![\"Jim](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1497516316-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBIRMINGHAM, Ala. \u2014 Since losing its way in the mid-2000s as the once-Southern sport that tried to grow too big and too fast, NASCAR has struggled to find its identity.<\/p>\n
For all too long, it seemed to answer the question \u201cWho are you?\u201d with \u201cWho do you want us to be?\u201d<\/p>\n
In the same breath, it could be both forward-thinking and herald a return to retro roots. It could be ambitious for international growth while consolidating more events back into the South. It could seek a high-end, Formula 1-style clientele while bending over backward to show blue-collar fans it had not abandoned them.<\/p>\n
Part of that was the product of a sport that saw its popularity plummet from that mid-2000s high point. The natural reaction was to throw a variety of ideas at the wall and see what sticks. The problem was that trying to be everything to everyone was not productive, and it worked like quicksand.<\/p>\n
Another major factor was the lack of a cohesive and decisive leadership team, laid bare by communications revealed during last December\u2019s antitrust lawsuit.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of that lawsuit\u2019s settlement, race teams led by Michael Jordan ended up getting all they had originally pleaded for during contentious, two-year negotiations over the sport\u2019s financial structure. Along the way, they were rebuffed by NASCAR chairman and CEO Jim France \u2014 this despite the team-friendly views of his top lieutenants, NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps and NASCAR president Steve O\u2019Donnell.<\/p>\n
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\n Jim France (left) and NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick in 2023. (Chris Graythen \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
France, it became clear, was the roadblock to reasonable, common-sense changes. France was the one who ignored his closest friends in racing, like team owners Roger Penske, Rick Hendrick and Joe Gibbs, who begged him to give them a fair deal.<\/p>\n
He would not. The thing was, France felt his family\u2019s entire legacy was at stake. His father, Bill France Sr., founded NASCAR in 1948. His brother, Bill France Jr., took the reins and led NASCAR to an era of even greater prosperity.<\/p>\n
To France, NASCAR teams were allowed to play in the sandbox, but would never control the sandbox \u2014 not the rules, not the money, not the direction of where it was going. And so when the teams tried to seize more power than they\u2019d ever had before, France did what his father and brother would have done: He did not relent.<\/p>\n
It backfired. France stubbornly took the fight all the way to a federal courtroom, refusing to strike a deal with the teams before heaps of NASCAR\u2019s financial information and private communications exposed the true inner workings of the sport.<\/p>\n
By the time he finished testifying a week and a half into the trial, the damage had already been done. The trial destabilized NASCAR\u2019s leadership structure, leading to Phelps\u2019 departure<\/a>, and left scars on those who remained. It was enough to wonder why France shouldn\u2019t resign immediately<\/a> and transfer power to the next member of the France family, 34-year-old Ben Kennedy.<\/p>\n Kennedy, a former NASCAR driver himself, has the respect of the garage area. He is a progressive thinker who came up with NASCAR\u2019s race inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, pushed for a street race in Chicago, and helped lead an international race in Mexico City last year.<\/p>\n Yet he is still young. And though he remains on the fast track to running NASCAR himself one day, perhaps such a rapid timeline was aggressive.<\/p>\n \n Ben Kennedy (left) and Steve O\u2019Donnell in 2022. (Chris Graythen \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n Enter O\u2019Donnell, a key Kennedy mentor, who found himself a survivor of the bruising antitrust trial despite many questions as to whether he\u2019d meet a similar fate as Phelps. O\u2019Donnell is a NASCAR lifer, but he is also much more of a moderate than the old-school, hard-line France.<\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1369050923.jpg\")
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