Teams Demand Full Deposition of Penske, Hendrick in NASCAR Antitrust Lawsuit

In a significant escalation of legal maneuvering within the NASCAR antitrust lawsuit, 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports have formally petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina to compel depositions of NASCAR titans Roger Penske and Rick Hendrick. The teams are seeking comprehensive examinations of the two team owners, who were recently added to NASCAR’s witness list for the upcoming trial, alleging a strategic maneuver by the sanctioning body.

The filing, submitted on Monday, argues that the late inclusion of Penske and Hendrick as witnesses by NASCAR constitutes "sandbagging" by the sanctioning body. 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports contend that both team owners were not initially listed as individuals likely to possess discoverable information pertinent to the case. According to the filing, inquiries made by 23XI and Front Row to determine if Penske and Hendrick intended to testify were met with consistent denials, making their subsequent inclusion on NASCAR’s witness list a surprise.

This surprise inclusion has prompted the motion for depositions, as 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports seek to thoroughly question Penske and Hendrick on matters they deem crucial to their antitrust claims. The teams are pushing for in-person depositions, pushing back against an earlier request from Penske and Hendrick to limit the scope of discussion and conduct the interviews remotely via Zoom. The filing explicitly states, "Mr. Hendrick and Mr. Penske’s confidentiality concerns about their team financial information cannot justify preventing Plaintiffs from cross-examining them in open court on a plainly relevant topic." It further asserts that if the team owners have legitimate grounds to protect specific financial information, they must follow established court procedures for sealing such data.

The legal maneuver by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports can be viewed as a dual strategy. While they could have challenged NASCAR’s motion to place Penske and Hendrick on the witness stand due to the late notice, they appear to be seizing this opportunity to extract critical discoverable information from the prominent team owners.

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The scope of information 23XI and Front Row wish to explore is extensive. The filing indicates that the declarations submitted by Hendrick and Penske cover a broad range of topics, including the charter system, negotiations for the 2025 charter renewal, the economics of team ownership, NASCAR’s NextGen car program, and Roger Penske’s ownership of the IndyCar series. The plaintiffs argue they are entitled to probe the basis of these declarations and the personal knowledge of Penske and Hendrick on all these subjects, emphasizing that this inquiry should extend beyond the "high level contents" of their statements to encompass any relevant testimony they intend to present on NASCAR’s behalf.

A specific point of contention highlighted in the filing is the financial health of Hendrick Motorsports. The filing references statements made by Jeff Gordon, a partner in Hendrick Motorsports, who publicly acknowledged that despite the team’s long-standing success and tenure in the Cup Series, Hendrick Motorsports has not been profitable for a decade. 23XI and Front Row intend to question Rick Hendrick about these statements and the financial realities of his team under the current charter system, arguing that this information is directly relevant to whether NASCAR has allegedly used its market power to compensate racing teams at below-competitive rates.

The teams also express bewilderment at the request to conduct depositions via Zoom, particularly given their willingness to travel to Charlotte for in-person testimony. The filing notes, "Plaintiffs do not understand how conducting the depositions by Zoom will save time, as Plaintiffs are willing to travel to Mr. Hendrick and Mr. Penske and presumably their counsel will be present in person to defend their depositions regardless."

Furthermore, 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports aim to question Penske and Hendrick regarding the preferential financial treatment their charters allegedly receive due to their historical significance in the sport. They also intend to inquire about Hendrick Motorsports’ grandfathered status, allowing it to operate four charters while new teams are limited to three, a situation that purportedly offers a competitive cost advantage. The filing posits that this preferential treatment, along with the absence of a cost cap for Cup Series teams – which NASCAR senior executive Scott Prime allegedly testified was due to Hendrick and Penske’s preference for their own competitive gain – is highly relevant to their testimony and potential bias in favor of NASCAR and its leadership.

The teams argue that Penske and Hendrick have "little to complain about" given their initial assertion of not testifying, followed by their voluntary agreement to do so on behalf of NASCAR. The filing also clarifies that a previous court order requiring non-party teams to submit broad financial records on an average car basis no longer applies to Penske and Hendrick, as they have chosen to actively participate as witnesses for NASCAR.

In response, NASCAR has filed its own arguments, asserting that 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports cannot claim Penske and Hendrick possess essential information for their case. NASCAR points out that the plaintiffs did not include either owner on their initial potential witness lists, nor did they seek additional financial information from Team Penske or Hendrick Motorsports during the initial discovery phase. NASCAR contends that the plaintiffs "strategically took ‘no position on the relevance of the specific financial information’ of non-party teams during discovery," and therefore cannot now claim such information is relevant or essential.

NASCAR further states that its own questioning of Penske and Hendrick will be narrowly focused and will not delve into team income, expenses, profitability, employee salaries, or driver payments.

Regarding the accusation of "sandbagging," NASCAR refutes this claim. The sanctioning body argues that its initial disclosures in January 2025 identified "Owners of NASCAR Cup Series race teams" as likely to have relevant information. NASCAR subsequently disclosed Hendrick Motorsports and Team Penske as entities holding materials it would rely upon. NASCAR maintains that the plaintiffs’ own initial disclosures and NASCAR’s amended disclosures in March provided ample notice and time for 23XI and Front Row to depose these individuals.

NASCAR’s amended disclosures on September 10, 2025, which included both Mr. Hendrick and Mr. Penske, left nearly three weeks for depositions under the Case Management Plan. NASCAR asserts that the plaintiffs "never asked for a deposition. Nor did they object to the timing of NASCAR’s amended disclosure. Nor did they move to strike." The sanctioning body concludes that the plaintiffs "strategically chose to sit on their hands and wait until less than four weeks before trial," and that had they acted earlier, there would have been sufficient time to conduct the depositions within the discovery period.

The legal battle continues to unfold as the antitrust trial looms, with the deposition of key figures like Penske and Hendrick becoming a central point of contention. The outcome of this procedural dispute could significantly impact the evidence presented and the overall trajectory of the lawsuit.