The NASCAR season ends for six weeks in the shadow of an antitrust lawsuit filed by two teams

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There’s a scene in the NASCAR-inspired movie “Days of Thunder” in which the character Big John, based on the show’s founder Bill France Sr., threatens a pair of feuding drivers.

Tired of the on-track antics between drivers loosely based on Dale Earnhardt and the combination of Geoff Bodine and Tim Richmond, Big John warns of the consequences that will come if they don’t stop destroying each other.

“You change the paint one more time, even if you touch, and I’ll black flag you both,” Big John says in the film, “and I’ll take your race cars apart for 300 laps. Then, if you pass inspection and put the cars back together, I might let you back into the race.”

There was some truth to this scene because NASCAR, its inspectors, race control officials and management are responsible for the race and can interpret the rules as they see fit. Since the founding of NASCAR by a French family in 1948, this has happened over and over again – a car has trouble passing inspection for some infraction, or the same team finds it has been “randomly selected” for a thorough teardown week after week.

Should 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports be worried?

After all, both teams just filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR, alleging “anticompetitive terms” in the charter agreement reached last month. The lawsuit will be an issue for the rest of the season, which has already entered the playoffs and includes six more races.

23XI is owned by retired NBA champion Michael Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, who actively drives for Joe Gibbs Racing. The team fields cars for Bubba Wallace and Cup Series regular-season champion Tyler Reddick. Hamlin and Reddick are racing for the Cup Series title.

Front Row doesn’t have any drivers participating in the playoffs, but that doesn’t mean Bob Jenkins’ cars won’t be under intense scrutiny when the garage opens at Talladega Superspeedway on Friday.

Hamlin, who has already received one severe penalty this season, said he hopes NASCAR doesn’t retaliate against him, the cars he owns, his teammates at JGR or the Front Row drivers.

“I have enough faith in them that they will be professionals,” Hamlin said. “They can separate Denny, the driver who will be on the track on Sunday, from Denny, who is the owner, Monday through Friday. Of course, there have been conspiracy theories in the past, but you can’t delve into such things.

“They will definitely respect me and my team (JGR) because right now the most important thing for me is trying to win this championship over the next six weeks.”

Talladega is a difficult track with strict rules designed for safety reasons that can be applied at will. For example, a yellow line surrounds a superfast highway in Alabama and drivers are prohibited from using it to gain position or force another driver below the line to maintain position.

It’s officials in the NASCAR scoring tower who rule on yellow line violations, and it’s never been more closely scrutinized than in 2008, when Tony Stewart was declared the race winner at Talladega even though Regan Smith beat him to the finish. Smith moved below the yellow line to pass Stewart, who apparently forced Smith over the track limits with a blocking maneuver.

Smith believed he was robbed by NASCAR’s decision.

“I was always told that the rule is that if you are forced to pit there, you are the winner of the race and on the last lap anything goes,” Smith said that day. “I was forced there.”

Just a year earlier, in the Truck Series race at Daytona International Speedway, Johnny Benson drove below the yellow line, ending the race in three distances. NASCAR said at the time that Benson’s move was legal because the rule left room for maneuver: If a driver sees the checkered flag flying, it basically means everything is crossing the finish line.

Come Sunday, Hamlin, Reddick or any of the drivers whose teams are involved in the lawsuit against NASCAR will be near the yellow line, who knows how the ruling will play out?

23XI and Front Row have hired Jeffrey Kessler, a leading antitrust lawyer, to represent them. He said he wasn’t worried.

“In my experience, in many cases against sports leagues and sports organizations, their attorneys advise them, ‘Don’t mess with the other side, that’s the worst thing you can do,’ when I approach them in court,” Kessler said. “We don’t typically see players facing retaliation, we don’t see our other plaintiffs facing retaliation, and I would be surprised if that happened in this case. But if it happens, we certainly know what to do about it.”

Hamlin heads to Talladega with the fifth seed in the playoff standings. Reddick, his 23XI driver and spring race winner at Alabama, is ninth and could be eliminated from the playoffs if he doesn’t finish in the top eight after next week’s qualifying race in Charlotte.