Jan 6 (Reuters) \u2013 NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps has decided to resign from the stock car racing circuit less than a year \u200dafter taking on the role, the company said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The decision by Phelps comes one month after NASCAR settled a contentious federal antitrust case filed by two teams, including one co-owned by NBA legend \u200cMichael Jordan and driver Denny Hamlin.<\/p>\n
During \u200cthe discovery phase of the lawsuit, it was revealed that Phelps had sent\u00a0inflammatory text messages regarding NASCAR Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress.<\/p>\n
Phelps joined NASCAR in \u200b2005 and moved up the ranks, eventually being named its first commissioner last March \u200dafter serving as president since \u200b2018. He will transition out of \u200bthe company by the end of the month.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs \u200da lifelong race fan, it gives me immense pride to have served as NASCAR\u2019s first commissioner and to lead our great sport through so many incredible challenges, opportunities and firsts over \u200dmy 20 years,\u201d Phelps said in a press release.<\/p>\n
NASCAR said there are no immediate plans to replace Phelps \u200dand that \u200dhis departure comes during a time \u200bof stability with an exceptional leadership \u200bteam \u2060in place.<\/p>\n
The stock car racing circuit \u200ccalled Phelps one of NASCAR\u2019s \u201cmost impactful leaders\u201d given the role he played in transforming its annual schedule, expanding its international footprint, securing long-term media rights and charter agreements.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto, editing by \u2060Pritha Sarkar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan 6 (Reuters) \u2013 NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps has decided to resign from the stock car racing circuit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-398355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398355","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=398355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}