Denny Hamlin added further detail Monday to his response to Jim France last week in which the NASCAR CEO claimed that the sanctioning body can’t offer permanent charters because they can “only support you as long as we are being supported [by media networks].”
Hamlin fired back, saying “Permanent charters don’t cost anything.” Speaking on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast, Hamlin elaborated on that comment, explaining why teams such as Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing have earned the right to own what they have pumped millions and millions of dollars into over the years.
Denny Hamlin elaborates on response to Jim France
“When I quote tweeted that statement from Jim saying that ‘we can only support you as long as TV supports us,’ I quickly said, ‘Permanent charters don’t cost anything.’ And they still do not cost anything,” Hamlin said. “The only thing that costs is control. And that’s the thing is that every agreement gets renegotiated after every TV contract. So, if the TV contract went to $10 total in seven years, we still renegotiate the terms to that. It’s not like we’re saying, and we’ve never ever said that we need this amount of money for the eternity. As long as we’re part of the sport, we need this amount of money. It’s not. Those all get renegotiated.
“All we’re saying is that Rick Hendrick, Roger Penske [and] Joe Gibbs have spent decades building this sport and you cannot deny that they built the sport with their drivers, with their teams and everything, that they deserve the blue sky, which is they have an asset that they can pass down to their kids and their grandkids, especially at a family organization like Joe Gibbs Racing. They wanna have something they can give their kids. Hey, this business is now yours. This charter is yours.
“Because in the instance is all goes crumbling down. Like in Stewart Haas’s scenario, they were able to sell something to get back some of that investment that they spent over decades. And they spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. They at least got some of that back. What we’re saying is that they deserve to have a permanent seat at the table when it comes to racing in NASCAR. We’re asking for and 23XI’s the same. We spent money, millions of dollars on charters — we should be able to own that. It should be owned.”
NASCAR, race teams remain far apart in charter negotiations
Hamlin’s response to France comes at a very hostile time within the sport, as race teams and NASCAR remain embroiled in negotiations on a new charter agreement. The current agreement ends on Dec. 31, and as of now, it doesn’t appear that much progress is being made on a deal.
At the center of negotiations, race teams’ fight to secure permanent charters. Under the current model, charters are not permanent franchises like the setup in other professional sporting leagues. Team can lose their charters due to poor performance on the racetrack or failing to field their cars week in and week out. As a result, most race teams lose money on a yearly basis. Race teams argue that by not having permanent charters, it makes it more difficult to attract outside investors and invest in their operations.
Hamlin, as co-owner of 23XI Racing, has been at the forefront of much of the conversation. He has also shown the most public frustration, which appears to be growing with every week that goes by without a new deal.
“It just seems to be going backwards time after time,” Hamlin said. “The newest and latest is not very good. So, it just seems that we always take one step forward and two steps back. I just don’t know the reason for it. It was very interesting because we had one-on-one meetings with NASCAR executives. And we felt like those meetings went well and we thought we were heard. And then you get a document that doesn’t cover any of the things that we talked about and actually not cover those things, but actually starts clawing back more on their side from us. It’s certainly not a good feeling for sure.
“It’s frustrating.”
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