DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) \u2014 In the days following the 2004 Hendrick Motorsports flight that killed all 12 people aboard, Bill France Jr. and Mike Helton showed up at Rick Hendrick\u2019s front door in Charlotte, North Carolina.<\/p>\n
France, terminally ill at the time, was the chairman of NASCAR, the stock car racing series his iron-fisted father founded in 1948. Helton was the first non-family member at that time to rise to president of the series and very much in the France family inner circle. <\/p>\n
The duo represented the very top of NASCAR, and Hendrick was their biggest team owner. <\/p>\n
France had one question:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou OK?\u201d France asked the grief-stricken Hendrick, who had lost his namesake son, brother and twin nieces in the crash.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I said, \u2018I\u2019ll be all right,\u2019\u201d Hendrick recalled during an interview with The Associated Press. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Whatever you need, whatever we can do, I just came here to tell you we\u2019re here for you. And he turned around and went home.\u201d <\/p>\n
A different image of NASCAR<\/p>\n
That is the story Hendrick chose to tell when asked if there was a counter-narrative to the image of the France family that emerged during December\u2019s federal antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR and current chairman Jim France brought by two teams, one of them owned by Michael Jordan.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit took a toll on the family, which settled the case after eight days of testimony that portrayed them as money-hoarding dictators who got rich while their teams were bleeding cash.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt bad for all of them,\u201d said Brian France, the grandson of founder Bill France Sr. who spent 15 years as chairman before stepping down in 2018. \u201cA lot of what happened is the nature of lawsuits; lawsuits are never pretty. But for 75-plus years, somebody has had to balance what is good for everybody, all of the stakeholders and certainly the fans. Our record in doing that, although not perfect, is that we\u2019ve actually done an amazing job.\u201d<\/p>\n
The negative image of the France family presented at trial contrasts sharply with the personal experiences of many in the motorsports industry, including Michael Shank, who launched a race-winning program by mortgaging his house to start in the France-owned IMSA sports car series.<\/p>\n
Shank told AP that Jim France personally backed his loan, helping Meyer Shank Racing off the ground. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese are good people who care about the industry and built it on their backs, and it pissed me off to see how it was twisted,\u201d said Shank, who now fields cars in multiple series and won the Indianapolis 500 in 2021.<\/p>\n
Hendrick found the entire dispute avoidable and said he believes the case never would have made it to court under Bill France Jr. or Brian France. Before the settlement, he was set to testify on behalf of NASCAR, though he told AP he was prepared to note how often NASCAR\u2019s winningest team has been punished by the series.<\/p>\n
\u201cI made a decision when I started to be a private business and to stay private because I didn\u2019t want the pressure of a board or stockholders telling me how to run my business,\u201d Hendrick said. \u201dAnd I say that because the Frances\u2019 sacrificed. They built it, and they made a whole lot of drivers very rich.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey built a heck of a business. They gave a lot of people opportunities to be racers and to make a living doing it. They\u2019re good people and what was portrayed \u2014 the greed \u2014 I just feel like they got railroaded.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit got ugly fast<\/p>\n
At 81 and 11 years younger than his brother, the soft-spoken Jim France is the only surviving child of NASCAR\u2019s founder.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was based largely on the valuable charters each team needs to survive financially in NASCAR since they provide guaranteed access to races and thus a stable stream of revenue. The teams wanted them to be made permanent, not subject to cancellation by the series, but France was unwavering and negotiations went nowhere for two years.<\/p>\n
He gave the 15 organizations that hold charters a 112-page, take-it-or-leave offer in late 2024 with a tight deadline to sign. According to testimony, he went to bed that night prepared to move forward with whoever had signed when he awakened.<\/p>\n
Jordan refused and sued on behalf of the 23XI Racing team he co-owns. He was joined by Bob Jenkins, a fast-food franchiser willing to stake the future of Front Row Motorsports to fight for better terms. Mediation failed and the sides wound up in a courtroom \u2014 and the details were not flattering.<\/p>\n
Testimony showed the France family trust was paid more than $400 million from 2021 through 2024 while teams were begging for financial relief. Evidence also showed that Steve Phelps, NASCAR\u2019s first commissioner, sent texts during negotiations in which he called Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress a \u201cstupid redneck.\u201d <\/p>\n
Phelps really did want more for the teams, evidence showed, but ultimately had to fall in line with Jim France\u2019s wishes. Phelps left the company at the start of the year.<\/p>\n
The France family relented on the ninth day of the trial, agreeing to a settlement that made the charters evergreen \u2014 terms will be renegotiated with each new media rights deal. The evergreen status alone overnight doubled the value of a charter from $45 million \u2014 the price of the last one sold in 2025 \u2014 to nearly $100 million. There are 36 charters for 40 spots in the field at every race.<\/p>\n
From his spot on the sideline, Brian France ached for his family during the trial.<\/p>\n
Jim France is his uncle and was forced to leave his preferred behind-the-scenes roles with the company to replace his nephew as chairman following Brian\u2019s 2018 arrest for drunken driving. Lesa France Kennedy is Brian\u2019s sister. A graduate from Duke with an economics degree, she is the executive vice chair of NASCAR but prefers her role running the family-owned racetracks and focusing on the fan experience.<\/p>\n
Her son, Ben Kennedy, is the heir apparent. He is 34 years old and working his way to the top. According to the Family Business Consulting Group, less than 5% of family companies make it to the fourth generation, but NASCAR emerged from the lawsuit intact and in position to become an outlier and give Ben Kennedy his chance.<\/p>\n
Ben Kennedy, who works primarily in operations and competition, is the only family member who does routine interviews. Jim France and Lesa France Kennedy typically do not speak to the media.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the challenges that you have with the family now is they\u2019re not self-promoters. Jim certainly is not, and Lesa\u2019s not either, as opposed to me, where I would be more out promoting broader things and different things,\u201d Brian France said. \u201cThey don\u2019t really like that and don\u2019t feel the need. I don\u2019t blame them, to have to defend themselves with some of the stuff that flew around in that lawsuit that was completely inaccurate or certainly way out of context.\u201d <\/p>\n
The fallout from the lawsuit <\/p>\n
When 23XI and Front Row signed the new charter agreement, the case was officially dismissed last week as the series readies for the season-opening Daytona 500 on Sunday. A sport that was fractured during the charter negotiations and lawsuit now appears united again and ready to put the focus squarely on the racing.<\/p>\n
Gary Nelson, who won a Cup Series championship as Bobby Allison\u2019s crew chief, acknowledged having negative thoughts about NASCAR when he worked in the garage. He later took a leadership role with the company in competition and today is general manager of Action Express. <\/p>\n
He rides motorcycles with Jim France to this day and even so, Action Express was the first car punished this season when it failed inspection after winning the pole for the Rolex 24 at Daytona. The car started last in class and rallied to finish second; it possibly would have won the most prestigious sports car race in North America had NASCAR-employed inspectors let the car through.<\/p>\n
\u201cNASCAR has always had an us-vs.-them feeling, but when I went to work for them, one of the main things the family made clear to me was, \u2018You have to treat everyone equally and fairly,\u2019\u201d Nelson said. \u201dIt\u2019s not a charity. You have to work hard to make it, and we\u2019ve seen so many people make tremendous wealth, millionaires created many, many, many times over by the France family. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the Jim France I know has helped so many people without any desire for recognition. The way the lawsuit portrayed them is just not the people I know.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP auto racing: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/auto-racing<\/p>\n
Jenna Fryer, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) \u2014 In the days following the 2004 Hendrick Motorsports flight that killed all 12…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-464064","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\/464064","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=464064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}