NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Childress has been a staple on pit road since 1969, first as a driver and then as a six-time Cup Series championship-winning team owner. However, it seems the 80-year-old\u2019s time in the sport is nearing its end, although he is uncertain how NASCAR appears to have already known about this desire.<\/p>\n
Childress took to the stand in Charlotte<\/a>, North Carolina, on Tuesday as part of the 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR<\/a>, aiming its fight towards the controversial 2024 charter agreement, which neither team signed, and what they see as \u201cmonopolistic\u201d behaviour from the organization<\/a>.<\/p>\n Prior to the trial beginning on December 1, Childress had already inadvertently found himself the center of attention<\/a>, after messages from 2023, sent by NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps to Chief Media & Revenue Officer Brian Herbst during a meeting with team owners emerged. These messages largely took aim at Childress, with Phelps calling Childress \u201can idiot,\u201d adding, \u201cIf they don’t like the state of the sport, sell your charter and get out.\u201d<\/p>\n After Herbst passed on more information from the meeting, Phelps brutally commented: \u201cIf he\u2019s that angry (and apparently he is) sign your charter extension and sell. He\u2019s not smart, is a dinosaur, and a malcontent. He\u2019s worth a couple hundred million dollars \u2014 every dollar associated with NASCAR in some fashion. Total a–clown.\u201d<\/p>\n If this wasn\u2019t bad enough, Phelps went on to say, \u201cChildress needs to be taken out back and flogged. He\u2019s a stupid redneck who owes his entire fortune to NASCAR.\u201d Childress threatened to sue in response to these messages going public.<\/p>\n Sign up to our NASCAR newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n On Tuesday, Phelps replied \u201cby and large, the answer is yes,\u201d when asked if he showed NASCAR team owners respect in messages, adding that he was \u201cnot proud of\u201d the Childress comments and had apologized, as per Adam Stern<\/a>.<\/p>\n Subsequently, Childress took to the stand, during which time he revealed that RCR had \u201cbeen in talks to sell an equity stake of the team including part of his 60% stake,\u201d per Stern<\/a>. However, he was none the wiser about how NASCAR found out about this, given that interested parties had signed Non-Disclosure Agreements.<\/p>\n One interested individual was Bobby Hillin Jr., although the former Cup Series race winner and the rest of his potential ownership group were labeled \u201ca pie in the sky operation\u201d by Childress, according to Peter Stratta<\/a>.<\/p>\n Delving further into this potential major shift in NASCAR, it emerged that the New York<\/a>-based investment firm, which owns 40 percent of RCR, has been attempting to jump ship for around four to five years, with the team not making money. That being said, RCR does make money via its military operations and ECR Engines, as per Toby Christie<\/a>.<\/p>\n This lack of finances seems to have played a part in RCR\u2019s decision to sign the aforementioned charter agreement in the first place, noting that they felt powerless not to sign it, and that, money permitting, they wouldn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Childress has been a staple on pit road since 1969, first as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[2074,48728,49,48,2332,634,9535,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-335403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-23xi-racing","9":"tag-antitrust-lawsuit","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-motorsport-section","13":"tag-nascar","14":"tag-richard-childress","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335403","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=335403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}