NASCAR\u2019s legal team has been slapped on the wrist by Judge Kenneth Bell after it was deemed to have overstepped court orders twice during Day 3 of the antitrust lawsuit against the organization, submitted by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsport.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s action focused first on 23XI\/FRM attorney Jeffrey Kessler cross-examining NASCAR<\/a> executive vice president in charge of strategy, Scott Prime<\/a>, after which it was the turn of FRM owner Bob Jenkins to take the stand<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, as Judge Bell, a President Donald Trump appointee<\/a>, closed ranks on Day 3, he warned NASCAR\u2019s legal team of \u201csevere penalties\u201d that could be heading its way should it violate any further court orders moving forward, as per Toby Christie<\/a>.<\/p>\n The team is deemed to have done so when it used a quote from Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson, which it was not permitted to do, while it also crossed a line when it attempted to disclose financial information regarding Jenkins\u2019 business interests not pertaining to NASCAR.<\/p>\n As for how Jenkins performed on the stand, Jeff Gluck<\/a> believes he withstood questioning well, stating that while NASCAR\u2019s legal team \u201ctook many shots\u201d at him, these did not \u201cseem to go well at all,\u201d adding \u201cThe jury appeared to dislike the line of questioning and Jenkins came off as a sympathetic figure [in my opinion].\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up to our NASCAR newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n Jenkins\u2019 testimony was truly eye-opening, with the team boss revealing the dire state of its finances, despite owning three full-time charters in the Cup Series – with the new charter agreement at the heart of the lawsuit<\/a>, along with what 23XI\/FRM believes to be “monopolistic” behaviour from NASCAR<\/a>.<\/p>\n He explained how the team has lost $16.3 million in the last three years, and somewhere in the region of $70 million during the last 11 years, according to Bob Pockrass<\/a>.<\/p>\n Understandably, Jenkins was asked why he continues to push forward with this costly venture, to which he replied, \u201cWe are sitting on something special. I really feel like we\u2019re making progress.\u201d<\/p>\n But while FRM has yet to become a profitable venture, and Jenkins has not taken a salary himself for his role, he clearly remains determined to make FRM work. This was clearly demonstrated by the fact that instead of running nine races without primary sponsors in 2025, he instead used his own brands on the liveries, as per Gluck<\/a>.<\/p>\n 2025 marked FRM\u2019s first Cup Series season with three charters, having purchased one from Stewart-Haas Racing for $29.5 million \u2014 the most expensive of the three the now-defunct team sold. As such, Jenkins was asked for his thoughts on the fairness charter system, which came into effect in 2016, and why his team opted to shell out so much for a third car, to which he replied, via Pockrass, \u201cIt\u2019s based on the belief that some time they will be fair.\u201d<\/p>\n Jenkins also examined the operating costs of the current NextGen cars, which debuted in 2022 and have been subject to heavy criticism ever since. Jenkins explained that FRM would spend approximately $1.8 million on parts annually prior to the Gen 7 car\u2019s arrival, which has since jumped to $4.7 million.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, should FRM\u2019s drivers, Noah Gragson, Zane Smith, and Todd Gilliland, emerge from races unscathed, there remains an inherent $30,000 cost for each car to have its tail and nose returned to the vendor for repairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR\u2019s legal team has been slapped on the wrist by Judge Kenneth Bell after it was deemed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[48728,140392,49,48,143277,2332,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-323778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-antitrust-lawsuit","9":"tag-bob-jenkins","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-financial-losses","13":"tag-motorsport-section","14":"tag-nascar","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}