In the message, O’Donnell waxes poetic about how he doesn’t want to see NASCAR essentially have its grip on the sport ripped away by outside entities. The skinny of how this message chain is relevant lies in this simply dichotomy: NASCAR sees this message as its president doing his job and preparing for worst-case scenarios, and the teams see this message chain as NASCAR trying to further a monopolistic agenda.
I’m not here to weigh in on who is right or wrong between those two sides; that’s for a judge to eventually do. Instead, my question is more about how this message has endeared O’Donnell to the fan base.
A quick scroll through the replies on any social media post mentioning this message chain will tell you that it’s just about as divided as the teams and organization are — and that’s not just interesting, it’s also important.
Because it shows that there is some support for O’Donnell, at least from the fan base. After all, he’s given them some good news in the recent weeks. Just in last week’s column we mentioned the soon-to-come horsepower increase and change in playoff format. It’s evident that O’Donnell realizes that the ship has holes, and the fact that he’s been vocal about his willingness to fight for it to stay afloat has done some good for his public perception.
But would a judgment in this case change that? All signs thus far have pointed toward this entire thing playing out in a courtroom, which will only make things even more bloody. If we reach that point, what will O’Donnell be painted as? The hero or the villain?
Today, at least, he’s a hero. With comments surfacing along the lines of “that’s what I would want my president to do,” and “at least someone cares about the sport,” it’s hard to deny that he’s won some favor within the fan base, and not even necessarily of his own accord. That might not be enough to sway a judge, but it might be a step toward swaying public opinion. All eyes in the sport should be glued to whatever the outcome of this case is, and by that logic, those same eyes should be glued to how the sport treats O’Donnell afterward.
The racing gods have always been a wishy-washy bunch, and anyone can go from hero to zero at any given time.
What in the world is going on with Ty Dillon’s (ex) spotter?
Fans (especially those of the No. 24) will remember last weekend when William Byron slammed into the back of Ty Dillon’s car as Dillon, who was off the pace, attempted to slow down and enter pit lane. The crash led to Byron being 15 points below the cut line entering this weekend.
Kaulig Racing moved rather abruptly in its decision regarding the matter. By decision, I mean that Dillon’s spotter, Joe White, was fired the second he stepped off the bus at Talladega Superspeedway this weekend.
After he exited the infield care center, Byron was quick to mention that, as far as he knew, his own spotter had never been informed of Dillon’s attempt to pit. After he was fired, White said in an interview with The Athletic he did, in fact, tell the spotter of the No. 24 that Dillon intended to pit.
While the abrupt firing of a key member of any team never goes over well, especially in this fashion, it especially doesn’t help that Kaulig CEO Chris Rice hopped on SiriusXM before White was fired and said, rather definitively, that the wreck was not the No. 10’s fault, that it was green flag racing and these things happen.
It’s a double whammy for Kaulig, then. Not only did it fire a spotter its CEO said was part of a team who bore no fault in the accident, but it also did so in an abrupt manner, with no warning, after he made the trip all the way to Alabama for a race at which it knew he was never going to work.
White has made light of the situation on X after the news broke, saying that he’s returning to his own body shop full time for the moment. As for Byron, the crash very well could cost him a shot at the championship. In a year where Murphy’s law seems to have reigned supreme for Hendrick Motorsports, this is just the latest chapter in a saga that has stretched most of the 2025 season.
Is that worth a spotter losing his job, especially if he did everything he could do in the moment, though? No. Sure, people have been fired for less in this sport, but this seems rather extreme. This reads as White being a victim of something much larger than his spot on the spotter stand, and it reeks from a PR standpoint. And until White finds another landing spot or does another interview or two, that’s how it will stay.
Will this weekend’s broadcast strategy pay off?
For the first time in 25 years, all three NASCAR races this weekend will be on network TV. Huzzah!
With one caveat, of course: They’re all on different networks. The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race will be broadcast on FOX, the NASCAR Xfinity Series on The CW and the NASCAR Cup Series on NBC.
Having all three races on network television should, in theory, provide quite the nice ratings boost to what as been a truly pitiful few weeks of stat crunching. The painful numbers reached a new boundary last week, though, as NHRA’s NFL lead-in caused the drag racing series to best the Cup Series in viewership for the day.
Yet all three races being on different networks might only result in this great opportunity falling flat on its face. The Xfinity Series has called The CW home all season long, but this is only the sixth Cup race of the season to be aired on broadcast TV channels, with only two more to go afterward. That’s the fewest since 1998, for those counting.
More than anyone else, NASCAR needs this one to land. It’s Talladega weekend during the playoffs. The infield should be lively, the broadcast should be top notch and the venue is like no other. It’s as NASCAR as NASCAR can get. If the sport can’t bring in real viewership this weekend, it’s only going to highlight an already rapidly growing issue.
The guess is we’ll see a slight boost, but nowhere close to what NASCAR would want. Unfortunately, this TV deal has yet to play into the organization’s favor from a viewership standpoint, and that doesn’t figure to magically remedy itself this weekend.
Is Brenden Queen the best face for RAM?
I’m going to keep this short and sweet: hell yes. His Butterbean nickname alone makes him stand out from the crowd, never mind the fact that he’s one of, if not the hottest commodity coming out of the ARCA Menards Series right now.
To put it in wrestling terms, he’s the perfect babyface, a solid, young, engaging driver that can be a great public-facing racer for a fresh looking team and manufacturer. He’s the first driver to join the new RAM stable, with a few more announcements surely to come in the coming weeks.
With Dodge eying a comeback to the sport, it can’t be overstated how important it is for it to have likable drivers early and often. With Queen being so young, it’s evident that both Kaulig and RAM see him as a future driver in the higher series, too.
Veterans will undoubtedly be added to the stable sooner rather than later, but Queen is the absolute best case scenario for Kaulig and RAM right now. Here’s to hoping he pans out, too, because not many get the chance to be the face representing one of the sport’s most important comebacks in decades.
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.