CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The highlight of Thursday’s fourth day of the 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports v. NASCAR antitrust trial was the testimony of NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell.
Following the conclusion of the questioning of Front Row Motorsports owner Bob Jenkins, O’Donnell was called to the stand by attorney Jeffrey Kessler.
Kessler asked O’Donnell repeatedly about the exclusivity provisions in NASCAR’s sanctioning agreements with race tracks, most prominently properties owned by Speedway Motorsports.
Other significant issues included the potential threat to NASCAR of competing racing series—notably SRX; the lack of permanence of the charters under the 2025 agreement; and governance of the sport, given the specific exclusion of the so-called “three strikes” provision in the current charter agreement.
O’Donnell testified, NASCAR wanted to eliminate team owners’ veto power over cost increases in order to grow the sport.
With the three-strikes provision (owners with voting power) in place, O’Donnell said, “We would not have been in Mexico City (in 2025), and the TV partner (Amazon Prime Video) would not have paid the money they did.”
Similarly, three years of races on the Chicago Street Course—initially a hard sell to the NASCAR board headed by chairman and CEO Jim France—cost NASCAR an estimated $55 million, but the event served a broader purpose.
“Amazon said there was no way they would have engaged with our sport without that,” O’Donnell told NASCAR outside counsel Chris Yates after Kessler finished his questioning. “It was a long shot, but we were able to pull it off, and it was a successful event.”
O’Donnell explained that the sanction agreements with Speedway Motorsports were expanded from a single year to five years in 2016 to coincide with the initial term of the charter agreements, which changed the economic paradigm of the sport.
Kessler asked O’Donnell about a litany of contingency plans NASCAR had considered, if race teams opted not to sign the 2025 charter agreement.
O’Donnell’s testimony, which will conclude Friday, followed the completion of the cross-examination and redirect of Front Row Motorsports owner Bob Jenkins, one of the plaintiffs in the case.
Jenkins admitted he incorrectly stated Wednesday that it costs FRM $20 million per season to a run a single car in the NASCAR Cup Series. The Defense cited FRM’s own financial records, which showed that the most it has spent in a year on running two Cup Series car was around $28 million ($14 million per car).
At the close of the court session on Thursday, Judge Kenneth D. Bell expressed displeasure with the pace of the trial and urged attorneys from both sides to use discipline in the questioning of witnesses.
As a parting shot, Bell added that some of the questioning involved “beating the horses well beyond their deathbeds.”
