Barring a quick settlement, the federal antitrust lawsuit filed by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports could take at least two years to reach trial.
There is much to be determined until then, like whether an injunction will be granted to allow those teams to continue racing as chartered teams and if NASCAR will revoke the six combined charters those teams intend to field.
Jeffrey Kessler, the lawyer representing the two teams against NASCAR, most famously successfully won college athletes their NIL rights and secured equal pay for the United States Women’s Soccer Team.
He says this is as easy an antitrust case as he has ever pursued but there is also skepticism over how successful it will be.
Former NASCAR team owner Chris Lencheski, who operated SKI Motorsports in the 2010s, advises private equity companies on motorsports investments and is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University.
Lencheski, who is known as ‘Ski’ around the industry said it’s going to be a tougher case for the teams to pursue in a FOX Sports article.
He said 14 of the 16 Cup Series teams signing the charter agreement works against the two hold outs.
“I’m still trying to square how any one individual organization among a business enterprise suggests that this was unfair to them, uniquely, and not unfair to the other 32,” Lencheski said. “If 32 organizations stand up and say, ‘We all agree,’ then you might have some merit because there might be something unknown to me as a consumer I may not be aware of.”
Several team owners have said privately that they felt coerced and that NASCAR issued a final take it or leave it offer. Kessler referred to the capitulation as ‘battered wife syndrome.’
Lencheski also said antitrust lawsuits must prove harm to consumers, and he says the fans are the consumers in this case.
“The race consumer … is the person I’m focused on,” Lencheski said. “All of this other stuff is millionaires versus millionaires style of discourse.
“It’s about how does it affect the race consumer? And nothing in the activity, in my eyes, by either NASCAR or Jim France affects the race consumer’s ability to enjoy the sport, engage in the sport meaningfully, or address the sponsors’ needs that would have been outside of one charter versus another.”
Lencheski also stated 23XI and Front Row will have to prove that NASCAR is a sport league as opposed to a business enterprise — one that features teams, winners and losers, and a playoff.