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Tag: NASCAR racing

  • From YouTuber to NASCAR driver: Cleetus McFarland expands his racing resume at Daytona

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    DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Garrett Mitchell is better known as “Cleetus McFarland” to his millions of followers gained over the years as a racing influencer. He’s pretty much always been called a YouTuber, until he was out to dinner last week when a fan stopped by and referred to him as a NASCAR driver.

    It was the first time anyone has given McFarland that title.

    “I’ve been called a YouTuber forever,” McFarland told The Associated Press on Thursday. “I was like, ‘Awwwe. That’s sooo much better.’”

    It might be more accurate, too.

    McFarland will make his Truck Series debut at Daytona International Speedway on Friday night and then will race in the ARCA Series the following day. He has more racing in his future, too, hinting that details are dropping soon.

    He made four ARCA starts in 2025, beginning with the season opener at Daytona. He crashed 17 laps into that one — and made headlines for saying he felt like “the best racer there ever was” for some of his driving moves — but found more success by finishing 10th at Talladega, ninth at Charlotte and 17th at Bristol.

    It should pay dividends on the high banks at Daytona.

    “I feel a little more comfortable,” he said. “Last year, I couldn’t even get to the garage. I’m like, ‘Where the hell is my car even at?’ Now, I know where to go. I know some familiar faces. I know the track, so I feel a lot better.”

    McFarland will be one of 36 drivers in a star-studded Truck Series event at Daytona. The field includes three-time Cup Series champion Tony Stewart, X Games and RallyCross standout Travis Pastrana as well as five Cup Series regulars.

    Stewart, whose nickname is “Smoke,” is helping launch Ram’s return to the Truck Series.

    “I love Smoke,” McFarland said. “To go hang out with him and hopefully get to hit his bumper at some point, I’m wound up.”

    McFarland and Pastrana are teammates at Niece Motorsports, with Black Rifle Coffee and Brunt Workwear serving as sponsors. McFarland earned NASCAR superspeedway clearance following a test session at Rockingham Speedway on Tuesday and arrived at Daytona with more confidence than he had a year ago.

    “My expectations are much higher this year,” he said. “I understand when and where risk matters. Last year, I ended up falling out (of the draft) because someone was spinning out in front of me and I kept trying to push it and get around them to not lose the field. Now I would just be like, ‘There’s a caution coming anyway. Just stop. This is so stupid.’ So, I’m learning.”

    Pastrana has learned about McFarland, too. They raced against each other in several made-for-YouTube events like the Freedom 500.

    “Cleetus always downplays his driving skills, but he’s a wheel man,” Pastrana said. “He can wheel anything.”

    McFarland and Pastrana will race with Greg Biffle tributes on their trucks. Biffle was among seven killed when his plane crashed in Statesville, North Carolina, in December. Biffle, 55, was named one of NASCAR’s top 75 drivers, was a Hall of Fame nominee for the stock car series and drove for 18 years at the top of the sport.

    He drew headlines last year for his humanitarian efforts as a helicopter pilot supplying aid in North Carolina following the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene in 2024.

    “Be Like Biff” adorns their truck beds, with Biffle’s No. 16 topped by a halo. McFarland even cut Pastrana’s shirtsleeves off during a media availability Thursday in a tribute to Biffle.

    “I wouldn’t be here without Biff,” said McFarland, who delivered a eulogy at Biffle’s funeral. “We’re representing. I never really talked to him about trucks, unfortunately. This would have been so cool. He would have been so stoked that we’re doing this.

    “He was actually going to race with us. He was going to race ARCA with me here this weekend. I imagine he would have found a truck. It would have been sick. But we’re representing Biff out here. If I do anything dumb, it wasn’t something Biff taught me. But I’m going to use everything else he taught me to hopefully do well.”

    And maybe move closer to being better known as a NASCAR driver.

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  • Teen sensation Connor Zilisch is the most hyped NASCAR rookie since possibly Jeff Gordon

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As sleet pelted Bowman Gray Stadium during NASCAR’s preseason warm-up race, multiple drivers complained about poor visibility and the wet track conditions.

    One of them — the youngest driver in the field — hit the button on his radio and grumbled it was time to get back to racing no matter the conditions.

    “We’re professional race car drivers — it’s our job to go figure it out,” 19-year-old Connor Zilisch radioed to his team.

    The teenager is the most hyped rookie to the elite Sprint Cup Series in decades. There was Kyle Busch in 2003, who had already been promoted by his Hall of Fame brother, Kurt, who famously said “if you think I’m good, wait until you see my brother.” Busch had been ready to go for two years, but a rule was passed that raised the minimum age to compete at the top level to 18, and he was forced to wait — which only built the anticipation.

    Joey Logano followed in 2008 hyped by Hall of Famer Mark Martin’s praise that the Connecticut youngster was “the best thing since sliced bread.” Like Busch, he also had to wait until he was 18 to debut.

    And now comes Zilisch with expectations that some believe exceed Busch and Logano.

    “I would have to say Jeff Gordon, honestly,” AJ Allmendinger said of the four-time NASCAR champion who was 20 in his first Cup Series season in 1992. “There was Joey and the whole ‘Sliced Bread’ thing, but I think straight-up hype? Connor is the deal and has already delivered. He’s jumping in everything and performing at very high levels.”

    Zilisch will make his Daytona 500 debut on Feb. 15 — four years after attending the race for the very first time. He was fairly new to racing at the time, had very few connections, and sat in the grandstands with tickets as a regular fan as Austin Cindric won as a rookie.

    “I think it’s very cool that people think that highly of me, when you are getting compared to Kyle Busch and Joey Logano there’s nothing to complain about, they have five Cup championships between them,” Zilisch told The Associated Press. “If I can have a career half as good as either of them, I think that would be a successful career. But I’ve got a lot of time to get to their level, I mean, four years ago I was in the grandstands for the Daytona 500 and to think I’m now going to be in the race is just crazy.”

    Not as crazy as it may seem considering the resume of the Charlotte native, who recently earned the internet nickname “Connor Connor Zilisch Zilisch” as a play on the moniker given to fellow Charlottean and New England Patriots quarterback Drake “Drake Maye” Maye. The idea is that the athletes are so elite, their given name needs no other moniker.

    Zilisch started go-karting five or six years ago and flirted briefly with pursuing a career racing in Europe. That dedication has given him a maturity far behind his years that Justin Marks, owner of Trackhouse Racing, recognized immediately as he set a path to get Zilisch to the Cup Series.

    In two years of racing sports cars and various NASCAR series, he’s won at almost every level. In 2024 he was part of the class-winning team that scored back-to-back victories at the Rolex 24 at Daytona and then the 12 Hours of Sebring, and the next year returned to the Rolex as teammates with Australian V8 Super Cars champions Scott McLaughlin and Shane van Gisbergen.

    McLaughlin is now an IndyCar winner for Team Penske and van Gisbergen, who made NASCAR’s playoffs as a rookie last year, will be Zilisch’s teammate at Trackhouse this year.

    “He’s just very mature, but there’s definitely times when you talk to him and you realize, ‘Oh yeah, you’re 18.’ Like, he’s young, but when he’s on track, he’s very smart and understands how to go about it in a respectful way,” McLaughlin said. “He’s got raw speed, he’s got no fear because he’s young, but at the same time, dudes like that are very temperamental.

    “You hope a guy like that has the right environment, and it looks like a good environment for him with Trackhouse.”

    Zilisch won a series-high 10 races last year in NASCAR’s second-tier national series but was denied the title in the winner-take-all finale when Jesse Love beat him head-to-head. That format has been scrapped for 2026 but Zilisch said after mourning the title loss for a week or so, he’s moved on and accepted Love has a trophy that he never will.

    The focus is fully on 2026, which is in full swing already. He was part of the second-place finishing team in the Rolex 24 at Daytona in the car owned by NASCAR chairman Jim France, and although he wound up 18th in The Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, he raced up front at times and was one of the few drivers pushing to get the race going in wet conditions.

    He’ll race this season as teammates to van Gisbergen — and he and the New Zealander should be next to unbeatable on road courses — as well as Ross Chastain, who is eager to help the teen. Zilisch replaced Daniel Suarez in the Trackhouse lineup.

    “I want Connor to succeed. If he succeeds, it’s good for me,” Chastain said. “If I can’t win, a Trackhouse win is really good. Definitely want that for Connor, want that for me and want that for Shane. I’m the one clapping the loudest when they’re winning. I want to be right there competing with them and winning races.”

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  • Berry and Cindric secure final spots in NASCAR’s Clash after thrilling last chance heat

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    Josh Berry and Austin Cindric claimed the final two spots in NASCAR’s preseason exhibition race by finishing 1-2 in the last chance qualifying heat at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem.

    The Clash was originally scheduled for Sunday and twice postponed because of a snowstorm that blanketed North Carolina and pushed the non-points event to Wednesday.

    Berry ran away with the win in the heat race in the No. 21 for Wood Brothers Racing, a team affiliated with Team Penske. Cindric had a much tougher task as he raced side-by-side for over 15 laps with Corey Lajoie for the second transfer position.

    Lajoie was the injury replacement driver for Brad Keselowski, co-owner of RFK Racing, who is healing from a broken leg suffered in a fall in December. He held his own against fellow Ford driver Cindric, in a Penske entry, as the two jostled back-and-forth for second.

    AJ Allmendinger as they came to the checkered flag gave Cindric a shove in the hopes of moving both Cindric and Lajoie out of his way so that Allmendinger could take the final spot. The move instead pushed Cindric firmly ahead of Lajoie for the final spot in the 200-lap Clash at the historic short track.

    Bowman Gray is hosting The Clash for the second consecutive year. It was held at Daytona International Speedway for 43 years from its inception in 1979 through 2021, then moved for three seasons to a temporary track inside Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

    Among those who missed making the field for The Clash were Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Todd Gilliland, who both spent a day this week shoveling snow out of the grandstands at Bowman Gray to help NASCAR prepare the facility.

    Kyle Larson, the reigning Cup Series champion, will start the The Clash from the pole alongside Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron, the two-time defending Daytona 500 winner.

    Denny Hamlin, who had an emotionally traumatic rollercoaster of an offseason, will start sixth in his first time in a car since he dramatically lost the Cup title in November. Hamlin revealed before the race that he re-injured a torn labrum that was surgically repaired ahead of the 2025 season when he slipped in the debris from the December house fire that killed his father and critically injured his mother.

    He said he’d hold off on repairing it until the end of this upcoming season.

    “I don’t think that it ever healed properly,” Hamlin said. “Took a little fall at my mom’s house, going through all the rubble and stuff, and just didn’t feel right. Got it rescanned and retore it again.”

    Teams report to Daytona International Speedway next week for the Feb. 15 season-opening Daytona 500. Qualifying for the pole is next Wednesday and the rest of the field will be set via a pair of Thursday races.

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  • A deadly plane crash, a burning home and a tense trial add up in NASCAR’s offseason of heartbreak

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The new year began with a celebration of life for Emma Biffle, the 14-year-old daughter of one of NASCAR’s 75 greatest drivers who was among seven people killed when Greg Biffle’s plane crashed just a week before Christmas.

    The service Sunday was standing room only as the performing arts center in suburban Cornelius wasn’t large enough to accommodate the turnout from the racing community and Davidson Day, the private school where many sent their children alongside Emma.

    The heartbreaking memorial to a teenager lost in a tragic accident capped a month of sorrow for NASCAR with a new season just weeks away. The grieving isn’t over, either, far from it.

    It’s not like the 2025 season ended on the highest note: Denny Hamlin was again denied his first Cup Series championship on a late sequence of events in the season finale that gave the title to Kyle Larson. When Larson was done with his post-race news conference, there was a toast in honor of Jon Edwards, a Hendrick Motorsports communications executive and mentor to many who died unexpectedly in April, a loss felt all season.

    Then came December, usually the start of a quiet offseason in which teams and drivers and every member of the 38-week traveling circus unwinds. Instead, it opened with a bruising federal trial in which two race teams accused NASCAR of being a monopolistic bully; the Michael Jordan-led lawsuit included eight days of testimony that embarrassed NASCAR until the France family settled a day before Hall of Fame owners Rick Hendrick and Roger Penske were due to testify. The landmark agreement will change the current revenue sharing model.

    The relief was far too brief. Biffle’s plane crashed Dec. 18 shortly after encountering an issue after takeoff from the nearby Statesville airport as the group tried to return for an emergency landing. Biffle was among those killed along with his wife, Cristina, five-year-old son, Ryder, and Emma, the only child from his first marriage.

    In a letter written by Nicole Biffle that she was too grief-stricken to read herself at her daughter’s service, she agonized over her decision to allow Emma to fly that day knowing Emma wasn’t feeling well. She had purchased tickets to Italy as a Christmas present for her daughter the night before the crash.

    Ten days after that tragedy, on the 52nd wedding anniversary of Denny Hamlin’s parents, the house he built to repay them for their years of sacrifice to get the future Hall of Famer to NASCAR’s top level, burned down. His father, Dennis, was killed. Mary Lou Hamlin was rushed to a hospital burn unit. Hamlin’s childhood racing memorabilia was lost along with his father.

    If there was any animosity from NASCAR toward Hamlin, a co-owner of the race team with Jordan that sued the series, it dissipated in a heartfelt statement from the sanctioning body.

    “Dennis Hamlin instilled a love of racing in his son, and sacrificed greatly to develop Denny into a world-class talent in the sport,” NASCAR said. “We also continue to offer our thoughts and prayers to Denny’s mother, Mary Lou, and hope for her full recovery.”

    The racing community is a quirky one, with hundreds of people living not just in and around Charlotte but feet away from one another in motorhome parking lots in infields around the country for three-fourths of the year. Relationships can sometimes be contentious and grudges held for years, even decades.

    But it’s also a community all too familiar with death and the dangers that come every weekend on the track. It is tight-knit and almost everyone looks out for each other or steps up in times of crisis and tragedy. There is a solemn pride in helping a fellow racing community member struggling with loss.

    In times of tragedy, NASCAR rallies like no other community. And there is more sadness ahead before the racing resumes.

    A public memorial will be held Jan. 16 for all seven people lost in the Biffle plane crash. It will be held at Bojangles Coliseum, a venue for Charlotte’s minor league hockey team that can be configured to seat more than 10,000 people.

    Knowing the NASCAR community, it will be packed.

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  • NASCAR settles federal antitrust case, gives all teams the permanent charters they wanted

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Michael Jordan and NASCAR chairman Jim France stood side-by-side on the steps of a federal courthouse as if they were old friends following a stunning settlement Thursday of a bruising antitrust case in which the Basketball Hall of Famer was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing the top racing series in the United States of being a monopolistic bully.

    The duo was flanked by three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin and Curtis Polk, the co-owners of 23XI Racing with Jordan, Front Row Motorsports owner Bob Jenkins and over a dozen lawyers as they celebrated the end to an eight-day trial that ultimately led NASCAR to cave and grant all its teams the permanent charters they wanted.

    “Like two competitors, obviously we tried to get as much done in each other’s favor,” Jordan said, towering over the 81-year-old France. “I’ve said this from Day 1: The only way this sport is going to grow is we have to find some synergy between the two entities. I think we’ve gotten to that point, unfortunately it took 16 months to get here, but I think level heads have gotten us to this point where we can actually work together and grow this sport. I am very proud about that and I think Jim feels the same.”

    France concurred.

    “I do feel the same and we can get back to focusing on what we really love, and that’s racing, and we spent a lot of time not really focused on that so much as we needed to be,” France said. “I feel like we made a very good decision here together and we have a big opportunity to continue growing the sport.”

    A charter is the equivalent of the franchise model used in other sports and in NASCAR it guarantees 36 teams a spot in every top-level Cup Series race and a fixed portion of the revenue stream. The system was implemented in 2016 and teams have argued for over two years that the charters needed to be made permanent — they had been revokable by NASCAR — and the revenue sharing had to change.

    NASCAR, founded and privately owned by the Florida-based France family, never considered making the charters permanent. Instead, after two-plus years of bitter negotiations, NASCAR in September 2024 presented a “take-it-or leave-it” final offer that gave teams until end of that day to sign the 112-page document.

    23XI and Front Row refused and sued, while 13 other organizations signed but testimony in court revealed many did so “with a gun to our head” because the threat of losing the charters would have put them out of business.

    Jordan testified early in the trial that as a new team owner to NASCAR — 23XI launched in 2021 — he felt he had the strength to challenge NASCAR. Eight days of testimony went badly for NASCAR, which when it began to present its case seemed focused more on mitigating damages than it did on proving it did not violate antitrust laws.

    Although terms of the settlement were not released — NASCAR was in the process of scheduling a Thursday afternoon call with all teams to discuss the revenue-sharing model moving forward — both Jordan and NASCAR said that charters will now be permanent for all teams. 23XI and Front Row will receive their combined six charters back for 2026.

    An economist previously testified that NASCAR owes 23XI and Front Row $364.7 million in damages, and that NASCAR shorted 36 chartered teams $1.06 billion from 2021-24.

    “Today’s a good day,” Jordan said from the front-row seat he’s occupied since the trial began Dec. 1 as he waited for the settlement announcement.

    U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell, who had presided over two days of failed settlement talks before the trial began, echoed the sentiment. Bell told the jury that sometimes parties at trial have to see how the evidence unfolds to come to the wisdom of a settlement.

    “I wish we could’ve done this a few months ago,” Bell said in court. “I believe this is great for NASCAR. Great for the future of NASCAR. Great for the entity of NASCAR. Great for the teams and ultimately great for the fans.”

    The settlement came after two days of testimony by France and the Wednesday night public release of a letter from Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris calling for NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps to be removed.

    The discovery process revealed internal NASCAR communications in which Phelps called Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress a “redneck” and other derogatory names; Bass Pro sponsors Childress’ teams, as well as some others, and Morris is an ardent NASCAR supporter.

    Childress gave fiery testimony earlier this week over his reluctance to sign the charter agreement because it was unfair to the teams, which have been bleeding money and begged NASCAR for concessions. Letters from Hall of Fame team owners Joe Gibbs, Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush and Roger Penske were introduced in which they pleaded with France for charters to become permanent; France testified he was not moved by the men he considers good friends.

    Hendrick and Penske, who were both scheduled to testify Friday, expressed gratitude that a settlement had been reached. Penske called it “tremendous news” and said it cleared the way to continue growing the series.

    “Millions of loyal NASCAR fans and thousands of hardworking people rely on our industry, and today’s resolution allows all of us to focus on what truly matters — the future of our sport,” Hendrick said. “This moment presents an important opportunity to strengthen our relationships and recommit ourselves to building a collaborative and prosperous future for all stakeholders. I’m incredibly optimistic about what’s ahead.”

    The settlement came abruptly on the ninth day of the trial. Bell opened expecting to hear motions but both sides asked for a private conference in chambers. When they emerged, Bell ordered an hourlong break for the two sides to confer. That turned into two hours, all parties returned to the courtroom and Kessler announced an agreement had been reached.

    “What all parties have always agreed on is a deep love for the sport and a desire to see it fulfill its full potential,” NASCAR and the plaintiffs said in a joint statement. “This is a landmark moment, one that ensures NASCAR’s foundation is stronger, its future is brighter and its possibilities are greater.”

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  • NASCAR chairman refuses to budge on team charters in testimony during Michael Jordan’s lawsuit

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — NASCAR Chairman Jim France testified Tuesday in Michael Jordan’s federal antitrust lawsuit against his family that he still has not changed his mind on granting teams permanent charters, and evidence showed he entered negotiations on a new revenue-sharing agreement determined to thwart teams’ efforts for a better deal from the stock car series.

    France was the final witness called by attorneys for Jordan’s 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports on the seventh day of the trial. Those race teams have accused NASCAR of being a monopolistic bully that engages in anticompetitive business practices.

    Also called Tuesday was Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress, who testified that he only signed the 2025 revenue-sharing agreement because refusing to do so would have put Richard Childress Racing out of business.

    NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps testified to the frustrating two-plus years of negotiations between the top motorsports series in the United States and its race teams. The plaintiffs introduced several documents detailing communication between NASCAR executives that showed France was stubbornly opposed to granting teams permanent charters throughout the process.

    The charter system is equivalent to the franchise model used in other sports. In NASCAR, a charter guarantees cars a spot in the 40-car field each week, as well as specified financial terms.

    Asked by plaintiffs’ attorney Jeffrey Kessler if he has changed his stance on making charters permanent, France said, “No, I have not.”

    Kessler later introduced a summary of notes from the first meeting of NASCAR executives on how they would approach negotiations with the teams over the new agreements. Steve O’Donnell, now the president of NASCAR, wrote in those notes, “Jim’s overarching comments — we are in a competition. We are going to win.”

    France’s position never changed, even though — as evidence showed — he received pleas from Hall of Fame team owners Joe Gibbs, Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush and Roger Penske. All four are close personal friends, France said on the stand Tuesday.

    France became chairman of the series his father founded in 1948 following the 2019 resignation of his nephew, Brian. NASCAR has always been privately owned by the Florida-based family, and Brian France negotiated the initial charter system that began in 2016 as a response to teams complaining they were bleeding money at an unsustainable rate.

    Jim France, who is 81, was soft-spoken on the stand and needed many questions repeated, and he said on numerous topics that he was either unable to recall, did not remember or was not sure — even in response to evidence introduced that the France Family Trust received $400 million in distributions from 2021 through 2024 and that NASCAR is valued at $5 billion.

    He wasn’t sure of the title his niece, Lesa France Kennedy, holds with NASCAR, or the ownership percentages between the two. Evidence showed Jim France owns 54% of NASCAR, while France Kennedy, the vice chair, owns 36%. France also testified he believes he is paid in “the $3.5 million range” as chairman.

    Richard Childress details his dissatisfaction

    Childress spoke to the pressure he felt to sign the charter agreement.

    “I would not have signed those charters if I was financially able to do what I do,” the six-time championship winning owner testified. “We are a blue-collar operation.”

    Childress has participated in NASCAR for 60 years and has a longtime personal relationship with the Frances. He testified that he pleaded with Jim France for the charters to be made permanent instead of renewable, and France refused.

    Childress testified he supports the charter system because before its implementation race teams “were worth 10 cents on the dollar at most. We didn’t have nothing.”

    He admitted that the charters added value to his team, but said the equity falls short of its financial potential if the charters were permanent. An economist testified that NASCAR owes 23XI and Front Row $364.7 million in damages, and that NASCAR shorted 36 chartered teams $1.06 billion from 2021-24.

    When Childress’ October declaration of his support for charters was introduced, Childress insisted NASCAR attorney Christopher Yates also show the jury language added to the statement in which Childress pushes for the charters to be permanent.

    Childress said he added those sentences to the declaration, which had been pre-written for him to sign.

    Phelps details negotiations with teams

    NASCAR commissioner Phelps noted that Jordan’s financial advisor would not compromise on key issues in the negotiations.

    Phelps, who was president of NASCAR during the negotiations, said Jordan right-hand man Curtis Polk was the lead representative for the teams and held firm in their demand for increased revenue, permanent charters, a voice in governance and one-third of any new revenue streams.

    The deal finally presented to the teams in September 2024 did not include permanent charters or a voice in governance, but NASCAR gave the teams a firm deadline to accept its final offer or forfeit their charters. 23XI Racing, owned by Jordan, Polk and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, and Front Row Motorsports, owned by Bob Jenkins, were the only two teams out of 15 organizations that refused to sign. They sued instead.

    Phelps, promoted to become NASCAR’s first commissioner earlier this year, testified that he worked hard to get the teams the best deal possible. But he said the teams’ initial request for $720 million in guaranteed revenue would have put NASCAR out of business.

    At the same time, Polk would not budge, either.

    “It was one of the most challenging and longest negotiations I’ve ever been part of,” said Phelps, who admitted he didn’t particularly enjoy negotiating with Polk, who was at the time the representative for the “Team Negotiating Council.”

    “The TNC never wavered off their four pillars. It was just the same thing, the same thing, and that was very frustrating,” Phelps said.

    Phelps testified at one point that NASCAR believed it had landed on a new charter agreement that satisfied the teams but it was contingent on NASCAR finalizing its new media rights deal.

    “I thought we’d just plug in the numbers,” said Phelps, who testified NASCAR was hoping to land a media deal worth $1.2 billion. When it became clear the media rights deal wouldn’t net that much money, Phelps said the teams asked to set a floor in negotiations.

    NASCAR ultimately got a media deal worth $1.05 billion — still an increase of $33 million a year from the previous deal — and Phelps said “every dollar” went to the race teams when it began this year.

    However, the ultimate revenue payout to teams is $431 million annually, the charters are not permanent and the teams did not get a voice in rules and regulations.

    Even so, Phelps testified he believed the charter agreement was “a fair deal.”

    Faster pace

    U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell has repeatedly admonished both sides to pick up the pace of the trial, and once France’s testimony concludes Wednesday, NASCAR will begin to present its defense.

    NASCAR has said it has a witness list of 16 people, but Yates informed Bell he can trim “four or five” names from it and is hopeful to wrap his defense by Friday.

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  • Economist says NASCAR owes $364.7M to teams in antitrust case

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — An economist testified in Michael Jordan’s federal antitrust trial against NASCAR that the racing series owes a combined $364.7 million in damages to the two teams suing it over a revenue-sharing dispute.

    Edward Snyder, a professor of economics who worked in the antitrust division of the Department of Justice and has testified in more than 30 cases, including “Deflategate” involving the NFL’s New England Patriots, testified on Monday. He gave three specific reasons NASCAR is a monopoly participating in anticompetitive business practices.

    Using a complex formula applied to profits, a reduction in market revenue, and lost revenue to 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports from 2021-24, Snyder came up with his amount of damages owed. Snyder applied a 45% of revenue sharing he alleged Formula 1 gives to its teams in his calculations; Snyder found that NASCAR’s revenue-sharing model when its charter system began in 2016 gave only 25% to the teams.

    The suit is about the 2025 charter agreement, which was presented to teams on a Friday in September 2024 with a same-day deadline to sign the 112-page document. The charter offer came after more than two years of bitter negotiations between NASCAR and its teams, who have called the agreement “a take-it-or-leave-it” ultimatum that they signed with “a gun to their head.”

    A charter is similar to the franchise model in other sports, but in NASCAR it guarantees 36 teams spots in the 40-car field, as well as specific revenue.

    Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin for 23XI, along with Front Row Motorsports and owner Bob Jenkins, were the only two teams out of 15 to refuse the new charter agreement.

    Snyder’s evaluations found NASCAR was in fact violating antitrust laws in that the privately owned racing series controls all bargaining because “teams don’t have anywhere else to sell their services.” Snyder said NASCAR controls “the tracks, the teams and the cars.”

    Snyder repeatedly cited exclusivity agreements NASCAR entered into with racetracks after the charter system began. The agreements prevent tracks that host NASCAR from holding events with rival racing series. Prior to the long-term agreements, NASCAR operated on one-year contracts with its host racetracks.

    The Florida-based France family founded NASCAR in 1948 and, along with Speedway Motorsports, owns almost all the tracks on the top Cup Series schedule. Snyder’s belief is that NASCAR entered into exclusivity agreements with tracks to stave off any threats of a breakaway startup series. In doing so, he said it eliminated teams’ ability to race stock cars anywhere else, forced them to accept revenue-sharing agreements that are below market value, and damaged their overall evaluations.

    Snyder did his calculations for both teams based on each having two charters — each purchased a third charter in late 2024 — and found 23XI is owed $215.8 million while Front Row is owed $148.9 million. Based on his calculations, Snyder determined NASCAR shorted 36 chartered teams $1.06 billion from 2021-24.

    Snyder noted NASCAR had $2.2 billion in assets, an equity value of $5 billion and an investment-grade credit rating — which Snyder believes positions the France family to be able to pivot and adjust to any threats of a rival series the way the PGA did in response to the LIV Golf league. The PGA, Snyder testified, “got creative” in bringing in new revenue to pay to its golfers to prevent their defections.

    Snyder also testified NASCAR had $250 million in annual earnings from 2021-24 and the France family took $400 million in distributions during that period.

    NASCAR contends Snyder’s estimations are wrong, that the 45% F1 model he used is not correct, and its own two experts “take serious issue” with Snyder’s findings. Defense attorney Lawrence Buterman asked Snyder his opinion on NASCAR’s upcoming expert witnesses and Snyder said they were two of the best economists in the world.

    Slow pace of trial

    Snyder testified for almost the entirety of Monday’s session — the sixth day of the trial — and will continue on Tuesday. The snail’s pace has agitated U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell, who heard arguments 30 minutes early Monday morning because he was annoyed that objections had been submitted at 2:55 a.m. and then 6:50 a.m.

    He needed an hour to get through the rulings, and testimony resumed 30 minutes behind schedule. When the day concluded, he asked the nine-person jury if they were willing to serve an hour longer each day the rest of the week in an effort to avoid a third full week of trial. He all said all motions must be filed by 10 p.m. each evening moving forward.

    Bell wants plaintiff attorney Jeffrey Kessler to conclude his case by the end of Tuesday, but Kessler told him he still plans to call NASCAR chairman Jim France, NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps and Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress, who was the subject of derogatory text messages amongst NASCAR leadership and has said he’s considering legal action.

    NASCAR has a list of 16 potential witnesses and Bell said he wanted the first one on the stand before Tuesday’s session concludes.

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  • NASCAR hoping must-win scenarios at Martinsville will avoid manipulation repeat

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    NASCAR has a buzzy slogan for the third-round finale of its Cup Series playoffs.

    With half of the remaining eight drivers desperate for a victory to reach the Championship 4 finale, Sunday is “Must-Win at Martinsville Speedway!”

    That certainly has a better ring to it than “Manipulation at Martinsville!” or “Martinsville’s Massive Scandal!”

    Those were the headlines written about what transpired last November at the 0.526-mile oval in southwest Virginia.

    A coordinated effort between multiple teams and manufacturers to engineer the results erupted in a controversial finish to the third-round finale. Officials took nearly 30 minutes to sort out that William Byron would advance over Christopher Bell to race for the title in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway.

    NASCAR issued a record $600,000 in fines and nine suspensions across three teams and added rulebook language in the offseason aimed at punishing race manipulation with a new penalty structure for manufacturers that engaged in nefarious behavior.

    Highly attuned to preventing another scandal, NASCAR executives already have warned drivers and crew chiefs during the 2025 playoffs about shenanigans motivated by the championship. A beefed-up staff of officials will be in place Sunday to scrutinize radio communications for foul play over 500 laps at Martinsville.

    “We’ll be on high alert this weekend,” NASCAR managing director of communications Mike Forde said on the “Hauler Talk” podcast. “Hopefully, it won’t matter.”

    It’s likely there won’t be a repeat of the embarrassing episode.

    With third-round winners Denny Hamlin ( at Las Vegas ) and Chase Briscoe ( Talladega ) having secured two of the berths in the Nov. 2 title race at Phoenix, the points breakdown is straightforward: The remaining six drivers are vying for the final two championship-eligible spots. Bell or Kyle Larson is virtually guaranteed to reach the Championship 4 based on the points standings, and both could advance without a victory.

    For Byron, Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott and Joey Logano, the overwhelmingly plausible way for the four drivers below the points cutline to make the title round is by taking the checkered flag.

    That’s why “Must-Win At Martinsville” should be a relief for NASCAR — because it greatly reduces the likelihood that Hendrick Motorsports, Team Penske and Joe Gibbs Racing, as well as manufacturers Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota, could be tempted to order drivers to run interference for teammates to help gain or protect positions that improve points totals to reach the title race.

    “I just don’t see those scenarios even presenting themselves to be possible or advantageous,” said Adam Stevens, the crew chief for Bell, who enters Martinsville ranked third in the standings and 37 points above the cutline.

    Bell is a point ahead of Larson, who is in the last provisional Championship 4 spot but still well ahead of Hendrick teammate Byron, who trails by 36 points — the largest gap to the cutline for a cutoff race in NASCAR playoff history.

    “We’re not worried about points or a race finish other than the win,” said Rudy Fugle, Byron’s crew chief.

    The largest cutline deficit overcome in a cutoff race is 22 points. If none of the four drivers below the cutline wins Sunday, Bell and Larson easily could clinch title berths with top-25 finishes.

    Data analytics firm Racing Insights lists each driver with an 81% probability of making the Championship 4, and the odds are much worse for Blaney (12.5%), Elliott (9.6%), Byron (8.5%) and Logano (6.1%). All six are former Martinsville winners.

    Though there are 37 cars in the field Sunday, Larson and Bell essentially are in a match race with a championship berth for whoever scores the most points.

    “You don’t want to spend too much focus on him. but the majority of it for sure revolves around Bell,” Larson said. “This year is a little bit simpler because there’s four guys that probably look at it as a must-win, and then me and Bell just look at it as we have to outpoint each other, and we’re in. You know what you have to do, but it’s just going out there and doing it is the tough part.”

    After winning three consecutive championships with Logano (last year and in 2022) and Blaney (’23), Team Penske could fail to place a driver in the Championship 4 for the first time in four years.

    Blaney has won the past two third-round cutoff races at Martinsville, and Penske’s strength has been on flat tracks such as Martinsville, Phoenix and New Hampshire Motor Speedway, where Blaney and Logano dominated last month. But the team has struggled in the playoffs with multiple tire failures while trying to maintain its edge.

    “That’s just trying to find that little bit more,” said Paul Wolfe, crew chief for Logano. “That’s what we’re down to, pushing those limits without going over them, and we’ve had our struggles there a little bit here in the playoffs with that.”

    The points fight between Bell and Larson will rekindle a longtime rivalry that dates back more than a decade to when they were teenage phenoms in dirt racing. Though they occasionally have feuded during six seasons of facing off in the Cup Series, Larson said he and Bell enjoy a healthy respect.

    “I hated seeing him beat me all the time on dirt,” Larson said. “But it pushed me to get better. Once he got to NASCAR, I always really like seeing him do well because I like to root on guys that come from the dirt background. I don’t get as upset as I did when he was winning dirt races. Having us battle for trying to make the final four this weekend, it’s cool and says a lot about the dirt-racing community.”

    Blaney (+350) is favored by BetMGM Sportsbook ahead of Hamlin (+425), who won March 30 at Martinsville, Elliott (+650), Larson (+675) and Bell (+675). … After victories at Las Vegas and Talladega, Toyota could become the first manufacturer to sweep the Round of 8 if a Camry wins at Martinsville. … Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske — the three teams representing the eight playoff drivers — have combined to win the past 14 races at Martinsville.

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  • Michael Jordan laughs at NASCAR’s claims as bitter antitrust feud barrels toward a trial

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. — CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — NASCAR and two of its teams returned to court Thursday after two failed days of mediation and resumed their bitter antitrust fight with a hearing that included team owner Michael Jordan laughing in disbelief at some of the testimony as the two sides hurtle toward a trial.

    “Today’s hearing confirmed the facts of NASCAR’s monopolistic practices and showed NASCAR for who they are — retaliatory bullies who would rather focus on personal attacks and distract from the facts,” Jeffrey Kessler, who represents the two teams, said afterward. “My clients have never been more united and committed to ensuring a fair and competitive sport for all teams, partners, drivers and fans. We’re going to trial to hold NASCAR accountable.”

    The lawsuit was filed a year ago by 23XI Racing, co-owned by Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, and Bob Jenkins-owned Front Row Racing. They are the only two organizations out of 15 to refuse to sign extensions for new charter agreements following more than two years of negotiations. Charters are at the heart of NASCAR’s business model, guaranteeing revenue and access to weekly races, and without them both teams say they will almost surely go out of business.

    Other teams have called for a settlement to clear the air and move the stock car series forward, but three mediation sessions have apparently gone nowhere and the hearing laid bare how far apart they are. The trial is scheduled for Dec. 1.

    U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell and Jeffrey Mishkin, a former executive vice president and chief legal officer of the NBA, both participated in mediation Monday and Tuesday and Bell opened the session by thanking both sides for working in good faith during the sessions. NASCAR wants Bell to throw the lawsuit out and the hearing focused on the series’ bid to narrow the scope of damages the two teams say they are owed.

    NASCAR has accused 23XI and FRM of manipulating other teams and conducting themselves with “classic cartel behavior, ultimately because they received less than they would have” under charter extensions signed late last year. It struggled to make those arguments Thursday.

    NASCAR repeatedly insisted that teams are free to compete in both IndyCar and F1, failing to disclose that entry into F1 is nearly impossible and the financials of IndyCar are simply not even close to the value of competing in the stock car series. Kessler likened a NASCAR move to IndyCar to a Major League Baseball team moving to the minors.

    “Experts found that the (IndyCar) prize money and TV ratings were too low to make them a minor league team,” Kessler argued. “Michael Jordan, if you put a gun to his head and said you have to join IndyCar, it better be a pretty big gun.”

    NASCAR also mischaracterized Chip Ganassi Racing’s sale of its NASCAR team to Trackhouse Racing ahead of the 2021 season as an opportunity for Ganassi — whose name was repeatedly mispronounced by NASCAR attorney Christopher Yates — to reinvest in IndyCar and expand that program to four cars. Ganassi has long run three to four cars in IndyCar and for more than three decades has been considered one of the top two teams in IndyCar.

    Jordan multiple times laughed and smiled at NASCAR’s claims, and at one point Hamlin and Jenkins vehemently shook their heads at NASCAR’s assertion that it pays its teams a higher percentage of revenue than F1 does to its teams. Jordan did not speak with reporters afterward.

    The original charters lasted from 2016 through 2020 and were automatically renewed to continue through Dec. 31, 2024. NASCAR contends they have added more than $1 billion in equity for its teams but owners have pushed for changes.

    23XI and FRM initially won a preliminary injunction to be recognized as chartered teams this season while the case played out, but that was overturned and the combined six cars have competed as “open” teams as the season nears its season finale Nov. 2.

    Kessler argued that damages in the case should date to the 2021 season because of 28 exclusionary items he says prevent NASCAR teams from competing in any motorsports series that closely resembles their version of stock car racing. NASCAR conceded that there was at least one exclusionary item in that charter agreement that began in 2021.

    Bell was supposed to hear testimony from expert witnesses but scheduled two November court dates, two weeks after Hamlin will race for the Cup Series title in suburban Phoenix.

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  • Blaney opens 2nd round of NASCAR Cup playoffs with New Hampshire win as Penske dominates

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    LOUDON, N.H. — In a race in which Fords were fastest at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Ryan Blaney barely was best in class for the second-round opener of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.

    The 2003 Cup champion led 116 laps in his No. 12 Mustang, including the final 39, but still had to fend off a furious charge by runner-up Josh Berry, who closed within a few car lengths with 10 laps left before overdriving a corner.

    Blaney pulled away to win by 0.937 seconds Sunday in his third victory of the season and 16th of his career.

    “That was probably the hardest 20 laps that I drove,” the Team Penske driver said. “I was trying to kind of bide my stuff and pull Josh a little bit, then he really started coming. It was all I could do to hold him off, trying new lanes. That was good and clean racing. I appreciate Josh for not throwing me the bumper when he could have.

    “What a cool day, what a cool weekend. Super fast car. Really have been strong through the playoffs. It’s great to get a win in the first race of the round.”

    Blaney, who is trying to reach the Championship 4 season finale for the third consecutive year, became the first driver to advance into one of the eight available spots in the third round of the Cup playoffs.

    Berry, whose No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford has a competitive alliance with Penske, overcame a spin on the 82nd lap and rebounded from his first-round elimination after finishing last in each of the first three races in the playoffs.

    “It was definitely an awesome day,” said Berry, who led 10 laps. “Hats off to Ryan at the end. All our cars were really strong, and Ryan did a great job there. I was honestly surprised I was able to keep him honest at the end.

    “Just a shame to finish second, but after the last couple of weeks, it feels good. This is definitely what we’re capable of, and hopefully we can keep it going.”

    The Fords backed up their impressive performances in qualifying Saturday when Penske star Joey Logano won the pole position to cap a sweep of the top three starting spots with Blaney and Berry. The same trio led 273 of 301 laps Sunday.

    William Byron was the highest-finishing Chevrolet driver in third.

    “It was a good day overall,” said Byron, who is the highest-ranked driver behind Blaney in the playoff standings with two races left in the second round. “Penske guys were super fast. I felt like they were in another zip code.”

    Logano took fourth after leading a race-high 147 laps in the No. 22 Ford. The Middletown, Connecticut, native started from the pole for the first time at New Hampshire, which he considers his home track.

    “(Blaney) was wicked fast in practice, and he showed that again in the race,” Logano said. “We obviously got a ton of points today, so we did what we needed to do, but I’d rather win. That’s just the greed in me, especially when it’s home.”

    After qualifying 27th, last among the 12 playoff drivers, Chase Elliott raced to a fifth-place finish.

    Christopher Bell took sixth as the top finishing Toyota driver for Joe Gibbs Racing, which went undefeated in the first round of the playoffs.

    Kyle Larson took seventh, and Ross Chastain was ninth as playoff drivers took eight of the top 10 spots on the 1.058-mile oval.

    The race turned awkward for Joe Gibbs Racing on Lap 110 when Denny Hamlin spun teammate Ty Gibbs into the Turn 2 wall while racing for 11th. Gibbs, the only JGR driver who failed to qualify for the playoffs, seemed to be impeding the progress of teammates Hamlin and Christopher Bell when the incident happened.

    “Does Ty know we’re running for a championship?” Hamlin said on his team radio shortly before they made contact. “What the (expletive) is he doing?”

    After the wreck, Hamlin questioned whether the grandson of team owner Joe Gibbs was getting preferential treatment. “Are they afraid to talk to him? That’s what I feel like,” Hamlin radioed his team. “They’re just scared of him.”

    Ty Gibbs briefly returned to the track before being forced to the garage with damage to his Camry. He finished 34th and refused to address the incident or what Hamlin said when asked directly about both.

    “It’s unfortunate, but I’m excited to go race next week and looking forward to it,” said Gibbs, the 2022 Xfinity Series champion who remains winless through 117 starts in the Cup series.

    After finishing 12th, Hamlin had a postrace conversation with Joe Gibbs and JGR director of competition Chris Gabehart before addressing the media.

    “It’s super unfortunate he got spun there, and obviously the contact came from us,” Hamlin said. “I don’t have any comment other than that. We’ll work through it and all, but we’ll see how it goes. But honestly, it’s unfortunate the contact happened.”

    After dominating the first round with three consecutive victories, Joe Gibbs Racing surprisingly faltered in the first stage at New Hampshire, where the team had won the past three Cup races and six consecutive stages.

    The team failed to earn any points in the first stage Sunday as Hamlin, Bell and Chase Briscoe finished outside the top 10 in the 70-lap segment.

    The second race in the second round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs is Sunday at Kansas Speedway. Kyle Larson won at the 1.5-mile track on May 11.

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  • Toyotas turning heads with speed in NASCAR playoffs. ‘They’re ridiculously fast,’ Joey Logano says

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    When Toyota entered NASCAR’s premier series in 2007, the manufacturer was concerned more about making races than winning 200 of them.

    In its first year, Toyota drivers suffered through nearly 100 failed qualifying attempts — but the lack of speed didn’t dissuade Joe Gibbs Racing from signing with the automaker for the 2008 season despite its drivers’ concerns.

    “Certainly, I was worried when we switched over,” JGR driver Denny Hamlin said Sunday after winning at World Wide Technology Raceway to make Toyota the fourth manufacturer to reach the 200-victory mark in Cup. “Obviously, it was a big leap of faith by everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing. The drivers were kind of like an innocent bystander. We were going to live and die by those decisions that JGR made. It turned out to be the best partnership that they could imagine.”

    Two races into the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, Toyota’s blazing pace in trying to end a six-year championship drought has emerged as a prevailing storyline.

    After Toyota swept the top four and took six of the top seven spots in the playoff opener at Darlington Raceway, Hamlin and teammate Chase Briscoe claimed the top two spots at the 1.25-mile oval outside St. Louis that commonly is known as Gateway.

    Toyota’s Camrys have led 515 of 607 laps in the playoffs, and their all-around performance has left defending series champion Joey Logano marveling at the gap with Ford and Chevrolet.

    “They’re ridiculously fast,” Logano said when asked about Toyota after his No. 22 Ford took fifth at Gateway. “They’ve got a lot of grip, and they’ve got a lot of horsepower. We’ve got a lot of work to do to catch up. We’ve got to be absolutely perfect in every category to contend, and we need them to make mistakes, which they do. We have the potential to do it, it’s just going to be really challenging.”

    Logano has won two of the past three titles for Team Penske by winning the season finale at Phoenix, a track that is similar in size and shape to Gateway.

    After failing to lead a lap at Phoenix in his past two Championship 4 appearances in 2020-21, Hamlin is hopeful of being a factor again after leading a race-high 75 of 240 laps at Gateway.

    “I remember showing up to the championship race in 2021 knowing we had no shot, that we weren’t good on the short tracks,” he said. “I do feel like our cars are good right now. This is a track that you can draw some connections to Phoenix, the distance and the banking. You just never know. The Penske cars have come out of nowhere the last few years when you didn’t think they had the speed. They just showed up one week and, poof, they had it.

    “You just never know in this sport. It ebbs and it flows.”

    Toyota Racing Development president Tyler Gibbs also is cautiously optimistic about the consistency across the manufacturer’s nine-car lineup. Though Joe Gibbs Racing is Toyota’s winningest organization with 166 victories (56 apiece by Hamlin and Kyle Busch, who won the most recent title for JGR and Toyota in 2019 ), 23XI Racing won the Brickyard 400 with Bubba Wallace (who has five top-10 finishes in seven races), and Legacy Motor Club has three top fives in the past three races.

    “The tracks have suited us well and our drivers well,” Gibbs said. “I think execution is going to be what wins races in the playoffs and is going to win the championship at Phoenix. The cars are so close, and that execution can take all that away. We’re just going to keep our heads down and keep preparing the way we have. The work that the teams have done is incredible. We had some stumbles at the beginning of the year, and we worked really hard to eliminate those and be ready for the playoffs.”

    Hamlin reaffirmed after his 59th career victory that “the countdown has begun” to the end of his driving career. After signing a two-year extension through 2027 in June, he has 70 races remaining — the eight left on the 2025 schedule, plus the next two 36-race seasons — and he said the timeline is helping him stay motivated to remain in top form.

    “I’m just not going to leave this sport on my deathbed, just leaking oil and running in the back of the pack,” Hamlin said. “I have way too much pride for that. I’m way too cocky for that. There’s just no way. I want to be able to win my last race. To do that, I’m going to have to retire when I’m racing like this.”

    Ryan Blaney rallied for fourth at Gateway despite falling to 18th after being spun by Kyle Larson with 105 laps remaining. Blaney still was miffed after a postrace apology from Larson, who said he misjudged the distance from his No. 5 Chevy to Blaney’s No. 12 Ford entering Turn 3.

    “He just said he made a mistake, and that’s fine, but at the end of the day, I still got turned,” Blaney said. “He came from all the way on the bottom of the racetrack and hit me in the left rear. I know he most likely didn’t mean to do it, but it happened anyway. And so that’s just one I’ve got to remember.”

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    This story has been corrected to show that Joey Logano finished fifth, not fourth, at Gateway.

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  • Ryan Blaney wins thrilling NASCAR regular-season finale at Daytona

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    DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ryan Blaney won a four-wide race across the Daytona International Speedway finish line Saturday night in NASCAR’s regular-season finale — a victory that denied a long-shot driver a spot in the playoffs and gave Alex Bowman postseason life.

    Blaney was 13th with two laps to go but muscled his Team Penske Ford to the front and surged slightly ahead as he led the pack to the checkered flag. He beat Daniel Suarez by 0.031 seconds, Justin Haley by 0.036 seconds and Cole Custer by 0.049 seconds.

    Erik Jones was fifth and Chris Buescher sixth. Any of the drivers behind Blaney would have been first-time winners this season and claimed the final spot in the 16-driver playoff field.

    But Blaney — a former series champion already locked into the field — denied them of the Cinderella moment. His victory assured Bowman, who crashed early in the race and had to watch for more than three hours on TV to learn his fate, would race for the championship this season.

    Tyler Reddick crashed early in and still clinched a spot in the playoffs.

    How?

    Just nine laps later, Bowman wrecked at Daytona and, with Bowman out of the race, it automatically locked Reddick into the 16-driver field.

    Reddick and Bowman both started the race trying to claim the final two spots in the playoffs. Reddick, last year’s regular-season champion, held a 29-point cushion over Bowman. But when he wrecked 18 laps into the race, he suddenly became in danger of missing out on racing for the championship just nine months after he made it to the title-deciding finale.

    His worries went away on Lap 27 when Bowman was collected in a multi-car crash that ended the Hendrick Motorsports drivers’ race. Bowman can still claim the final spot in the playoffs if there is not a first-time winner Saturday night.

    “There’s just nothing you can do, welcome to superspeedway racing,” Bowman said about the crash. “We feel like it was out of our control and it is what it is. I am going to sit in front of a TV and watch, unfortunately we are on the sidelines watching and we’re going to find out here in a couple of hours.”

    Hours before the race began Team Penske noted the death of Karl Kainhofer, the first employee Penske hired when he launched the motorsports juggernaut in 1966.

    Kainhofer was was part of 10 of Penske’s 20 Indianapolis 500 wins, including Mark Donohue’s 1972 win as chief mechanic. Donohue was Penske’s second hire.

    Team Penske said Kainhofer died Friday night. He was 94.

    “Karl Kainhofer’s contributions to Team Penske are immeasurable,” Penske said.

    The playoffs open next Sunday at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. The race was the regular-season finale in 2024 and won by Chase Briscoe, who used the victory to claim the final spot in the playoffs.

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  • NASCAR playoffs roll into Talladega with cloud of lawsuit hanging over sport

    NASCAR playoffs roll into Talladega with cloud of lawsuit hanging over sport

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    TALLADEGA, Ala. — It’s most fitting that NASCAR this weekend races at Talladega Superspeedway, sight of one of the first major disputes between drivers and the top stock car series in the United States.

    It was at the Alabama track’s 1969 debut race when the NASCAR-despised Professional Driver Association led by Richard Petty deemed the track too dangerous and not ready for competition.

    The PDA wanted to postpone the race, NASCAR founder Bill France said no and things quickly turned contentious. So 36 of NASCAR’s regulars boycotted the event, but France made sure the show went on without them.

    And now here we are, 55 years later, back at Talladega with the France family again under challenge. This time from only two teams — the Michael Jordan-owned 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports — who this week filed an antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR over its charter system.

    The two organizations are the only ones among 15 that refused to sign the take-it-or-leave-it agreement NASCAR dropped on the owners 48 hours before last month’s playoff opener. They filed suit Wednesday against NASCAR, which is in the thick of the playoffs with six races remaining starting Sunday at Talladega.

    “It’s obviously the biggest story in the sport currently, and probably one of the biggest stories in a long time,” Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson said.

    And so instead of the focus being on Sunday’s middle race of the round of 12, where drivers need to secure their spot in the standings ahead of next week’s elimination race at Charlotte, the talk is centered on the brewing legal battle.

    Denny Hamlin, the three-time Daytona 500 winner who co-owns 23XI Racing with Jordan, said the lawsuit won’t distract him from trying to win his first Cup Series championship. In fact, he’s more motivated than ever. Hamlin is ranked fifth in the standings and a two-time Talladega winner.

    “Make no mistake, the competitor in me, you don’t think I don’t want to come out here and win this weekend more than any?” Hamlin bristled Saturday. “That’s what I fuel myself on, making the 18-footer on hole 18 to win the match. Like, I live for those moments.

    “Anyone that knows me personally will tell you that these moments, you’ll typically get more out of Denny, because I hate to lose and certainly will not justify any excuses to losing.”

    Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress confirmed to Fox Sports that NASCAR dropped the more than 100-page charter agreement — which is essentially the revenue sharing model — on Richard Childress Racing at 6:37 p.m. on Friday night Sept. 6, with a midnight deadline to sign it “or we’d lose our charters.

    “I didn’t have a choice because we had to sign,” Childress told Fox Sports. “We’ve got over 400 employees, contracts, and I’ve got to take care of my team.”

    Michael McDowell won his fifth pole of the season on a superspeedway Saturday to give Front Row Motorsports — the other team in the antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR — the top starting spot at Talladega.

    McDowell is not in the playoffs.

    He has won six poles this year starting with Atlanta Motor Speedway in the second event of the season. McDowell was also the fastest qualifier in NASCAR’s return to Atlanta, as well as both Talladega races and the August race in Daytona. His sixth pole was at Gateway outside St. Louis and that is not a superspeedway.

    The record for most consecutive superspeedway poles is held by Bill Elliott, who won six straight at Talladega from 1985 through 1987. Elliott won two of those six races.

    McDowell turned a lap at 183.063 mph to lead a Ford driver sweep in qualifying. Austin Cindric qualified second for Team Penske and McDowell teammate Todd Gilliland qualified third.

    Kyle Busch, who is desperately trying to keep his streak of winning at least one race a year for a 20th consecutive season, qualified fourth in a Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing.

    Ryan Blaney, the reigning Cup Series champion and Penske teammate with Cindric, was fifth and followed by teammate Joey Logano and RCR driver Austin Dillon.

    Hamlin was the highest-qualifying Toyota driver at eighth.

    Tyler Reddick won Talladega in the spring as part of his march to the regular-season championship. But as he heads into Sunday’s race, he’s below the cutline for elimination and struggling to understand what happened to his 23XI Racing Toyota.

    Reddick has an average finish of 19th through the first four races with one top-10 finish and 21 stage points. He was 25th last week at Kansas Speedway, where he won a year ago.

    “Yeah, at this point it’s definitely a head-scratcher,” Reddick continued. “I feel like all of us coming off of the regular season, I felt no change in what I was doing. I don’t think anyone on this team has either. We just haven’t been putting together good races. We haven’t had speed; we haven’t been able to get stage points. It’s been tough.”

    Reddick vowed to race Talladega on Sunday as he normally would and has no concern that NASCAR will be scrutinizing him because his race team is suing the sanctioning body.

    “Not worried at all,” Reddick said.

    NASCAR has supplied a new part to teams ahead of Sunday’s race as part of an aerodynamic change designed to stop cars from going airborne.

    The change is intended to increase the speed required for the cars to lift off. Josh Berry flipped in August at Daytona International Speedway, the same race where Michael McDowell went airborne but did not flip.

    One week earlier, Corey LaJoie flipped at Michigan International Speedway.

    The new parts add a rocker skirt to the side of the cars, while fabric was added to the inside of the right roof flap. The right-side roof rails were extended two inches with polycarbonate.

    Talladega is a 2.66-mile oval with 33-degree banking.

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  • Michael Jordan’s 23XI and a 2nd team sue NASCAR over revenue sharing model

    Michael Jordan’s 23XI and a 2nd team sue NASCAR over revenue sharing model

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Two NASCAR teams — one of them owned by Michael Jordan — filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the stock car series and chairman Jim France on Wednesday, claiming the new charter system limits competition by unfairly binding teams to the series, its tracks and its suppliers.

    23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports filed suit in the Western District of North Carolina in Charlotte after two years of contentious negotiations between the privately owned National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing and the 15 charter-holding organizations in the series’ top Cup Series.

    “The France family and NASCAR are monopolistic bullies,” the teams said in the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “And bullies will continue to impose their will to hurt others until their targets stand up and refuse to be victims. That moment has now arrived.”

    NASCAR in early September presented its final offer on what is essentially a revenue sharing model; 13 organizations signed, with most saying they did so under duress or felt threatened into doing so.

    But 23XI Racing, the team co-owned by Jordan and veteran driver Denny Hamlin, and the smaller Front Row team refused to sign. They hired Jeffrey Kessler, a top antitrust attorney who has represented the players in all four major professional North American sports, helped push the NCAA toward an era of paid college athletes and won a landmark equal pay settlement for members of the U.S. national women’s soccer team.

    The lawsuit seeks details from NASCAR and France “related to their exclusionary practices and intent to insulate themselves from any competition.” Kessler said he would ask for a preliminary injunction that will enable the two teams to compete in 2025 under the new charter agreement while the litigation proceeds.

    The teams said they will seek treble damages for anti-competitive terms that have ruled the sport since the initial 2016 charter agreement.

    “Everyone knows that I have always been a fierce competitor, and that will to win is what drives me and the entire 23XI team each and every week out on the track,” said Jordan, the retired NBA superstar. “I love the sport of racing and the passion of our fans, but the way NASCAR is run today is unfair to teams, drivers, sponsors and fans. Today’s action shows I’m willing to fight for a competitive market where everyone wins.”

    A NASCAR spokesman said the series does not comment on pending litigation. NASCAR is based in Daytona Beach, Florida.

    The charter system introduced in 2016 included revenue sharing and other elements of the business for the top motorsports series in the United States while guaranteeing 36 entries in every lucrative Cup Series race. Of the 19 team owners who were originally granted charters in 2016, the lawsuit says, only eight remain in the sport.

    One of the departing teams was Furniture Row Motorsports, which sold its charter for $6 million at the end of the 2018 season — a year removed from winning the Cup Series championship — proof, the plaintiffs say, that the charters left the teams without a path to profitability.

    The original charters lasted from 2016 through 2020 and were automatically renewed to continue through Dec. 31, 2024. With expiration looming, teams argued the revenue sharing is unfair and demanded a larger share of the pot.

    Front Row owner Bob Jenkins has maintained he’s never turned a profit since forming his team in 2005. He won the Daytona 500 in 2021 with driver Michael McDowell, and failed to break even in that banner season.

    With four sons and a desire to leave something for his family to run, Jenkins said he wants a fair agreement.

    “I have been part of this racing community for 20 years and couldn’t be more proud of the Front Row Motorsports team and our success. But the time has come for change,” Jenkins said. “We need a more competitive and fair system where teams, drivers, and sponsors can be rewarded for our collective investment by building long-term enterprise value, just like every other successful professional sports league.”

    During negotiations, the teams asked for more revenue, a voice in governance and rule-making, and a cut from deals NASCAR earns off the names, images and likenesses of the participants.

    The teams also wanted the charters to be permanent; France has refused.

    According to the suit, NASCAR presented a take-it-or-leave-it offer on Friday, Sept. 6, 48 hours before the playoffs began. It says NASCAR threatened teams to sign the more than 100-page agreement or risk losing not only their charters but the charter system itself unless “a substantial number of teams” agreed.

    “The teams knew that fielding a NASCAR car had become so expensive that it would be economically devastating for most of them to compete without even the modest revenue sharing and stability provided by the charter system and the complete loss of their charter values if the charter system was discontinued,” the lawsuit claims.

    Rick Hendrick, the winningest owner in NASCAR history, has said he signed only because he was worn down by the negotiations. 23XI Racing and Front Row held out but their motivation remained unclear until Wednesday’s court filing.

    The suit argues NASCAR violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by preventing any stock car racing team from competing on the circuit “without accepting the anticompetitive terms” it imposes.

    “Faced with a take-it-or-leave-it offer, and no competing opportunity for premier stock car racing in the United States, most of the teams concluded that they had to sign,” the lawsuit states. “One team described its signing as ‘coerced,’ and another said it was ‘under duress.’

    “A third team said, NASCAR ‘put a gun to our heads’ and we ‘had to sign.’ A fourth described NASCAR’s tactics as that of a ‘communist regime.’ None of these teams would permit their identities to be publicly revealed for fear of retribution from NASCAR.”

    NASCAR was founded in 1948 by the late Bill France Sr., and has since been run first by his son, Bill Jr., then his grandson, Brian France, and now France Sr.’s second son, Jim. Ben Kennedy, the son of Bill Jr.’s daughter, Lesa, is the heir apparent to the family business.

    The lawsuit maintains that NASCAR until 2016 operated under year-to-year contracts that provided no long-term viability to any team. There was no guaranteed entry into any Cup Series event or prize money, and teams depended on individual sponsorships they had to find themselves.

    That model made sustainability next to impossible for any owner who tried to operate exclusively as a racing team without additional outside businesses. Chasing sponsorship became a full-time job and teams often found themselves competing with NASCAR outright for financial deals.

    The teams felt they were operating in a “constant state of financial vulnerability” that put some of the most successful organizations out of business, the lawsuit states. It quotes NASCAR Hall of Famer Jimmie Johnson, who has mostly retired as a driver and is the co-owner of a fledgling Cup Series team.

    “In the words of NASCAR Hall of Famer Jimmie Johnson,” the lawsuit says, “the best thing to be is NASCAR, the second best a driver and the last thing a team owner.”

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  • Bowman wraps up a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs with a win on a rainy Chicago street course

    Bowman wraps up a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs with a win on a rainy Chicago street course

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    CHICAGO — At long last, Alex Bowman got a win. And a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.

    So yeah, he was ready to party.

    “We’re going to drink so much damn bourbon tonight, it’s going to be a bad deal,” a jubilant Bowman said. “I’m probably going to wake up naked on the bathroom floor again. That’s just part of this deal sometimes.”

    Bowman held off Tyler Reddick on a rainy street course in downtown Chicago on Sunday, stopping an 80-race winless drought.

    It was his first victory since Las Vegas in March 2022 and No. 8 for his career. He is the 12th Cup Series driver to win this year, leaving four remaining spots in the playoffs with six races left in the regular season.

    After his Vegas victory two years ago, Bowman, 31, was sidelined by a concussion. He injured his back in a short-track accident in April 2023.

    “You start to second-guess if you’re ever going to get a chance to win a race again,” he said.

    Not anymore.

    The Cup Series’ second street race in Chicago was stopped for more than 100 minutes because of rain, and NASCAR set a cutoff time of 8:20 p.m. CDT because of the fading sunlight. When Bowman crossed the start-finish line after that time, the white flag came out, followed by the checkered.

    Reddick made a late charge, but he got into a wall while trying to run down Bowman. Ty Gibbs was third, followed by Joey Hand and Michael McDowell.

    “I got the opportunity to run him down,” Reddick said. “Just obviously couldn’t get the job done. A clean lap was all I had to do and couldn’t even do that.”

    Bowman closed it out on wet weather tires in his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet after pole-sitter Kyle Larson and Shane van Gisbergen were knocked out.

    During the cool-down lap, Bowman was bumped into the wall by Bubba Wallace. Bowman spun out Wallace early in the race.

    “I have to apologize again to the 23 guys,” Bowman said. “Just messed up, trying to get my windshield wiper on, missed a corner and ruined their day. I hate that. I’m still embarrassed about it.”

    Larson slammed into the tire barrier in Turn 6 on Lap 34, bringing out a caution. He was trying for his fourth win of the season in his 350th career Cup Series start.

    “As soon as I hit the brakes, I knew I was in trouble,” said Larson, who has an 11-point lead over Chase Elliott in the driver standings.

    Van Gisbergen was clipped by Chase Briscoe going into Turn 6 on Lap 25. Briscoe slid into a tire barrier, but van Gisbergen crashed into the temporary wall — causing heavy damage to the right side of his Kaulig Racing Chevrolet.

    “I just sort of turned in. It looked pretty good and then just got smacked by someone,” van Gisbergen said. “It’s gutting.”

    Shortly after the wreck, the race was stopped to give NASCAR time to clear standing water from the makeshift track. The drivers returned to their cars about an hour later, but the delay continued when another cell passed over the course.

    Gibbs was in front when the race resumed, followed by Christopher Bell and Larson.

    “It’s really fun. I feel like it’s kind of like a dirt track, honestly,” Gibbs said about the wet conditions. “Pick and choose your lines, see what lane is drying up and is faster. You have to look around, which makes it fun as we don’t get to do that a lot.”

    Van Gisbergen raced to a career-altering victory last year in Chicago when he became the first driver to win his Cup Series debut since Johnny Rutherford in the second qualifying race at Daytona in 1963. The 35-year-old New Zealand native also won Saturday’s Xfinity Series race on the tricky 12-turn, 2.2-mile course.

    Van Gisbergen won the first stage Sunday shortly before he was knocked out.

    “We were able to lead and I felt like I was driving well with it,” he said, “so yeah, it’s a shame to be out so early. It’s a shame we couldn’t have a proper crack at it at the end.”

    Bowman’s victory finished NASCAR’s second year on the street course in Chicago. It is expected to return next season, but the future of the weekend — a combination of racing and music that is designed more for NASCAR newcomers than its traditional fans — is unclear beyond 2025.

    Unlike last year, when persistent showers wreaked havoc on the schedule — leading to shortened versions of the Xfinity and Cup Series races — there was no issue with the weather until the Cup drivers got into their cars and got the command to start their engines. Then the rain started to fall, and the teams had to make a quick decision on whether to switch to wet tires.

    After slowing to a drizzle, the showers increased in intensity about 17 laps in — eventually leading to the stoppage.

    The Cup Series is at Pocono next Sunday.

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  • Austin Cindric gives Team Penske its first NASCAR win and some much-needed momentum

    Austin Cindric gives Team Penske its first NASCAR win and some much-needed momentum

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    Even amid the elation of finally winning a NASCAR Cup Series race again, Austin Cindric found himself a bit heartbroken.

    It should have been a banner day for Team Penske on Sunday just outside St. Louis. Defending series champ Ryan Blaney was leading in the closing laps, Cindric was poised to give a team that has struggled all season a 1-2 finish and Joey Logano was just one spot away from giving Team Penske all three of its cars in the top five at the checkered flag.

    But as the white flag flew, Blaney slowed to a crawl — out of fuel, it turned out — and Cindric went right by, leading the final lap for his second Cup Series victory and first since the season-opening Daytona 500 more than two years ago.

    “They deserved to win this race,” said Cindric, who nevertheless was happy to lock the No. 2 car into the Cup Series playoffs. “Ryan has been a hell of a leader on this team. This weekend was a great weekend for everybody involved.”

    Right up till the end.

    But that is how the season has gone for Team Penske, one of the perennial contenders in NASCAR’s top series. Cindric had just one top-five finish, and that was in February at Atlanta. Blaney had three straight top fives early on but had finished 36th and 39th in the previous two points-paying races. Logano won the All-Star race at Charlotte, but when he passed out-of-gas Blaney and finished fifth on Sunday, it was only his second top-five run in a points race all year.

    That’s a far different story from last season, when Blaney won three times on his way to the title, and Logano had 11 top-five finishes along with a second-place run in the Daytona 500 and a victory at Atlanta.

    The meager results by Team Penske have been mirrored by Ford teams as a whole. The manufacturer, which switched from the sixth-generation Mustang to the Mustang Dark Horse body style this season, didn’t reach victory lane until Brad Keselowski last month at Darlington, and that remained its only win until Cindric on Sunday.

    “I’m proud for Team Penske and Ford. I’m really happy with our showing today,” said Blaney, who may have used more fuel than he thought while battling for several laps with Christopher Bell, who faded late when his engine started having trouble.

    “I don’t know what I’ve got to do to get some luck on our side,” Blaney added. “I’ve wrecked the last two points races and thought we had a great shot to win and I ended up bad, so I just appreciate the effort. We just have to keep sticking with it.”

    It’s been a topsy-turvy year for Team Penske beyond NASCAR, too.

    The biggest scandal to hit IndyCar in years came after the season-opening race at St. Petersburg, Florida, when Team Penske’s three cars were found to have an illegal version of push-to-pass software installed, giving them a horsepower boost they could use when rivals could not. Newgarden had his win stripped and teammate Scott McLaughlin also was disqualified, and team — and series — owner Roger Penske suspended four of the organization’s key personnel.

    Among them was Cindric’s father, Tim Cindric, the president of Team Penske and Newgarden’s race strategist.

    “Newgarden never should have had to worry about it because our team missed it, but it was not malicious,” Penske told The Associated Press in an interview last week in Detroit. “By the way, it was available for everybody to look at it at all the races. So at the end of the day, we took our medicine and we’re moving on.”

    That was evident in the Indy 500. Team Penske locked out the front row in qualifying, Newgarden won his second straight 500 with a daring last-lap pass of Pato O’Ward and pole sitter McLaughlin finished sixth after leading early on.

    While the IndyCar teams had trouble last weekend in Detroit, where Will Power led the way with a sixth-place finish, the Cup Series teams finally stepped up. Cindric may have felt like he was gifted the win, but the No. 2 car led the second-most laps with 53, while Blaney spent 20 laps running out front and Logano also led a lap.

    Perhaps it was a sign that things are finally turning around for the organization.

    “We were able to grab some points, which we need to do, and a Penske car got in victory lane,” Logano said, “so you’ve got to be happy about that. Obviously, we’d rather it be us, but that momentum goes through the whole shop. It’s still a good day.”

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  • NASCAR teams have hired a top antitrust attorney in their revenue dispute. Here’s what it means

    NASCAR teams have hired a top antitrust attorney in their revenue dispute. Here’s what it means

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    The NASCAR season is under way, with 38 races to determine another stock car racing champion in the 76th season of the top motorsports series in the United States.

    There is a serious problem for NASCAR and its teams: Negotiations on a new revenue-sharing model have deteriorated. In mid-February, representatives from five teams told The Associated Press they have hired top antitrust sports attorney Jeffrey Kessler as an adviser..

    The move was a power play by the 15 teams holding the 36 charters that guarantee entry into every race, a message that they won’t be bullied in the negotiations. Here’s what to know about this off-the-track brawl with millions at stake:

    The charters are the equivalent of having a franchise within NASCAR, but they aren’t permanent and can be revoked by the series. Their value is set by the current market rate, but the details are not disclosed. A charter purchased by Spire Motorsports last year was sold by Live Fast Motorsports reportedly for $40 million — an enormous jump from the $6 million Spire spent in 2018 when it became the first team to buy a charter from another team.

    NASCAR determined which teams received charters in 2016. There are four charters that have not been offered for sale and are on hold by NASCAR for use if a fourth manufacturer enters the Cup Series.

    The current agreement expires at the end of this season and teams have been trying for two years to get a better deal from NASCAR, including making the charters permanent.

    NASCAR claimed it needed to first complete a new media rights package and a new $7.7 billion television rights deal was announced in December. NASCAR’s economic offer to the teams came shortly after.

    The five-member negotiating committee for the race teams told AP that NASCAR was clear: “We’ve been told, ‘This is all there is; there is no flexibility.’ That’s not a negotiation,” said Curtis Polk, part owner of 23XI Racing with Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin.

    The stability of NASCAR has ebbed and flowed for years, with much made about empty seats in the stands or viewership numbers season to season. The series has weathered it all and the TV deal is considered substantial.

    A recent S&P Global Ratings Report sees ongoing strength in live attendance, sponsorship and advertising-related revenue for NASCAR this year, and added that the new rights deal “provides good revenue visibility” through 2031.

    The report also raised its rating on NASCAR’s credit, citing the series’ ability to pay down debt while still growing revenue. S&P expects NASCAR to see 6% to 8% growth this year in its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a standard accounting measurement.

    S&P also expects a positive cash flow of $135 million to $145 million — which could be reduced to $85 million after infrastructure upgrades — that could be used to further trim its debt.

    Polk noted the report proves NASCAR is financially stable and has had little trouble paying down the nearly $1.5 billion it borrowed in 2019 to take its race tracks private.

    “The rating agencies have upped NASCAR to a better rating based on the health of NASCAR,” Polk said. “That debt that NASCAR had is now down to like $400 million. They paid off $1 billion of debt in less than five years.”

    The teams want more than just a larger financial stake.

    In addition to an increase in the percentage the teams receive from the media rights deal, the teams want the charters to become permanent the way franchises are in other leagues. With so many of NASCAR’s top team owners in their 70s — Roger Penske turned 87 last week — they want their investments to become legacies they can leave to their families.

    NASCAR has refused to even consider making the charters permanent.

    The teams also want a seat at the table when it comes to governance, and they want to create a collaborative environment to create new revenue opportunities.

    The teams are independent from NASCAR, which sanctions the 38 races each year and distributes the purses along with revenue from licensing, merchandise and other streams. It also controls a swath of top-tier tracks.

    The teams do not want to create a breakaway series of their own, citing the demise of CART when Tony George took the Indianapolis 500 away and formed a rival league. Two open-wheel series were not sustainable and in 2008 reunified for what is now IndyCar. The damage was already done, though; what was once the top U.S. motorsports series was bypassed by NASCAR during the split.

    The teams also have no plans at this time to promote a race outside of NASCAR’s supervision. They want to make a deal.

    Teams could technically go on strike and stop showing up at the track, but it makes no financial sense and NASCAR would likely just find teams from a stock car series it doesn’t already own to fill a field.

    The attorney is a specialist in sports labor and antitrust disputes. He helped secure a 9-0 win in 2021 at the U.S. Supreme Court in NCAA v. Alston, a major case on athlete compensation. He also led the U.S. women’s soccer team in its successful fight for equal pay as well as litigations for current free agency rules in the NBA and the NFL.

    Although retaining Kessler could mean the teams are exploring litigation, the negotiating representatives insisted the attorney has so far only been brought on to advise them in negotiations.

    The Race Team Alliance met at Daytona International Speedway, NASCAR declined to attend, and the teams claim NASCAR is no longer negotiating with them as a group. Instead, they believe NASCAR is trying to talk to teams individually to create division in what is now a unified front.

    NASCAR could remake the entire eligibility system and write its own rules for distribution of revenue. NASCAR does not have a collective bargaining agreement for teams and even though the RTA was formed to fight this battle, it is not a union.

    The teams could make an antitrust challenge on NASCAR’s control of the market and argue NASCAR operates stock car racing as a monopoly.

    But NASCAR has won legal battles before, including a 2009 case in which Kentucky Speedway failed to prove its denial to host a Cup Series race constituted an illegal monopoly.

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  • Ken Squier, a longtime NASCAR announcer and broadcaster, dies at 88

    Ken Squier, a longtime NASCAR announcer and broadcaster, dies at 88

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    Ken Squier, a longtime NASCAR announcer and broadcaster, has died. He was 88.

    Squier died Wednesday night in Waterbury, Vermont, according to the management of the local WDEV radio, which he owned.

    “Though he never sat behind the wheel of a stock car, Ken Squier contributed to the growth of NASCAR as much as any competitor,” Jim France, chairman and CEO of NASCAR, said in a statement. He called him a superb storyteller whose voice is the soundtrack to many of NASCAR’s great moments.

    “His calls on TV and radio brought fans closer to the sport, and for that he was a fan favorite. Ken knew no strangers, and he will be missed by all.”

    Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he is forever grateful for Squier’s “major role” is growing stock car racing.

    “Ken Squier was there when Nascar was introduced to the rest of the world in 1979 for the Daytona 500. I’m convinced that race would have not had its lasting impact had Ken not been our lead narrator,” Earnhardt posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. “We still ride the wave of that momentum created on that day.”

    Squier opened Thunder Road speedway in his home state of Vermont in Barre in 1960. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a stock car racer, called Squier “a true Vermont legend and dear friend to me and so many others.”

    Much will be made of “the NASCAR Hall of Famer’s extraordinary contributions to racing — from his time in the booth at CBS, where he coined the phrase ‘The Great American Race’, to his founding of the ‘Nation’s Site of Excitement’ at Thunder Road,” the governor posted on social media. “His impacts on the sport are too numerous to count, and he deserves every one of those recognitions and many more. But for me, what I will remember most was his friendship and deep devotion to his community, which was the entire state.”

    NASCAR named its annual award for media excellence after Squier and broadcaster Barney Gall. Race fans felt like they knew Squier, whether they met him or not, said Winston Kelley, executive director of NASCAR Hall of Fame.

    “While perhaps best known for his memorable last lap and postrace descriptions of the 1979 Daytona 500, he had the incomparable ability to so effectively articulate the human side of all NASCAR competitors,” Kelley said in a statement. “Among his signature phrases, used at just the right time, was ‘common men doing uncommon things’ which helped audiences and we mere mortals understand the unique skills, risks and gravity of manhandling a 3,400 pound racecar at speeds in excess of 200 mph with 39 other snarling competitors entrenched around one another.”

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  • Ryan Blaney earns 1st career NASCAR championship and gives Roger Penske back-to-back Cup titles

    Ryan Blaney earns 1st career NASCAR championship and gives Roger Penske back-to-back Cup titles

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    AVONDALE, Ariz. — Ryan Blaney only had to beat Kyle Larson and William Byron to win his first NASCAR championship.

    He needlessly added Ross Chastain to his list, too, racing him pointlessly hard in an attempt to win the race Sunday at Phoenix Raceway. When he couldn’t pass Chastain, Blaney angrily ran into the back of his car.

    It was a side of Blaney his team and competitors know very well.

    The public? Not so much.

    The soft-spoken third generation racer from Ohio used a pugnacious second-place run at Phoenix to win the Cup title in a drive that showcased a fire that apparently blazes inside the typically mild-mannered Blaney.

    “You can say his frustration level gets above the boiling point, I’d have to say,” said team owner Roger Penske, who won back-to-back Cup titles with Blaney’s effort.

    The clash with Chastain followed an earlier deliberate collision by Blaney with Martin Truex Jr. Blaney also raced Larson extremely hard and he’d had it with Chastain, the leader and eventual race winner, with 53 laps remaining when Blaney ran into the back of Chastain.

    “Not surprised by it because it’s him and he does that,” said Chastain, who believes Blaney also flashed him the middle finger. “Anger. He gets angry. It’s OK. I’ve known him for a decade. I could see him moving around in the car. The car’s going straight. I could see his colorful suit and gloves. When I checked the camera, I was like, ‘Oh, he is angry.’”

    Blaney’s behavior was relayed to Byron, who dates Blaney’s youngest sister, Erin.

    “The 12 is melting down,” Byron was told over the radio. Byron, who won a Cup Series high six races this year, started from the pole and led 96 laps early.

    “He’s always aggressive,” smiled Byron. “He’s always quick and aggressive. I don’t think it was anything new.”

    Larson was watching and waiting to pounce in case Blaney made a mistake. The championship was guaranteed to the highest-finishing driver between Blaney, Larson, Byron and Christopher Bell, but Bell broke a brake rotor early and was eliminated with a last-place finish.

    “He’s a quiet guy, but I feel like he races really hard and he gets extremely fired up, too. I’m curious what his radio sounded like,” Larson said. “He was mad at (Truex) at the end of the second stage, he ran into the back of him in a caution. He ran into the back of Ross. He earned it. He worked really hard.”

    Blaney became the first Ohio-born driver to win the Cup title and followed teammate Joey Logano, who won for Penske a year ago. It was an amazing finish for Ford Performance, which struggled most of the season but came on late with Blaney, who won two of the final six playoff races.

    The title was the fourth in the Cup Series for Penske, but first time “The Captain” has consecutive Cups. His IndyCar program won back-to-back championships in 2016 and 2017 with Simon Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden and Penske has 44 total championships across motorsports.

    Blaney noted how important it was to win for Penske; the 86-year-old was recently hospitalized with shingles and missed Blaney’s win at Martinsville Speedway last Sunday. Penske was in Phoenix and calmly watched the race from a suite, but made his way to the frontstretch to congratulate his 29-year-old driver.

    “I thought the captain had to stay cool. He’s the coolest guy on the ship,” Penske said of watching the race with a headset he used frequently to calm Blaney over the radio. “I would say I probably was cool, but inside I was turning over. I told him before the race, ‘Win, lose or draw, you’re a champion.’”

    Blaney for sure needed it on Sunday, and used an expletive to admit he deliberately ran into Chastain.

    “Yes I hit him on purpose. He blocked me on purpose 10 times,” Blaney said. “So yeah I hit him on purpose. He backed me up to the other championship guy (Larson) and I gotta go.”

    Team Penske has won three Cup titles in the past six seasons, and Blaney has driven for Penske since 2013, when he was 19 years old. He said it was a goal this entire week to add consecutive NASCAR titles to Penske’s legacy.

    “It was definitely on my mind to give him consecutive titles, I mean, because he’s done everything in motorsports and we had a chance to go back-to-back on the Cup side with him,” Blaney said. “I mean, we couldn’t pass up that opportunity. So everyone worked really hard to make it happen and I’m so proud of the effort.”

    Blaney is the son of former Cup driver Dave Blaney, who made 473 Cup starts over 17 seasons. Dave Blaney was a World of Outlaws champion, his brother, Dale, was a sprint car champion, and their father, Lou, was credited with multiple Midwest titles.

    “Obviously I come from a family of racers, my grandfather, dad and uncle,” Blaney said. “Dad is obviously who I grew up watching and admiring, wanted to be like. To be able to do what he did, ’cause as a kid I just wanted to do what dad did, so to be able to race and let alone compete for wins and championships, still have my parents around, people that you look up to that are still around, it makes it even more special.”

    Chastain won the race in a Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing and is the first driver to win the season finale while not racing for the championship since Denny Hamlin in 2013, one year before this current elimination format began.

    Larson and Byron finished third and fourth for Hendrick Motorsports, while Bell of Joe Gibbs Racing didn’t finish and was scored 36th. They were the only four drivers eligible for the title Sunday.

    Kevin Harvick finished seventh in the final race of his Cup career.

    Even after his clash with Chastain, there was still a final round of pit stops to come when a Kyle Busch spin brought out the final caution of the race with 37 laps remaining. Blaney was second when he headed to pit road but it was Larson and the No. 5 Hendrick team that had the fastest pit stop.

    “Let’s do this guys,” Larson told his crew as he headed in for the stop.

    Larson was the first of the title contenders off pit road, while Blaney lost four spots and was sixth on the last restart. Blaney made up some quick ground and eventually caught Larson, but had to race door-to-door for several laps against the 2021 champion before finally clearing him with 20 laps remaining.

    “Blaney had to work for it. He really had to work for it,” Larson said. “And guys around him that were not in the final four racing him really hard. He definitely deserved it and earned it.”

    Larson was the only previous champion in the final four, while Blaney, Bell and Byron were racing for their first title.

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  • Column: Ryan Blaney carries momentum into NASCAR’s championship finale as he chases 1st Cup title

    Column: Ryan Blaney carries momentum into NASCAR’s championship finale as he chases 1st Cup title

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Ryan Blaney began to doubt himself and his ability to compete at NASCAR’s top level as he was mired in a 59-race losing streak and all his buddies he’d grown up racing against were thriving in the Cup Series.

    There was Chase Elliott, one of his best friends, who won the 2020 Cup title and is NASCAR’s five-time reigning most popular driver. Then there was Bubba Wallace, who Blaney grew up racing practically every week, freshly minted with a Michael Jordan-owned team built around him.

    And what of William Byron, who only needed half the time to pass Blaney in career wins? Well, he started dating Blaney’s sister. Add another star to the inner circle.

    “There’s been some bumps in the road, for sure. Maybe not being as, like, dominant as you want to be, right?” Blaney said. “Some of the other guys that are around your age who kind of came in at the same time, you want to be the best of that crop. We haven’t, right? We haven’t had the successes as like a (Kyle) Larson, Chase, those people.

    “I try not to let that get to me. Chase and I are great friends. It kind of motivates me, like, ‘Man, I want to be that guy, I want to be that guy winning a championship, all these races, I want to be that guy.’”

    A win on Sunday at Martinsville Speedway has given Blaney a chance to be that guy.

    He’ll race for his first Cup title on Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, where the highest-finishing driver between Blaney, Byron, Larson and Christopher Bell will be crowned champion. Blaney got there first by snapping his long losing streak with a May win at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway to ensure he qualified for the 16-driver playoffs.

    Then he scored his second win of the season in the round of 12 of the playoffs at Talladega Superspeedway to earn an automatic berth into the round of eight. Blaney had been to the round of eight three previous times but had never reached NASCAR’s final four until this week.

    As the last Team Penske driver standing — reigning Cup champion Joey Logano was eliminated after the round of 12 — Blaney felt immense pressure to get a Ford into this Sunday’s championship race. He opened with a sixth-place finish at Talladega that was initially disqualified for a failed post-race inspection, only for NASCAR to reverse it the next day when it found its templates were off.

    It put Blaney back in the game and he finished second at Homestead-Miami Speedway to control his own championship destiny at Martinsville. He didn’t need the victory to lock himself into the finale, but in winning on the Virginia short track, Blaney joined Larson as the only two drivers with multiple playoff wins this season.

    He admitted after the Martinsville win how difficult the last few years have been as his peers have thrived.

    “I think it motivates me more than anything, just to try to work on the things that you think you can do better. I think that’s the biggest thing that’s helped me out this year,” Blaney said. “It’s hard to do. You’re picking out your flaws. ‘You suck at this, this and this. Let’s change things up to make it better.’ Sometimes that’s hard to kind of admit. You don’t ever want to admit your flaws. I think that’s been something good that has kind of helped me out for this year.”

    Of the final four drivers, the 2021 champion Larson is the only one with a Cup title. He’s back in the finale for the second time in three years alongside Hendrick teammate Byron, who led the Cup Series this year with six wins to earn his first shot at the title.

    Christopher Bell of Joe Gibbs Racing is the lone Toyota representative, and Blaney had to hold off Denny Hamlin for the entirety of Sunday’s race at Martinsville to ensure Ford had a driver racing for the title.

    It was a sigh of relief to Mark Rushbrook, global director, Ford Performance Motorsports. The Ford camp started the playoffs with six drivers in the field but only Blaney still in contention at Martinsville.

    Blaney now has two wins in the last five races — has only finished outside the top 10 once in that span — and has back-to-back runner-up finishes at Phoenix. He was second to Logano a year ago in the finale, and second to Byron in the spring.

    Rushbrook loves Blaney’s chances come Sunday to give Ford a second consecutive Cup title.

    “100 percent he’s got a chance. Look at the race last year, Logano led most of the race and who was right there on his shoulder the entire race? Blaney,” Rushbrook said. “So I believe in our program and the Penske program and Ryan Blaney that he’s got a solid chance to win on Sunday. He’s going in there with a lot of momentum and optimism.”

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