$365 million in combined damages<\/a>. Through their lawyers led by Winston & Strawn, the two teams claim NASCAR exerted monopsony power illegally and hurt the value of NASCAR teams as a result.<\/p>\nNASCAR, in its defense, has tried to point out that F1\u2019s governing Concorde Agreement is not permanent in duration. NASCAR brought up F1 because the teams\u2019 expert economist said he used F1 as the basis upon which he determined damages.<\/p>\n
NASCAR\u2019s first witness was its Exec VP and Chief Racing Development Officer, John Probst. A former team executive in motorsports, Probst has been one of the key people in helping NASCAR design and implement its seventh-generation car that debuted in 2022. 23XI and Front Row have alleged that the car helped NASCAR illegally exert its monopsony power via IP patents combined with team and track non-compete clauses.<\/p>\n
Probst testified that the foremost priority and aim of the seventh-generation car was to save teams money and that filing IP patents on it was a natural move by a business after investing what he said was an unprecedented sum by NASCAR standards to create a new model vehicle. He said NASCAR has spent $14 million so far on research and development of the car, adding that the teams didn\u2019t help pay for any development and that NASCAR does not profit off single-source supplier agreements, as is sometimes theorized by fans and industry members.<\/p>\n
Probst said that NASCAR creating the seventh-generation car and not filing for IP patents with it would be like \u201cCoke creating a recipe and immediately giving it to Pepsi.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Probst used to work in American open-wheel racing when he worked for Ford, and when NASCAR\u2019s counsel tried to question him about the IndyCar spilt from 1996 through 2008, teams attorney Jeffrey Kessler successfully objected before Probst could say whether the split \u201chad any lasting effects\u201d on open-wheel racing, as the NASCAR lawyer had asked. Previously in the trial, Kessler brought up the split himself when he said IndyCar teams eventually \u201cgot a better deal\u201d due to the competition of having the different series.<\/p>\n
Probst also was asked by NASCAR\u2019s counsel about his experience with the intricate gadgets and car pieces that teams spend their money on in racing, as the sanctioning body tries to convince the jury that teams have a spending problem as much as the revenue shortages that they claim.<\/p>\n
When the jury was let out for its lunch break, Bell told NASCAR\u2019s counsel that he isn\u2019t going to allow testimony from Fox Sports Exec VP Jordan Bazant about how Fox apparently could trigger a clause to pay NASCAR less if the series no longer provided the service of premier stock car racing, such as if a significant portion of the Cup Series teams left to start a competitor.<\/p>\n
The teams\u2019 lawyers appeared to object to NASCAR introducing deposition testimony from Bazant due to an element of antitrust law that Bell said could confuse the jurors and would result in Bell reading a long warning to them about Bazant\u2019s testimony, were the judge to even allow it.<\/p>\n
Bell suggested that Fox may ultimately pay NASCAR less for its media rights but may not necessarily pay less for stock car racing media rights overall. He said his final decision was not to allow the testimony.<\/p>\n
NASCAR\u2019s external counsel Christopher Yates said that NASCAR wanted the court to make record of its disagreement with the decision by Bell, in what appeared to be a signal of something that could be raised in a possible appeal if NASCAR loses the initial jury trial. Bell said that making records of disagreement can be done with the court of appeals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE — NASCAR was denied two potential elements that could have helped form its defense on Wednesday, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,12716,634,82],"class_list":["post-338443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338443","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=338443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}