“I Don’t Have a Billion Dollar Company”: Justin Marks on “Funny Business” Behind NASCAR Charter Leading to Holdup

Since Shane van Gisbergen sat in the Justin Marks-owned Project 91 car, all eyes have been on him to achieve success in the NASCAR Cup Series. The Kiwi, who races in the V8 Supercars championship in Australia, has been looking forward to making the full-time jump into NASCAR. But the question is, which team will be the landing spot?

SVG proved his ability after winning the race at the Chicago street race and then finishing in the top 10 at the Indy road course. Therefore, it shouldn’t be hard for him to get a seat. The problem at the moment is the cost of the charters.

Speaking about the “funny business” involving the charters, Trackhouse Racing bossman, Justin Marks, spoke about the matter, underlying how the financial side of it holds them back.

Justin Marks talks about the charter system and its problems

Marks was asked if he would be purchasing a charter for SVG or not. To this, he gave an honest answer, “I don’t have a charter. It matters I mean… The charter thing is a funny business right now. I mean I think that there is probably a tipping point where buying a charter is…”

“Look I’m running a business here. I don’t have a billion-dollar company that I can lean on or anything like that. We have got a lot of people who are interested and the barrier of entry is high, financially right now for a charter… We are going to try and grow as a business. It’s not 100 percent dependent on us and our ability to buy a charter.”

Considering that charters range somewhere near the $30 million mark, it makes next to no sense for some of the smaller teams to even think about investing in such a  deal. NASCAR’s cost of charters has multiplied over the year and has reached an outrageous point at the moment.

What is the NASCAR Charter system?

The charter system came into effect in the 2016 season, when 36 were given a charter to run in the Cup Series. In essence, it is an agreement between the teams and NASCAR to ensure they will continue to race for as long as their agreement is valid. Moreover, they also will get a piece of the prize money at the end of each season.

For example, Team Penske runs three charters, basically three separate cars and their crew members. Hence, NASCAR can treat them all as a franchise. So basically if a team like Trackhouse Racing wishes to expand and add one more car to the starting grid they would have to acquire a charter for that to happen.