Embroiled in a legal battle with the sanctioning body, 23XI Racing had its sights on winning its first NASCAR championship this weekend with Tyler Reddick driving the 45 car. Unfortunately Reddick’s sixth place finish fell just short of Team Penske’s Joey Logano, who won the race and the championship in the final round of the playoffs. 23XI team boss Denny Hamlin was really hoping to end what could be the team’s final season in NASCAR with a championship victory. During the season-ending race weekend Hamlin admitted that the team he co-owns with Basketball’s greatest star is “TBD” for the 2025 season.
With 23XI and Reddick so close to the title, and considering the team is a serious front runner for fan favorite, it would be silly of NASCAR to completely dismiss such a great team, right? Even if it had won the championship outright, Hamlin doesn’t believe it would have made a difference in the team’s legal proceedings. After all, “Furniture Row did it,” quipped Hamlin. The 2017 championship title winning Furniture Row Racing closed its doors after the 2018 season, following some seriously competitive running from driver Martin Truex, Jr.
“They [FRR] ceased to exist after a championship,” Hamlin continued. “I think that depending who you ask, I think on one side they [NASCAR] could care less whether you’re here or not and for us, we certainly have got a lot of people that have put their heart and souls into this team and want to see it succeed.”
Hamlin spent the Monday before race weekend in court waiting to see whether his team would continue to exist in the immediate future. Teams 23XI and Front Row filed an antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR in an effort to make the sport’s charter agreement more fair for all teams. In the meantime, it filed an injunction in court to force NASCAR continue to honor the team’s now-out-of-date charter until a new agreement could be made. The injunction was denied, and while the teams will appeal and the lawsuit will play out over the off season, the futures of 23XI and FRM are up in the air.
Without charters in place for the 2025 season 23XI and FRM will be forced to race as “open teams” without any guarantee that their entry will be accepted at any round of the championship. Both teams have been operating a pair of charters each, and both were looking to purchase a third charter from the now-defunct Stewart-Haas Racing as it shuts down operations. Meanwhile NASCAR has already announced that it will issue 32 charters for 2025 instead of its usual 36.
“I’ve poured a lot into this sport in multiple ways,” Hamlin continued, “and certainly financially over the last four years. I’ve put back a lot of the money I got out of it back into it and certainly all could be wiped away pretty quickly.
“Certainly, it’s a nervous time for me and we just hope that this thing gets resolved in a peaceful manner or in a correct manner to fix it. I’m just – it’s got its ups and downs for sure, but it’s difficult because you can’t control it right? I can’t rely on my instincts or things like that to change the outcome or the results. It’s just the facts are the facts. I’ve just never been a part of anything like this, but certainly hate that we’re in the situation that we’re in after everything that we’ve put into the support over the last four years.”
It seems absurd that NASCAR wouldn’t be doing everything in its power to keep a Michael Jordan-helmed team in the sport, as the billionaire athlete certainly brings another level of attention to the series. But it would seem NASCAR would rather have money and power in the short term over stability and cooperative relationships with the teams and drivers that make the sport work.