NEW YORK — This past May, in a large banquet room tucked inside a Times Square hotel, high-level executives representing 23XI Racing and NASCAR sat at adjacent tables at the Sports Business Awards. Throughout the night, the two parties bantered and traded good-natured remarks.
A few months before, this seating arrangement might have been awkward. These were the opposing sides of a contentious lawsuit last year that threatened to create significant upheaval within NASCAR. But now, 23XI — whose co-owners include NBA legend Michael Jordan and NASCAR superstar Denny Hamlin — has, in many ways, become the prototype for how a team should be built in this era of NASCAR, when the rules deemphasize ingenuity and stress parity.
Teams in their sixth year of operation aren’t supposed to win with great regularity — especially not three of the past six crown-jewel races — or become perennial championship contenders. But emboldened by Jordan and Hamlin’s vision, Jordan’s status as a worldwide sports icon, and Hamlin’s knowledge of the sport, 23XI has done just that. It is the team many others say they want to be.
“What they’ve done deserves a lot of credit,” said Brad Keselowski, co-owner and driver at RFK Racing. “If you’re not learning from 23XI, shame on you. If I said in 2021 that a new team was going to break through and be successful, and I read you their stats, you probably would have chuckled a little bit. And the fact that they’ve been successful, more successful than I think anyone would have predicted, is really a testament to some smart decision-making and great leadership.”
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From the moment Hamlin convinced Jordan to form 23XI in the fall of 2020, the plan called for their team to be different from legacy teams such as Hendrick Motorsports, Team Penske and Joe Gibbs Racing, the team Hamlin also drives for in NASCAR’s premier Cup Series. Yes, they wanted to incorporate elements from these organizations, which collectively have won 17 of the past 20 championships. There is a reason, Hamlin acknowledges, that they are the standard-bearers.
Still, 23XI’s leadership sought to blend old and new. They had their own ideas of what a team should be and how it should operate. It wanted to be a destination job for the brightest minds working on the mechanical-engineering side and a place the most talented drivers dreamed of joining, with an openness to try different roles and not be tied to conventional ways.
“It’s a balance because you always want to think outside the box, but you also have to realize that these teams have been doing it for decades and they probably worked out all the kinks and got it to the best process that it can be,” Hamlin said. “So you take that information and fine-tune it, and then other things that you know are new to the sport, that’s where you can really start from scratch and rethink things.”
In six years, Denny Hamlin (left) and Michael Jordan have made 23XI Racing into one of NASCAR’s better teams. They’ve won three of the past six crown-jewel races. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
As 23XI president Steve Lauletta explained how his team strives to be different, he gestured toward the expansive building around him known as Airspeed. The team’s headquarters symbolizes the financial commitment ownership has put into becoming championship-caliber. It cost $35 million to construct the 114,000-square-foot facility that opened its doors in 2024.
The design is distinct, the open floor plan more like something you’d see in Formula One than in other NASCAR teams’ shops. It’s laid out to improve workflow; car construction is more systematic, and each department is less siloed off from others.
Other teams are taking note of Airspeed’s functionality. Legacy Motor Club is building its own new shop, and the team — led by NASCAR legend Jimmie Johnson — drew inspiration from how 23XI designed Airspeed.
“(23XI’s) been great to share, especially from a workflow standpoint,” Johnson said. “With the old car, I worked at a place (Hendrick) that had the old car system dialed in, but where we are today and the amount of time you can save by laying out your workflow correctly on the shop floor, there’s a lot to that.”
Lauletta and team have ambitions to achieve a rare feat in the sport — building a brand big enough to generate instantaneous recognition beyond the NASCAR bubble.
“It starts with Michael and Denny and the fact that from the beginning they wanted to redefine what a team in this sport could look like,” Lauletta said. “And that started with the way we developed our processes and the way we built the brand. We purposely didn’t call it ‘Jordan-Hamlin Racing.’ We called it 23XI because we felt like that can be a brand that can transcend the sport itself.”
Having a grand plan is one thing, but actually transforming it into a reality is the challenge.
Part of it is continual on-track success. Since 2021, 23XI has won three crown-jewel races — Tyler Reddick in the 2026 Daytona 500 and Corey Heim and Bubba Wallace the past two Brickyard 400s. The only teams that have won more during this span are Hendrick and JGR, with five apiece. Reddick also won the 2024 regular-season points championship and reeled off three consecutive victories to start this season and five in the first nine races.
All that is missing is one notable thing, something the team knows it must achieve if it wants to truly join Hendrick, JGR and Penske as NASCAR’s elite organizations.
“If you want to be the face of a sport, you probably should have a championship or two,” Lauletta said. “We don’t have that.”
Reddick has come close, finishing fourth in 2024 and sixth in 2023. He enters this weekend’s playoff race at Bristol Motor Speedway — the third of 10 races in NASCAR’s Chase — in fifth place, 42 points behind the leader, Hamlin.
Michael Jordan and Tyler Reddick embrace after a Reddick win in Austin, Texas, this season. Reddick is 23XI’s best hope for a title in this Chase. (James Gilbert / Getty Images)
Winning only elevates a brand so far. To have crossover appeal beyond the NASCAR realm requires outside-the-box thinking in how you market yourself to the masses.
Months in advance of NASCAR’s inaugural race at Naval Base Coronado in the San Diego area in June, 23XI organized promotional activities in the area, including hosting a Daytona 500 watch party on Coronado Island. Fans then watched 23XI’s own Reddick win NASCAR’s biggest race.
NASCAR’s marketing, both by the league and its teams, is not always the most forward-thinking. As the sport pushes to expand into new markets, such as San Diego, 23XI believes it can be the team NASCAR uses to attract a greater spotlight — a cause undoubtedly aided by having one of the world’s most famous people as one of its co-owners. Jordan’s fame brings a level of attention that even previous teams who had celebrities in their ownership groups couldn’t come close to matching.
“The opportunity is there, but it takes work; it takes effort,” Lauletta said. “… I want us to show up at places like the Super Bowl and the NBA All-Star Game and music festivals, and have people go, ‘Oh, yeah, of course they’re here. That’s the brand for Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin’s race team. They’re cool.’”
A year ago, as 23XI and another team, Front Row Motorsports, battled through their lawsuit against NASCAR, alleging monopolistic practices, all of this was in jeopardy. Jordan and Hamlin had refused to sign NASCAR’s latest charter agreement, putting their future into question. If NASCAR prevailed, 23XI would have lost its charters and perhaps, ultimately, its entire business.
Instead, the two teams gained nearly every major concession they sought in court. Their charters were restored, and Jordan and Hamlin secured a victory for all teams in the sport.
If NASCAR is bitter, if any animosity lingers, there hasn’t been anything said publicly to indicate it. When Reddick won the Daytona 500 in February, NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell and chief operating officer Ben Kennedy were among the first to congratulate Jordan, the trio embracing in a hall outside Jordan’s suite.
NASCAR’s senior leadership recognizes the benefit of a Jordan-supported team being in the sport, along with 23XI’s efforts to market both itself and the league. Jordan and Hamlin have made it a point not to pound their chests regarding what most view as a decisive legal victory. NASCAR has since even tabbed Hamlin to play a key role in deciding a handful of major rule changes.
“It’s really been good,” Hamlin said of his relationship with NASCAR. “I’ve had quite a bit of dialogue with (O’Donnell). … It’s been a really good working relationship, and they’ve delivered on everything they promised us.”
“If you want to be the face of a sport, you probably should have a championship or two,” 23XI president Steve Lauletta said. “We don’t have that.” (Helen McGinnis / Getty Images)
The cumulative effect of what 23XI has done on the track and how it reshaped the league off the track over the past year is why the team found itself in New York at the Sports Business Awards. 23XI was nominated for sports team of the year, and Jordan was nominated for executive of the year. Among the other teams nominated included the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries, the first women’s professional sports franchise to have a valuation over $1 billion; the two-time defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers of MLB; and the 2024-25 NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder.
Neither 23XI nor Jordan won this night, but just being there offered additional proof that 23XI was moving toward its goal of being more than just another NASCAR team.
“It’s always been our goal to win on and off the track,” Hamlin said. “From the very beginning, we said we wanted to be game changers in the sport, do things a little differently. We’ve tried to create a culture that has been very, very low turnover. … It’s great to see it being recognized.”
Being nominated is an honor, but winning, be it awards or races, matters. Especially for a team co-owned by the uber-competitive Jordan. And if 23XI can combine winning with pop-culture relevance, it would accomplish something truly unique for a NASCAR team.
“I want everybody to know who we are,” Lauletta said. “I want to walk down the street in Seattle, Washington, and have somebody pass me wearing a 23XI hat, and they’re wearing it because they know what we stand for. They see what we do, whether it’s on the track, off the track. That’s what we can be.”