![\"Lettermark\"](\"https:\/\/www.autoweek.com\/_assets\/design-tokens\/autoweek\/static\/images\/logos\/lettermark.de67f45.svg?primary=%2523000\")
<\/p>\nNASCAR is expected to announce this weekend that 81-year-old Jim France will step down as the sanctioning body\u2019s CEO but will remain as its chairman and majority owner.<\/p>\n
Steve O\u2019Donnell, who was promoted to NASCAR president in March 2025, will succeed France as CEO, Fox Sports\u2019 Bob Pockrass reports. Prior to being named president, O\u2019Donnell was NASCAR\u2019s chief operating officer. He played a key role in race operations and developing the current Cup Series car. <\/p>\n
Ben Kennedy, who has been NASCAR\u2019s executive vice president and chief venue and racing innovations officer since June 2024, will be promoted to chief operating officer. Kennedy is France\u2019s nephew and the son of Lesa France Kennedy, who is NASCAR\u2019s executive vice chair.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A North Carolina native, Deb Williams is an award-winning motorsports journalist who is in her fourth decade covering auto racing. In addition to covering the sport for United Press International, she has written motorsports articles for several newspapers, magazines and websites including espnW.com<\/a>, USA Today, and The Charlotte Observer. Her awards include the American Motorsports Media Award of Excellence, two-time National Motorsports Press Association writer of the year, and two-time recipient of the Russ Catlin award. She also has won an award in the North Carolina Press Association\u2019s sports feature category.\u00a0 During her career, Deb has been managing editor of GT Motorsports magazine and was with Winston Cup Scene and NASCAR Winston Cup Scene for 18 years, serving as the publication\u2019s editor for 10 years. In 2024 she was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR is expected to announce this weekend that 81-year-old Jim France will step down as the sanctioning body\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,782,235157,784,1642,634,235156,82,183339],"class_list":["post-627463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-909bde5d-1bd8-423f-845c-b9547a799cb8","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-locale-us","tag-nascar","tag-shorttitle-nascar-ceo-jim-france-expected-to-step-down","tag-sports","tag-subsection-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627463","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=627463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}