when being left nursing its wounds when a judge ruled earlier this week in favor of the two teams that launched an antitrust action against the sanctioning body and Chairman Jim France, NASCAR is again in a fairly dire situation.
When a judge decided that 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports may sign the charter agreement while continuing their lawsuit, the two teams finally received some much-needed good news.
The two teams’ refusal to sign the charter agreement, in contrast to the other clubs that formally account for 30 of the 36 charters, sparked months of litigation before the judgment was made.
Due to the preliminary injunction, Front Row Motorsports and 23XI Racing are permitted to use their two current charters to compete as chartered teams in 2025. Additionally, it implies that NASCAR cannot stop Stewart-Haas Racing from selling them more charters, so they can all buy one as they had originally intended.
The issue is that NASCAR has chosen to appeal because they are unhappy with the result. They are essentially attempting to undermine a nonexistent team by doing this. All of a sudden, NASCAR is agreeing to let Front Row Motorsports and 23XI Racing compete as chartered teams, but only with their current two entries.
They do, however, wish to postpone the other advantages of charter membership for both teams. In an effort to further postpone the transfer of the Stewart-Haas Racing charters to those two teams, NASCAR has also requested that the preliminary injunction’s execution be postponed. To put it another way, they wish to keep preventing those purchases.
If NASCAR is successful in this case, the number of charters will fall back to 34, and the two missing charters will still be associated with a team that is no longer in existence. Following the 2024 season, Stewart-Haas Racing closed, and two of their four charters were able to find new homes for 2025.
In reality, one of the two was kept by team co-owner Gene Haas to operate a brand-new one-car Haas Factory Team, while the other was given to Trackhouse Racing. Similar to Front Row Motorsports and 23XI Racing, Trackhouse Racing has increased to three vehicles for 2025.
When it was first ruled that NASCAR had prohibited the transfer of Stewart-Haas Racing’s other two charters to 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports as a result of this case, there were allegedly other questions made into the availability of those charters.
The difficulty is that some would-be candidates to add charters for next year are no longer in play, and as the 2025 season nears, it becomes less and less probable that a team would make a last-minute decision to add a full-time entry.
That ultimately implies Stewart-Haas Racing would be unable to receive the upwards of $20 million they had counted on getting for each charter, as their worth intrinsically diminishes since more and more time passes.
Although 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports would benefit from third charters, they already seem to be the clear winners in this case. Most significantly, because Tyler Reddick’s contract requires him to drive a chartered vehicle, the team owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan no longer faces the chance of him departing.
Regardless, both teams want to run three cars: Front Row Motorsports is anticipated to confirm Zane Smith alongside Todd Gilliland and Noah Gragson, while 23XI Racing has already confirmed Riley Herbst alongside Reddick and Bubba Wallace.
After this week’s decision, the judge’s decision to side with NASCAR would undoubtedly be a setback, but it wouldn’t harm them as much as it would screw over a team that is essentially nonexistent, leaving two charters without homes and with few suitors less than two months before the 2025 season begins.
According to reports, NASCAR needs a decision on Friday, December 19, since the charter agreements with Stewart-Haas Racing must be finalized by Saturday, December 20.
Considering the apparent devaluation of the blocked charters, Gene Haas could potentially take legal action of his own if NASCAR wins this case. Even while the decision this week was a positive move, there are still a lot more questions than answers going forward.
