{"id":592153,"date":"2026-04-09T09:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T09:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/592153\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T09:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T09:06:08","slug":"michael-jordans-second-act-is-hitting-top-gear-on-nascars-fast-track-michael-jordan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/592153\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Jordan\u2019s second act is hitting top gear on Nascar\u2019s fast track | Michael Jordan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Jordan the basketball player is success personified, the legend against whom all others are measured. Michael Jordan<\/a> the sports executive, on the other hand, has spent much of the past three decades falling short of his own impossible standard.<\/p>\n

In 1999, Jordan joined Abe Pollin\u2019s Washington Wizards ownership group as a history-making minority partner, but neither his star power nor a brief return from retirement translated into sustained team success. Eleven years later, he took over the Charlotte Bobcats, replacing BET co-founder Robert Johnson as the league\u2019s only Black majority owner \u2013 but poor roster moves, questionable hires and three playoff appearances in 13 years, with nary one series victory, ultimately became his legacy<\/a> as the principal steward of the retro-branded Charlotte Hornets.<\/p>\n

When he sold his stake in 2023 for $3bn, in part to focus on his nascent 23XI Nascar Cup operation (pronounced twenty-three eleven), a joint venture with Jordan Brand racing ambassador Denny Hamlin, many assumed Jordan the exec would only bring about more disappointment before fully retreating into his golf and gambling hobbies. Turns out, the 63-year-old was simply on the wrong track. \u201cI\u2019m cursed with this competitive gene, that anything I do is from a competitive lens,\u201d he told CBS\u2019s Gayle King<\/a>. \u201cIn some ways, that keeps me young. It keeps me aggressively thinking positively. [It] has transcended and taken over everything that I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

No Nascar owner in history has opened a Cup season hotter than Jordan has in 2026. Tyler Reddick, the No 23 car driver who joined the team three years ago, won four of the Cup calendar\u2019s first six events; he started off by grabbing the checkered flag in the Daytona 500, charging to the front on the last lap just before a crash broke out in his wake<\/a>. Bubba Wallace, the No 45 car driver who helped establish 23XI Racing in 2021, has finished no worse than 11th through the first five races. Even a fraction of that success would make for a remarkable year in a sport where loss is constant \u2013 sweat, sponsors, sleep.<\/p>\n

Throughout, Jordan has watched from the pit wall before celebrating in victory lane while seemingly making himself endlessly available for on-camera interviews. (Imagine how NBC must feel, touting Jordan as a \u201cspecial contributor\u201d to their rebooted NBA coverage, only to wind up cutting and stretching their one<\/a> interview<\/a> with the guy before the season.) Naturally, Jordan\u2019s new teammates frame his firm but more forgiving leadership style in basketball terms. \u201cHe emphasizes doing what you need to do to make sure you\u2019re performing at your highest level and taking that game-winning shot,\u201d Dave Rogers, 23XI\u2019s senior director of competition, explained to The Athletic<\/a>. \u201cAnd if you make it, great. And if you don\u2019t, move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Jordan celebrates after Tyler Reddick\u2019s win in the Goodyear 400 last month in Darlington, South Carolina. Photograph: Jonathan Bachman\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

23XI has been on a roll since Reddick hung on to claim the 2025 regular-season points title and push for the Cup series championship in the final race \u2013 after Wallace booked the team\u2019s only win at the prestigious Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis. Heading into this Sunday\u2019s race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Jordan sits atop the owner leaderboard alongside perennial powerhouses Roger Penske, Rick Hendrick and Joe Gibbs \u2013 who still employs Hamlin as a driver, as it happens. It\u2019s a conflict of interest that can sometimes put Hamlin in the stressful position of having to choose between glory for the team he owns and risking one of his drivers to snatch victory for himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually wiped out one of the 23XI cars last year<\/a> [going] for a win on the final lap,\u201d Hamlin told King<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he got a phone call from me,\u201d Jordan shot back.<\/p>\n

On the surface, 23XI\u2019s streak is remarkable for a team in just its sixth year of operation. But what makes it truly astounding is that it all could\u2019ve ended in court four months ago.<\/p>\n

In October 2025, 23XI broke ranks with every Cup series team but one to file an antitrust lawsuit against Nascar<\/a>. Jordan \u2013 well familiar with the cartel-style business practices of stick-and-ball leagues like the NBA, which allowed him to sell the Hornets for more than 10 times what he paid \u2013 effectively called out the France family, who have controlled Nascar since its inception. Among other grievances, he objected to the Frances taxing teams for the privilege of competing across their monopoly of racing circuits while hoarding revenue from the governing body\u2019s multibillion-dollar media rights deals with Fox, NBC, TNT and Amazon.<\/p>\n

The tradition of squeezing what MJ calls \u201cthe people putting on the show\u201d predates patriarch Bill France Sr establishing Nascar<\/a> in 1948. (Believe it or not, Big Bill was one of the more honest brokers \u2013 just better organized.) But when Jordan put his considerable clout on the line to challenge the Frances, Penske, Hendrick and other revered gatekeepers of the sport stayed on the sidelines, perhaps wary of picking a fight with Nascar\u2019s leadership and facing the fallout alone.<\/p>\n

Initially, Nascar seemed to hold the legal high ground: the top 36 Cup teams compete under a charter system that guarantees them a spot in each race and a share of the purse according to their finish, with binding terms. Even well-off teams seem to hold little to no leverage. In court testimony, Heather Gibbs, the daughter-in-law of Joe Gibbs and co-owner of the team, likened Nascar\u2019s tight signing deadlines to \u201chaving a gun to your head\u201d. It\u2019s a fraught arrangement that leaves teams living hand to mouth.<\/p>\n

By taking Nascar to court in October 2025, Jordan effectively bet the farm: a loss could have imperiled the very team he had spent six years building, jeopardizing drivers, sponsors and the future of 23XI itself. But he did so with the public on his side and years of experience defending intellectual property claims, winning in those courts more often than he lost too.<\/p>\n

Michael Jordan (pictured) celebrates in victory lane after Tyler Reddick, the No 23 car driver who joined his team in 2024, Photograph: James Gilbert\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Before long, testimony from Jordan and Gibbs, coupled with a series of inflammatory text messages<\/a> that surfaced showing Nascar commissioner Steve Phelps insulting prominent team owners, proved as clutch as Jordan\u2019s 20-footer over Byron Russell in the 1998 NBA finals \u2013 swinging the tide and contributing to Phelps\u2019s resignation in January<\/a>. After a bit more back-and-forth, Nascar agreed to settle, bringing the week and a half long trial to a close.<\/p>\n

In some ways it was inevitable Jordan would end up leaving his mark in this fast lane. He grew up in North Carolina, the stock car racing cradle founded by bootleggers outrunning the law. He has fond memories of his shade-tree mechanic father, James<\/a>, carting the family to tracks across the state to watch Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and the like trade paint. As a player, Jordan pulled up to home games in Ferraris and Porsches. After retiring, he got into motorcycle racing, launching Michael Jordan Motorsports.<\/p>\n

Since 2011, Hamlin has worn the Jumpman logo across his racing uniform \u2013 a sponsorship deal that began with Jordan, a genuine fan, tracking him down at a Hornets game. Hamlin says he once came across an article claiming the two were looking to buy a team, and sent it along with a message: \u201cIt\u2019s not real, but if you want to make it real, let me know.\u201d The rest is racing history.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasketball is just a small part of your life,\u201d Charles Barkley said, interrupting March Madness coverage to reflect on his former friend<\/a>. \u201cNo matter how great you are, you\u2019re gonna be done as a young person. You have to find something else to bring you joy and happiness. I\u2019m proud of his success in Nascar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jordan hasn\u2019t hesitated to wade into the sport\u2019s thorny racial politics either \u2013 starting by launching his team with Wallace, the Cup series\u2019 trailblazer who notoriously advocated for a ban on the confederate flag and won<\/a>. Jordan has cast himself as the figure who can break through to would-be fans long put off by the sport\u2019s racist vestiges, chopping it up with rappers Fat Joe and Jadakiss outside of the 23XI team hauler<\/a> before last month\u2019s Cup race in Phoenix. And while it\u2019s striking that it took Michael Jeffrey Jordan to drag Nascar into the 21st century, kicking and screaming, it can\u2019t be said the role doesn\u2019t suit him.<\/p>\n

Just let the record reflect this Nascar season as a victory for Michael Jordan the executive, his Airness rising to the occasion at last. \u201cI\u2019m excited that I\u2019m connected to this sport,\u201d Jordan told King. \u201cI feel like I watch it through the lens of my father, or with my family \u2013 and that matters to me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Jordan the basketball player is success personified, the legend against whom all others are measured. Michael Jordan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-592153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592153","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=592153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}