CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — The legal fight between NASCAR and two race teams, one owned by Basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan, heated up Monday ahead of a critical court hearing as both sides filed new motions over antitrust claims.

NASCAR said in its filing that it plans to issue one of the charters held by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports to a team whose name is redacted in the document. It said it would do so ahead of the 2026 season.

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Front Row and 23XI counterclaimed that selling charters will put them out of business. Additionally, the teams say they will suffer irreparable harm because not being chartered will give drivers and sponsors the option to leave; Tyler Reddick of 23XI has such a clause in his contract.

Both sides are due in court Thursday before U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell as 23XI and Front Row seek an injunction to prevent NASCAR from selling the charters until the case has been settled. It is scheduled to go to trial Dec. 1.

A charter is the equivalent of a franchise tag in other sports and having one guarantees an entry a spot in each 40-car field, as well as financial incentives. NASCAR and its teams went through more than two years of bitter negotiations on charter extensions, with the teams fighting to have them made permanent.

When a final offer was presented to the teams last year — days before the playoff-opening race — the deal was a seven-year extension with an additional seven-year option beyond that. NASCAR got 13 organizations to sign, but 23XI and Front Row did not and instead filed the federal antitrust suit.

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The two teams have six entries between them and initially won a temporary injunction to be recognized as chartered as the case heads to trial. That has since been overturned and the teams have appealed, but NASCAR has notified the court it plans to start issuing the six charters to others and wants back the money that 23XI and Front Row were paid when they were recognized as chartered earlier this season.

The playoffs begin Sunday at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. Among the 16 championship contenders are 23XI Racing drivers Reddick and Bubba Wallace, as well as team co-owner Denny Hamlin, who drives for Joe Gibbs Racing.

In Monday’s filing, the teams say they have “smoking-gun documents” that show NASCAR wants to force competitors to sign “one-sided” charter deals. The teams also allege NASCAR acted illegally in trying to exclude competition.

The teams also accused NASCAR of “bullying and retaliatory behavior” and said “teams were forced to accept below competitive market prices, and have the same standing as college athletes or UFC athletes who also were forced to accept below market prices.”

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Because the six charters held between 23XI and Front Row have been returned, NASCAR is arguing the teams never really had them, never signed charter agreements and that it has enough interest in them to begin reissuing them. NASCAR also says it cannot be forced to do business with parties it does not want to do business with.

The teams say selling the charters will put them out of business and contend NASCAR has so far done little to disprove the antitrust allegations.

“Much of NASCAR’s opposition is filled with personal attacks on plaintiffs, the racing teams, Curtis Polk and anyone else who has dared to challenge NASCAR’s monopoly,” the teams said. “None of these attacks have anything to do with the merits of plaintiff’s antitrust claims against NASCAR or plaintiff’s pressing need for a preliminary injunction.”

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The NASCAR Xfinity Series goes from the high banks of Daytona International Speedway to tackling the left and right turns at Portland International Raceway for the Pacific Office Automation 147 (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

ENTRY LISTS: Cup Series | Xfinity Series at Portland | Truck Series

2024 winner Shane van Gisbergen will not be returning to the West Coast to defend his victory, but Oceania will still be represented as Australia’s Will Brown hops in the No. 11 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet this weekend.

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Road-course ringers Jack Perkins (N0. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota), Joey Hand (No. 28 RSS Racing Ford) and Austin Green (No. 32 Jordan Anderson Racing Chevrolet) will also hit the 1.97-mile Oregon circuit.

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23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports claim NASCAR would put them out of business if the Sanctioning Body is permitted to transfer the charters at the heart of their legal dispute to other interested parties.

Earlier on Monday, NASCAR adhered to a court order that required it to notify all parties involved in the 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports v NASCAR federal antitrust lawsuit and countersuit if there were any pending agreements to transfer an ownership charter previously held by the teams to a different organization.

In the redacted filing, NASCAR said it had such an agreement pending the results of a Thursday hearing in which both parties will argue before federal district Judge Kenneth D. Bell in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Over the course of several legal filings, NASCAR has said that not executing agreements with new teams to take over the charters relinquished by 23XI and Front Row when it did not come to terms on an agreement with the league prior to the lawsuit would cause irreparable harm to the 2026 Cup Series season.

For the teams’ part, they claim they did not sign the agreement due to numerous examples of federal antitrust law violations that needed to be remedied in court. NASCAR, under the conviction that it will emerge victorious following the scheduled December 1, 2025 trial, now intends to transfer these charters to teams interested in acquiring the vacated charters.

The court initially issued a decision that forced NASCAR to recognize 23XI and Front Row as if they held charters but an Appeals Court in Richmond, Virginia overturned that decision, which opened the door for the league to begin negotiating with other racing organizations or private equity entities.

23XI and Front Row are now seeking a new injunction from the district court over what it believes to be a catastrophic result for them if NASCAR is allowed to transfer these charters prior to the antitrust lawsuit in December.

Making the case for irreparable harm

Bubba Wallace, 23XI Racing Toyota

Photo by: Malcolm Hope – Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

From the legal filing issued by attorneys representing the two teams on Monday afternoon:

“Plaintiffs will indisputably suffer irreparable harm if NASCAR is allowed to carry out its plan to immediately sell their charters to other entities before trial, because that would put 23XI and Front Row out of business following the 2025 Cup Series season. This Court has already found that it is not economically viable to race as open teams on a long-term basis, and NASCAR did not challenge that finding on appeal.”

The teams were also given chartered status back in December, prior to NASCAR’s successful appeal, because they claimed that without a charter, drivers and sponsors could execute contractual opt-out clauses and become free agents.

That point was again made on Monday.

“Plaintiffs will also suffer irreparable harm if they do not have charter rights for the rest of this season, because it will cause their drivers and sponsors to seek to leave. This is evidenced by …”

It is at this point of the document that the teams listed a very lengthy redacted example of such an outcome. Because of the redaction, the specific details were not made available to the public.

Disputing NASCAR’s claims

NASCAR President Steve Phelps

Photo by: Chris Graythen – Getty Images

In its own legal filings, NASCAR has stated that the court cannot force the Sanctioning Body to do business with a party it no longer wants to do business with, such as the teams suing it on antitrust grounds.

However, 23XI and Front Row disputed that legal standing on Monday:

“This Court has the authority to preserve the status quo and prevent NASCAR from selling the charters before the December 1 trial. Otherwise, Plaintiffs will face the imminent destruction of their businesses regardless of how the jury rules.”

The 23XI and Front Row filing also argue that the court could force NASCAR into business with them should it be decided that the Sanctioning Body is in violation of federal antitrust laws due to a precedence found in Google Play Store Antitrust Litig, 2025.

There were also several other historical precedents referenced within the document.

“If the jury finds that NASCAR has violated Section 2, this Court will have broad remedial powers to restore Plaintiffs’ charter rights. Courts regularly order a defendant to deal with parties harmed by anticompetitive conduct following a finding of Section 2 liability.”

Key takeaways 

Riley Herbst, 23XI Racing Toyota, Zane Smith, Front Row Motorsports Ford

Photo by: James Gilbert / Getty Images

The key takeaway from the Monday filing, ultimately, is that the teams believe that NASCAR will wrongfully force them out of business before a trial in December can even take place — even if the teams’ antitrust claims were eventually found to be justified.

The teams, despite the ruling from the Fourth Circuit of Appeals over the summer, also are making a renewed motion for the district court to issue a new injunction to restore their de facto charter status. The filing includes a new reason, presumably the result of fact discovery, but it is redacted and not publicly available.

NASCAR, again, claims that not moving forward with teams interested in replacing 23XI and Front Row in the charter system so close the 2026 season will bring irreparable harm to their business but the teams refute that.

The reasons are also publicly redacted, however.

More broadly, NASCAR said in a filing last week that it is not a monopsony because it allows its teams to race in CARS Tour – a Mid-Atlantic Late Model series owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick, Justin Marks and Jeff Burton.

The teams rejected that argument pretty adamantly.

“The cases NASCAR cites to argue against its monopsony power are off point. They involve markets for amateur auto clubs, dirt track racing, or an entertainment output market that have no relevance to the input market for premier stock car racing that Plaintiffs have proven in this case. NASCAR cannot seriously argue that dirt track or amateur racing are substitutes for the top-tier stock car teams competing in the Cup Series.”

And where NASCAR refuted claims that it has not acted as a monopsony because it increased the revenue to teams for this charter period for the 13 of 15 organizations that signed, 23XI and Front Row say that is irrelevant because the Sanctioning Body still ‘exercised monopsony power to impose terms on the teams below those that would be present in a competitive market.’

Beyond that, 23XI and Front Row say in their filing that NASCAR has no response to ‘smoking gun documents’ that show examples of monopolistic behavior but that section of the document is also heavily redacted.

The teams also continue to allege uncompetitive behavior in the form of restrictions placed on where Cup Series teams can now race the NextGen car that were not present with previous generations of cars and also the acquisitions of both ARCA and International Speedway Corporation; in addition to event restrictions placed on Speedway Motorsports Inc.

“Internal NASCAR documents and testimony also show how NASCAR used its acquired control over ISC to deny competitors access to tracks that were needed to compete and how the acquisition of ARCA eliminated a nascent potential competitor (monopolist’s acquisitions “to neutralize . . . likely future competitors” were actionable conduct).

“The evidence thus demonstrates that rather than limiting itself to acts of competition on the merits, NASCAR engaged in an interrelated series of exclusionary acts that had the purpose and effect of preserving its monopsony power.”

And also:

“NASCAR’s arguments that its track exclusivity agreements are procompetitive fare no better. NASCAR’s free-riding claim is factually bereft: NASCAR bought track operators (ISC, Bowman Gray) and forced an exclusivity agreement on Speedway Motorsports (SMI) and other independent companies that built and ran their own tracks. NASCAR did not make the investments; the tracks did. The argument that SMI’s exclusivity only lasted for several years again distorts the facts:

The 23XI and Front Row legal filing then listed its rebuttal to this point, but like much of this document, it was also heavily redacted.

This filing also wants the court to restore the chartered status overruled by the Fourth Circuit, which would once again entitle the teams to receive payment as if they owned charters.

These are all topics that will be argued in front of Judge Bell on Thursday in his Charlotte courtroom. A decision will be unlikely issued before the weekend and may take a week or longer based on the process that came with the first injunction request granted to the teams.

With 10 title hopefuls now confirmed, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs are set to get underway this Saturday at Darlington Raceway (Noon ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

ENTRY LISTS: Cup Series | Xfinity Series at Portland | Truck Series

The “Lady in Black” will act as one of three Round of 10 contests, with Bristol Motor Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway rounding out the three-race slate before the Round of 8. Two drivers will be eliminated following the conclusion of the Round of 10.

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Rising star Corey Day returns to the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet to make his eighth start with the team this season. Mason Maggio also returns to the No. 22 Reaume Brothers Racing Ford this weekend.

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