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<\/p>\nNASCAR Vs. 23XI\/FRM Lawsuit Day 4 Recap<\/p>\n
Bob Jenkins isn\u2019t quite spending $20 million to field a Next Gen car<\/p>\n
Day three in court appeared to be advantageous for the plaintiffs, especially when Jenkins was at the stand. But momentum shifted back to NASCAR at the start of day four, as attorney Lawrence Buterman was able to uncover multiple discrepancies in Jenkins\u2019 financials claims when he returned to the stand.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Jenkins \u2014 who claimed to have never turned a profit in 22 years of NASCAR ownership \u2014 testified that it costs $20 million per year to field a Next Gen car, which is the same number that Denny Hamlin<\/a> cited during his testimony on day one.<\/p>\n With Jenkins at the stand, Buterman uncovered evidence that showed FRM was spending far less than $20 million annually on fielding a Next Gen car. Altogether, since 2022, FRM had never spent more<\/a> than $27 million per year to field two NASCAR Cup Series cars and a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series team. Jenkins replied that he didn\u2019t know the exact annual cost during testimony and was listing the average of the Cup teams, only for Buterman to remind him of his answer of $20 million under oath the day prior.<\/p>\n The plaintiffs have emphasized how expensive it is to run a team and how unfair the current model is for the Cup teams, only for Jenkins to be caught in a discrepancy of his previous claims. If the $20 million claim of annual spending for a Cup car is off the mark, are there other discrepancies to be found in the financial numbers the plaintiffs provided?<\/p>\n The France family refused to budge on charter negotiations with the teams last year<\/p>\n It had been suspected for quite some time \u2014 especially since the May 2024 texts between O\u2019Donnell and NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps were first shown \u2014 that the France family was at an impasse in negotiations, and that was all but confirmed in O\u2019Donnell\u2019s testimony.<\/p>\n Evidence had showed Jeff Gordon <\/a>asking O\u2019Donnell if \u201cthe family\u201d was open to a new model, to which O\u2019Donnell testified that Jim France was not. O\u2019Donnell had messaged Phelps that the teams and NASCAR needed to meet more in the middle<\/a> and pleaded his case to the Frances, to no avail. Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Heather Gibbs had sent an emotional letter asking for NASCAR to reconsider its stance on permanent charters, a letter to which Jim France was \u201cswearing every other sentence\u201d while reading it, according to a text from O\u2019Donnell.<\/p>\n Interestingly, O\u2019Donnell denied that France was swearing when questioned by 23XI\/FRM attorney Jeffrey Kessler about the letter, but when asked what France was mad about, O\u2019Donnell did not have a reply.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no surprise then that the two sides reached an impasse where no one was willing to budge on negotiations, which ultimately led to NASCAR sending out the ultimatum for teams to sign the 2025-2031 charter agreement by midnight on Sept. 6, 2024, or risk losing them.<\/p>\n But if NASCAR has exclusivity control over the majority of tracks (more on that later) and has a financial model where it\u2019s practically impossible for a full-time non-chartered team to survive, what choice did the teams have other than to sign or take it to court?<\/p>\n NASCAR paid SMI tracks for exclusivity and saw SRX as a growing threat<\/p>\n NASCAR has already been established as a monopoly by Judge Bell. It\u2019s all about whether it broke antitrust law by using its power unfairly, and that came to the forefront as Kessler questioned O\u2019Donnell about racetrack exclusivity and the threat that NASCAR saw in the upstart Camping World SRX Series.<\/p>\n And from the moment when Phelps\u2019 \u201cneed to put a knife in this trash series\u201d texts were revealed, everyone and their mother knew that the now-defunct SRX would play a pivotal role in this case.<\/p>\n Remember when Denny Hamlin<\/a> revealed during his day-two testimony that some team owners explored the idea of forming a new series, only to realize that there \u201cwas no access to racetracks\u201d to compete on? That\u2019s where all of this comes into play.<\/p>\n It\u2019s known that NASCAR has an agreement where it pays Speedway Motorsports, Inc. to have an exclusivity clause that prevents other stock-car series outside of NASCAR from competing on their tracks. The zMAX CARS Tour is an exception to that clause, but SRX is not, and when SMI asked if it could be granted an exception to host a SRX event at one of its venues, O\u2019Donnell said in court<\/a> that NASCAR \u201casked them not to.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Reacting to Day 4 of the NASCAR vs. 23XI\/FRM Trial<\/p>\n So in other words, if a new series were to be formed tomorrow, it would effectively be shut out of nearly every oval longer than 1 mile in the United States.<\/p>\n As for SRX, when did NASCAR start growing weary of it? According to O\u2019Donnell\u2019s testimony, it was when Cup drivers made numerous appearances during its final two seasons in 2022 and 2023, and O\u2019Donnell added that he was frustrated that a NASCAR-like series was propping itself up right when NASCAR was in the midst of shopping for a new media-rights contract.<\/p>\n Kessler hammered home the point that the exclusivity clauses that NASCAR put in place with SMI and other independent tracks serve to lock out existing stock-car series from the largest tracks and prevent the formation of new ones to preserve NASCAR\u2019s premier status. And with the real-life examples of SRX getting denied access to a SMI track and the race teams abandoning the idea of a new series because of the track exclusivity, it\u2019s a tough point for NASCAR to refute in the trial.<\/p>\n Now we know how and why NASCAR made Chicago and Mexico City a reality<\/p>\n NASCAR, to its credit, has been unafraid to explore new ideas and visit new markets, with at least one new track on the Cup schedule every year since 2021.<\/p>\n Two of the biggest experiments were a street race through downtown Chicago and a trip south of the border to Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City. Neither locale will be on the 2026 schedule, but they took NASCAR to new audiences and new heights in more ways than one.<\/p>\n Except in their pocketbook. O\u2019Donnell testified<\/a> that NASCAR lost $6 million in its visit to Mexico City in June and that it lost a whopping $55 million (an average of $18.3 million per year) during its three-year tenure in Chicago. NASCAR also lost<\/a> $13 million in the three years of the Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.<\/p>\n Yikes.<\/p>\n But in the case of Chicago, was it $55 million well spent? O\u2019Donnell would be inclined to say yes, as he testified that NASCAR\u2019s time in Chicago was the catalyst that helped it inked a five-race deal with Amazon Prime Video in the 2025-2031 media rights deal.<\/p>\n The trips to Mexico City and Chicago, in turn, revealed a new provision of the 2025 charter agreement, one that removed the \u201cthree strikes rule\u201d present<\/a> in the agreements from 2016 to 2024.<\/p>\n Simplified, the three strikes provided teams a level of veto power to prevent NASCAR from making more than three non-safety decisions that increased costs for the race teams.<\/p>\n The abandonment of the three strikes rule was yet another loss for the teams in the new charter agreement, and in retrospect, it\u2019s another reason why the negotiations were as contentious as they were last year.<\/p>\n So why was that provision removed? According to O\u2019Donnell, it was because NASCAR wanted to grow the sport and that the three strikes could\u2019ve (and likely would\u2019ve) prevented it from making the trek to Mexico City.<\/p>\n The removal of the three strikes and NASCAR\u2019s subsequent ability to travel far and wide with no restriction is an intriguing discovery, because depending on what ruling is made in eight days\u2019 time, it\u2019s possible that the 2026 Cup schedule might not be as set in stone as we think it is.<\/p>\n NASCAR Content Director\u00a0at\u00a0Frontstretch<\/p>\n Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is \u201cStat Sheet<\/a>,\u201d and he formerly wrote “4 Burning Questions<\/a>” for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.<\/p>\n![\"Donate](\"https:\/\/frontstretch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/frontstretch-donate.avif\")
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