The NASCAR antitrust lawsuit drama has finally come to an end. NASCAR and 23XI Racing/Front Row Motorsports officially settled on the ninth day of the trial and confirmed through a joint statement that “evergreen” charters will be issued for every charter holder in the NASCAR Cup Series. What led to this sudden turnaround?
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Former driver Kenny Wallace decoded the key takeaways from the trial on his YouTube channel. The first point he believes led to the settlement is fan sentiment. He explained that, as much as fans complain about the sport not being good enough, they don’t like it when someone outside the fraternity does it. And so, the pressure to heed the fanbase and respect its opinion was high.
Second, he observed how Jim France and Steve Phelps kept avoiding the topics they wanted to talk about by saying that they didn’t remember the details. He said, “Come on, guys. Let’s debullshit this a little bit. When Jim France and Steve Phelps said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember.’ That means they don’t want to talk about it. That was not good.”
One more point he thinks was pivotal in the proceedings is the letters that France got from Rick Hendrick and Roger Penske last year. These letters pleaded with him to make charters permanent and were read on the stand in court. Wallace mentioned these letters as hits that France took to the gut since both Hendrick and Penske were good friends of his.
What does Wallace want NASCAR to do now?
Every family has dirty laundry. NASCAR does too. Wallace believes that it would be in everybody’s best interest for NASCAR to acknowledge that it made a mistake and move on to the next thing at hand. He said, “The lawsuit is over. What does NASCAR need to do to make you happy? I think all they need to do is show humility and move forward.”
He used a story from his own career to back this approach that he suggests. Back when he was a driver for Furniture Row Racing, the team fired him out of the blue and left him stranded. They reasoned that he wasn’t performing well enough. Six months later, they came back to him, accepted that a mistake had been made, and rehired him to race in the Daytona 500.
As fate would have it, Wallace got back into the team’s car, produced a great result, and all was well again. He hopes that something similar will transpire if NASCAR takes the road of humility.
