The third day of the antitrust trial brought another round of pointed testimony as 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports continued pressing their case against NASCAR. After Bob Jenkins detailed how the sanctioning body dropped a 112-page charter agreement on team owners with a six-hour Friday deadline, effectively ensuring no attorney could review it, NASCAR strategy chief Scott Prime attempted to deflect claims that the organization wields its power like a monopoly determined to keep teams boxed in.
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During cross-examination, attorney Jeffrey Kessler, representing 23XI Racing, methodically walked Prime through his own emails and internal communications, showing how the governing body didn’t simply stumble into lopsided control but crafted it with accuracy.
Kessler argued that despite the charter system’s supposed guardrails, NASCAR’s grip has tightened to the point that teams have virtually no leverage when renewal time arrives. With no legitimate alternative series available, teams are negotiating from their heels, not their toes.
Kessler also revived conversations around NASCAR’s posture toward competing ventures, citing messages indicating a desire to squeeze out rival leagues such as Tony Stewart’s SRX. The essence was that NASCAR didn’t merely want to maintain order; it wanted to ensure no parallel ecosystem could gain footing.
The most damning moment came when Kessler introduced an email Prime sent during the 2024 charter negotiations outlining four specific demands from race teams.
Prime complained that those demands came with a warning: if NASCAR refused to budge, teams would be forced to consider all alternatives. That raised the specter of a possible breakaway stock-car series, something the sanctioning body clearly viewed as an existential threat.
Prime’s email laid out a slate of potential responses, none of them subtle.
Among the options: slash the number of available charters and hand them out on a “first come, first served” basis to spark chaos in the garage; rewrite charter language entirely to favor NASCAR and issue a strict take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum; dissolve the charter system outright; or even absorb all car ownership in-house, eliminating independent teams altogether.
Former NASCAR president Steve Phelps replied to Prime, stating bluntly that the scenarios reflected the sanctioning body’s true options and warned that teams were “playing with fire.” His solution to get the teams back on track was to pick a deadline, present the deal, and make it clear that teams either sign or lose their charters. Full stop.
Kessler told the court that only an organization operating as a monopoly could issue such a threat and expect compliance. As he summarized it, “Only a monopolist has the power to say, Take my offer, and if you don’t take it, you will no longer be in this business.’”
