Michael Jordan-NASCAR Brawl Shakes Up Top US Motorsport

In decades past, when Michael Jordan took to the court, everyone knew the inevitable result. This fall, not so much.

The change has much to do with the type of court where Jordan has more recently “competed.” As the majority owner of a stock-car racing team with driver Denny Hamlin, Jordan and another team spent nearly two weeks inside a federal courthouse in Charlotte during the trial of their antitrust suit against NASCAR.

Both parties ultimately settled the suit mid-trial for an undisclosed sum, making it more difficult to ascertain exactly whether and how Jordan “won.” The settlement marks a series of important developments over a normally quiet offseason that will affect how major motorsports leagues operate.

Monopoly Allegations

The suit, originally filed in October 2024 amid contentious negotiations between all NASCAR teams and the sanctioning body, alleged that the league abused its monopoly position — NASCAR owns many of the tracks on which the series runs, and tracks hosting events (whether NASCAR-owned or not) cannot host other stock-car racing series — to “low-ball” the amount of revenue teams received. While most teams signed a renewal of their charters (the sport’s equivalent of a franchise) that fall, Jordan’s 23XI team and Front Row Motorsports refused to sign, and went to court.

Both entities took a major gamble, as a defeat in court likely would have caused financial losses leading to the dissolution of their teams. But Jordan, who personally came to the courthouse every day of the trial (causing a minor media circus), thought the sacrifice worth it to help grow the sport over the long run.

While the financial terms of the settlement with the two suing teams weren’t disclosed, all NASCAR teams won “evergreen” charters, a move toward giving the teams more stability. The move was one that the France family, which controls NASCAR, had previously refused to contemplate. Teams will also have more input on car design changes, in an attempt to keep team costs manageable.

Will Scars Linger?

Those and other changes will, as Jordan stated, grow the sport, but they came at a steep cost — and arguably an unnecessary one. Because Jim France, son of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., refused to sign off on permanent charters, the sport ended up going through a 14-month-long soap opera, with the financial details of the teams and the league on public display.

Apart from the costs associated with the high-priced litigation teams, the optics of groups of millionaires battling it out over pieces of the pie never look good to ordinary sports fans, whether in labor disputes or, as here, in court. The defensiveness of NASCAR executives on the witness stand and the way they took potential competitors as a threat meant they came out on the worse end of the public relations battle.

Then there were the text messages. Among the most inflammatory were several from NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps regarding Richard Childress, who owned the car driven by NASCAR icon Dale Earnhardt. In a series of angry texts from 2023, Phelps called Childress “not smart … a dinosaur, and a malcontent,” a “total a—clown,” and “a stupid redneck who owes his entire fortune to NASCAR.”

Those aren’t the kinds of statements that either Childress or NASCAR fans will necessarily forget, let alone forgive. Some have called for Jim France to step down as the league’s CEO, rightly noting that just about any publicly held company would have axed its chief executive after a court debacle this bad. Only time will tell if he or others go, and whether time can heal these wounds.

Open Wheel Changes Also Afoot

Beyond NASCAR, other motorsports leagues also face major changes this offseason. After a cheating scandal just before last year’s Indianapolis 500, IndyCar announced a new independent officiating system for 2026. The change is designed to alleviate the fact that the owner of the league (that is, IndyCar) also owns one of the league’s competing teams — Roger Penske, whose cars were sanctioned for major rules violations twice in as many years.

Meanwhile, Formula One ended its campaign with Lando Norris narrowly defeating Max Verstappen for the championship, with the Brit winning his first title in Abu Dhabi and denying Verstappen his fifth consecutive title. But the closeness of the 2025 title fight doesn’t necessarily portend outcomes in 2026, with so many changes taking place — new regulations for engines, chassis, and a new 11th team (Cadillac) adding two more cars to the grid. Even the terms used to describe the cars’ aerodynamics and the Formula 1 broadcast partner in the United States will sound and look different.

Offseasons in motor racing, as in most sports, see new faces going to new places. But for each of the three major racing leagues, the sport itself is changing. All of which suggests fans have much to anticipate when cars get back on track next spring.