After NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell wrapped up hours of testimony that stretched over two days in the sport’s antitrust trial, Joe Gibbs Racing co-owner Heather Gibbs took the witness stand today to discuss her team’s displeasure with charter negotiations. Gibbs was called as a witness by the two teams suing NASCAR, 23XI Motorsports and Front Row Motorsports, the former of which pays $8M a year to have an alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing. During the quickest questioning for any witness so far this week, Gibbs was quizzed about why she sent a letter to NASCAR leadership and ownership in mid-2024 imploring NASCAR to grant the teams a form of a permanent charter in what came to be referred to as “evergreen” versions. Gibbs said she wrote the letter after attending a meeting with NASCAR leadership in which Steve Phelps told JGR leadership that its spending on the sport was “reckless” and therefore contributing to the challenges in making a financial model work. Gibbs told the court that it “really bothered me that he shared that,” and she said the sport’s financial model is “very challenging for the teams,” particularly for JGR because it doesn’t rely on external businesses like some other major teams.
Gibbs also testified that it was “very upsetting” when NASCAR gave its apparently final deadline to sign the 2025 charters in September 2024, and that Joe Gibbs called Jim France that night to tell him “Don’t do this to us.” She said France responded by saying, “I’m done with the conversations. If I wake up and I have 20 charters, I have 20 charters. If I have 30, then I have 30.” NASCAR’s questioning of Heather Gibbs related to topics such as whether she acknowledged the France family has built the series over decades of investment -- which she referenced in her much-publicized letter to NASCAR last year -- as the sanctioning body’s lawyers work to make clear to the jury that NASCAR only earned its monopsony status through merit and hard work.
