Last week, Denny Hamlin was in court as part of the preliminary injunction hearing in the ongoing NASCAR lawsuit. 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports this week received a ruling that they would not be granted that injunction.
Prior to the ruling from Judge Kenneth Bell this week, Denny Hamlin gave a little insight into that hearing in Charlotte and his takeaways. The two sides in this case have been going back and forth over charters in the buildup to the December trial that could determine the future of the sport.
Hamlin talked about the hearing on his Actions Detrimental podcast. He gave fans a small insight into how things played out ahead of last week’s race at Darlington.
“They [NASCAR] presented, you know, their argument of why they wanted to sell our charters,” Hamlin explained. “And we said that, ‘No, you cannot and should not do that until the case is over with,’ and then they changed their minds the next day. Er, I don’t know if ‘changed their minds,’ … they made a decision to say, ‘Well, okay, we’ll change our thinking on that.’ So, we need to respond to that. I think we’ll do it tomorrow.”
During the hearing, 23XI and FRM’s legal team revealed a number of documents. One of the revelations included the infamous “Operation Gold Codes.” It is essentially a plan from NASCAR to blow the sport up, repossess all of the teams and cars, and operate the sport themselves.
“Yeah, that’s very, very unfortunate,” Hamlin said about the Gold Codes. “And it’s obviously, uh, yeah. It’s, I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s not good and it certainly was unfortunate to see. That’s all I can really say about it. Yeah, bad deal.”
So, what’s next? Denny Hamlin also gave a rough outline of what will happen between now and the trial. There isn’t much else to do, but prepare for December.
“I’d have to look at the schedule, but I don’t know, truthfully,” Hamlin said. “I’d have to kind of look, but I’m sure there’s other motions or summary judgments. There’s counterclaims, things like that that they’ll all be, you know, there will start to be decisions made.
“You know, basically, the whole discrepancy of if they say they’re paying us more than F1, and we say, ‘No, you’re not.’ You have to work, you usually try to work that out where it becomes factual before the actual case, so you’re not arguing it in the middle of [the trial]. You know, because there’s no time to really do that, you gotta do the work now to figure out what’s actual factual and what is not. That way, you can go into the case with facts, not just whatever you say.”
While this case has leaned heavily on the charters, it’s about more than that. This trial will not solely be about charters. 23XI and Front Row have no issues with the charters. In fact, they only objected to one section of the 2025 Charter Agreement that they refused to sign.
This is an antitrust case. It is about whether or not NASCAR is a monopolist in American professional stock car racing. The Plaintiffs have pointed to a number of ways that the sport has allegedly reduced competition in the industry. I’m not talking about on-track competition, either. This is about the business of NASCAR.
Denny Hamlin and his 23XI Racing organization are going to keep racing. It’s the NASCAR Playoffs, they have to focus on winning. But right after the season is over, the intensity is only going to heat up further.
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