NASCAR vs. The Little Guy: Bob Jenkins Spills the Financial Tea in Antitrust Trial

It’s not every day that you get a peek behind the curtain of NASCAR’s finances, but when you do, it’s usually because someone is suing someone else. Welcome to the main event: the NASCAR antitrust trial, where Front Row Motorsports (FRM) owner Bob Jenkins just dropped some financial truth bombs that make you wonder how any team outside the top tier even affords the gas to get to the track.

The courtroom drama in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been spicier than a ghost pepper, and on day three, Jenkins took the stand to lay out the cold, hard, and frankly depressing, numbers.

In a revelation that should surprise absolutely no one who’s been paying attention, it turns out that running a mid-pack NASCAR team isn’t exactly a path to riches. In fact, it’s a financial black hole.

According to Bob Jenkins, his team, Front Row Motorsports, loses a cool $6.8 million per year. Let that sink in. This isn’t just a bad year; this is a business model that seems fundamentally designed to hemorrhage cash.

1. The Shocking (or Not So Shocking) Losses of Front Row Motorsports

Jenkins testified that he has never turned a profit, nor has he ever taken a single dollar in salary from the team he owns. You’ve got to really love racing to willingly light that much money on fire annually. The financial bleeding isn’t a new problem. Over the last three years alone, FRM has lost a staggering $16.3 million. And if you zoom out over the past 11 years? Try $70 million. That’s a lot of dough to lose for the privilege of maybe, just maybe, sniffing a top-10 finish on a good day. The situation has gotten so dire that in 2025, the team had to run nine races without a primary sponsor. Instead of a blank car, which is the NASCAR equivalent of a sad, empty storefront, Jenkins slapped his own company logos on the car. It’s the ultimate “fine, I’ll do it myself” moment, but one born out of necessity, not ego.

2. How the Next Gen Car Made Things Worse for Jenkins

Remember the Next Gen car? The one that was supposed to level the playing field and, crucially, cut costs for teams? Well, according to Bob Jenkins, that’s been a spectacular failure. He revealed that before the Next Gen era, his team spent about $1.8 million a year on parts. Today, with the shiny new spec car? That figure has skyrocketed to $4.7 million. Yes, you read that right. Costs have more than doubled. It gets even more ridiculous. Jenkins explained that it costs $30,000 just to repair a car that didn’t even wreck. Why? Because NASCAR mandates that certain parts, like the nose and tail, must be sent back to the vendor for repairs. Teams aren’t allowed to fix them in-house. It’s like being forced to take your car to the dealership for an oil change and paying a premium, except this oil change costs more than a brand-new Toyota Camry. Jenkins didn’t hold back, calling it “offensive” for NASCAR to suggest teams are simply overspending when the system itself seems engineered to drain their wallets.

3. What’s This Whole Lawsuit About Anyway?

So, why is Bob Jenkins airing all this dirty laundry in court? It all stems from a legal battle over NASCAR’s charter system. FRM, along with 23XI Racing (co-owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan), refused to sign a new charter agreement, calling it a “take-it-or-leave-it” offer that was a massive step backward. They filed an antitrust lawsuit, claiming NASCAR operates as an illegal monopoly. NASCAR, in a totally predictable move, has accused the teams of manufacturing evidence and making false claims. Their attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, fired back, calling NASCAR’s accusations a “baseless distraction” from the real issue: an “unlawful monopoly” that hurts everyone in stock car racing. The stakes couldn’t be higher. If NASCAR wins, FRM and 23XI could lose their charters and potentially their spots in the Cup Series. But if Jenkins and company win, it could fundamentally reshape NASCAR’s entire business model, forcing a power shift from the sanctioning body back toward the teams that actually put on the show. For now, the trial continues, and with it, the flow of juicy details about just how broken the economics of NASCAR really are. Bob Jenkins, the Tennessee native and lifelong Dale Earnhardt fan, is taking on the giant. Whether he can pull off the upset remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: he’s not going down without a fight.

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