Years ago, I was in the garage at Darlington Raceway chatting with David Pearson, Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough. All three are among the greatest racers in NASCAR history. All three had long since retired as drivers, but all three had only recently given up trying to be Cup Series team owners, the experience having crushed them all financially.
Yaborough said to me, «You are looking at three NASCAR dinosaurs.»
Pearson laughed and replied, «But we’re doing better than the dinosaurs because we’re still here.»
When I asked them what they’d figured out that the dinosaurs didn’t, Allison explained, «We were smart enough to realize we were dinosaurs and got out of the damn way before we went extinct.»
On Thursday afternoon in a Charlotte courthouse, another NASCAR dinosaur got out of the damn way.
As an antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR, filed by 23XI Racing, co-owned by Michael Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, and Front Row Motorsports (FRM), began to grind its way toward the end of its second week, the two sides announced that they had reached a settlement.
NBA.
NASCAR lost that fight. As the trial slogged on, a defeat began to feel inevitable, for the same reason that Jordan and his team believed that the latest charter agreement, the one they refused to sign in September 2024, was unsatisfactory. A reason that everyone in that garage, including NASCAR’s commissioner and president, had already talked about behind closed doors — and in emails and texts that were revealed in and around the trial — but no one spoke about publicly until the lawsuit forced them to.
The door to the future was being blocked by a dinosaur.
Jim France is a good man, a brilliant businessman and someone who loves auto racing on a level that few can understand. But he also never wanted the job he now holds as NASCAR’s CEO and chairman. His father, Bill France, originated the position after he oversaw NASCAR’s foundational meetings in 1948. His older brother, Bill France Jr., took over those duties from their father in the early 1970s and ruled the sport for three decades with a highly respected iron fist. His heir was his son Brian, whose tenure at the helm was tumultuous at best and ended prematurely in 2018.
Through it all, legendarily introverted Jim France was happy to remain in the background, racing sports cars and working in the racetrack ownership division while enjoying much sway in the NASCAR boardroom without any of the public spotlight that his father and brother both so loved and his nephew so loathed.
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And when it comes to collateral damage, race fans are rightfully incensed that the commissioner of NASCAR called Richard Childress, who teamed up with Dale Earnhardt to win six Cup titles, a «stupid redneck.» We now know that Joe Gibbs, a three-time Super Bowl-winning coach and five-time Cup Series champion owner, was moved to tears when he called Jim France to say «Don’t do this us!» and was told it was his fault in part because spending habits on his team were reckless. The France family now knows how displeased their lieutenants have been. Hell, I didn’t know that Hamlin believes that I’ve spent my entire career being scared of NASCAR people until he tweeted it on the eve of the trial.
Nothing says the holiday season like a vicious family fight. An airing out of long-simmering familial grievance that steps and then resteps over a line that had long been regarded as uncrossable. Your uncle finally spoke his mind about your mom’s drinking. Your sister finally got it off her chest that your spouse creeps her out. Your mother-in-law, caught up in the heat of the moment, called you a bad parent and then piled on by adding that you also never split the check at family dinners.
So, once that clash has ended and everyone is done calling out hard truths that everyone in the family already knew but no one dared say aloud, the only thing worse than the shouting is the awkward silence that follows.
Where do you go from there?
On Thursday morning, Jim France stood with Michael Jordan, surrounded by NASCAR executives, members of the France family, Hamlin, and an endless sea of lawyers. As the dinosaur and the GOAT were shoulder-to-shoulder on the steps of the very courthouse where they had just held a very public family fight, that’s the question that hovered over the scene like a storm cloud over the Daytona 500.
Some will say, as Jordan did after the settlement, that it was never personal, but strictly business. The business model of stock car racing is moving forward, and everyone seems to agree that’s the right plan of action. But hurt feelings never heal that quickly, do they?
Few communities in sports are like NASCAR. A relatively small group of people who travel together every weekend nearly year-round. It is genuinely like a family.
It’s never easy for any family to tell the patriarch he needs to hand over his car keys. You always hope he’ll realize he needs to do it first. On Thursday, Jim France did just that. Not every key on the chain, but certainly more than he, his father or his brother had ever given up before.
Hopefully, it wasn’t too late.
