In 2021, Denny Hamlin decided to invest into NASCAR by founding 23XI Racing alongside NBA legend Michael Jordan.

While it has been a successful venture from an on-track standpoint, the last two years have been filled with constant off-track drama stemming from negotiations with NASCAR over a new charter agreement. Now, Hamlin and 23XI, along with Front Row Motorsports, are taking NASCAR to court. The two teams filed an anti-trust lawsuit against NASCAR in federal court in North Carolina, they announced in a joint statement Wednesday.

The two teams accused NASCAR and its CEO Jim France of “unlawful monopolization of premier stock car racing in order to enrich themselves at the expense of the premier stock car racing teams.” Hamlin told Kelly Crandall of RACER he believes the sanctioning body has wielded its power “in an unfair manner.”

“I didn’t realize until re-investing the money that I’ve made as a driver back into the sport to put on a show for Jim France and NASCAR, how unfair this whole system is,” Hamlin said. “I didn’t realize they would exercise the power that they did in an unfair manner, in my opinion, and we just got to a tipping point where we all said, enough is enough and let’s exercise some options.”

The lawsuit stems from 23XI and Front Row opting not to sign NASCAR’s final charter proposal at Atlanta Motor Speedway last month. Teams have been negotiating an extension of the original 2016 charter agreement for the last two years ahead of its expiration on Dec. 31. Teams made demands such as making charters permanent, which NASCAR refused to include in its proposals.

Denny Hamlin, 23XI Racing seeking ‘significant change’ in NASCAR

The final proposal came in at 6 p.m. ET on Friday, Sept. 6. NASCAR gave teams a six-hour deadline to sign, threatening to “eliminate the charter system altogether for 2025 and beyond” if they did not. 23XI and Front Row were the two holdouts among the 15 Cup Series teams.

Hamlin said the threat prompted them to “react seriously.”

“They made a very serious threat to us, so we had to react seriously,” Denny Hamlin told Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic.

Attorney Jeffrey Kessler is representing 23XI and Front Row in litigation. Kessler, who has previously scored court victories which have led to the creation of NFL free agency, implementation of name, image and likeness (NIL) in collegiate athletics and equal pay for the United States women’s national soccer team, said they are seeking “significant change” from NASCAR in making a “fair system for the teams.”

“If NASCAR is willing to change, it’s got to be a significant change to make a fair system for the teams,” Kessler said. “If they’re not willing to do that kind of a deal, then they’ll take this case all the way to a jury and a judge. And that’s why I say they’ll be forced to change. It’s the same type of thing I went through with the NCAA, who had a choice to make. They could keep fighting in court and keep losing and have the new system thrust upon them. Or in that case, they finally sat down and said, we’re ready to transform the sport and we’ll be a part of it.

“That’s the type of choice that NASCAR is going to face.”

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