Ford team Front Row Motorsports (FRM) and 23XI Racing, a Toyota-backed outfit, are in the throes of an ongoing lawsuit against NASCAR over the sport’s charter system in the Cup Series. Last week, the court ruled in favor of FRM and 23XI, granting them their charters back for the 2025 season. Unsurprisingly, a few days later, NASCAR appealed that decision, but the war isn’t over. On December 23rd, 2024, Judge Kenneth D. Bell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied NASCAR’s motion to stay the injunction.
According to a report from Sportico, Bell stated that “nearly all of the arguments” brought by NASCAR “have already been made to the Court.” Specifically, NASCAR argued that allowing FRM and 23XI to race as chartered entities without signing the new agreement gives the two teams preferential treatment over the rest of the field, and that it could harm the sanctioning body by forcing it to disclose otherwise confidential information in the long run.
Part of the ongoing lawsuit deals with the fate of two charters that have yet to be claimed from former Ford team Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), which is no longer active as of the conclusion of the 2024 racing season. FRM is in line to purchase one of the former SHR charters, as is 23XI.
Bell indicated that “significant collateral harm” that could affect SHR and its former employees factored into his decision to deny the stay, stating that SHR “has already announced it is closing down most of its operations” and that quite a few of its employees have “been let go and left to join Plaintiffs.” Granting the stay ran the risk of causing those former employees to be “thrown into limbo.”
Bell’s order modified FRM and 23XI’s injunction as well. While it still prevents NASCAR from blocking FRM’s purchase of an SHR charter, it does not extend to 23XI. However, 23XI – jointly owned by active Cup Series driver Denny Hamlin and basketball legend Michael Jordan – could pursue a separate injunction to allow the purchase of an SHR charter.
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