Breaking News: 2 Times NHRA champion ‘Brittany Force’ suffers $30,000 fine after been suspended…

Breaking News: 2 Times NHRA champion ‘Brittany Force’ suffers $30,000 fine after been suspended

Renowned lawyer calls NASCAR the ‘poster child’ for an illegal monopoly.

In 1961, NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. banned Curtis Turner — the most popular driver in the sport at the time — and two-time Cup Series champion Tim Flock for life.

In 1969, France held the inaugural race at the Talladega Superspeedway without many of his star drivers, as those in the Professional Drivers Association boycotted the event after France refused to acknowledge their concerns over the track’s safety.

In 1988, NASCAR suspended star driver Tim Richmond after Richmond failed a drug test. The drugs he tested positive for? Sudafed and Advil, both of which he received over the counter.

76 years after NASCAR’s dusty origins in a smoke-filled room in Daytona Beach came about, the sanctioning body’s history is doing nothing to help it at a tumultuous time in its existence.

On Wednesday, 23XI Racing — co-owned by driver Denny Hamlin and basketball legend Michael Jordan — and Front Row Motorsports sued NASCAR, calling the sanctioning body and the France family “monopolistic bullies.”

The lawsuit argues that NASCAR, which is still privately owned and operated by the France family, has established a monopoly of stock-car racing that is anti-competition. The suit comes nearly four weeks after NASCAR’s teams were all forced to sign a new charter agreement for the 2025 season, which some owners felt “coerced and threatened” into signing.

The only two holdouts from the charter agreement? 23XI and Front Row, who have now doubled down on their defiance. Representing the teams will be Jeffrey Kessler, a lawyer notorious for his work with other professional sports leagues. Kessler spoke on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Wednesday regarding the lawsuit.

“NASCAR is the poster child for being an illegal monopoly,” Kessler said on Wednesday. “It is the only premiere stock-car racing circuit in the country, maybe in the world. It got that position not by being the best, or by investing money, or by having the best thing out there that nobody competes with. It got there by acquiring its competitors, tying up the racetracks, going to all the teams who are independent contractors and saying, ‘you can’t go race at anybody else’s races,’ and imposing restrictions on the cars where the teams can’t even take their Next-Gen car and put it in another race. All of that gives them this monopoly power.”

Kessler was then asked if the France family’s ownership in the sport since day 1 was a violation of anti-trust law.

“Not by itself, but is the motivating factor for why it (NASCAR) has been run this way,” Kessler said. “When you look at what the France family has done, they run it like it’s their own personal fiefdom, where all the revenues and profits and TV deals and money should mostly go to them. The teams and drivers end up getting just enough economic scraps to survive, and some of them can’t survive.”

NASCAR’s first family has long had a scarred reputation among fans, but the lawsuit has suddenly brought the eyes of the sports world onto a sanctioning body whose precedent isn’t doing them any favors.

As the legal proceedings continue to carry on, NASCAR’s reputation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better — if it ever gets better, that is.