Following a Monday hearing where both sides argued their case, U.S. District Court Judge Frank Whitney decided to deny the preliminary injunction filed by by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports (FRM) in hopes of keeping their charters, while the antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR is ongoing.

The judge stated that the teams did not meet their burden of proof in an eight-page release, noting that they failed to clearly indicate that they would suffer irreparable harm due to the loss of charters.

The teams argued that they would risk losing sponsors, explaining that sponsors “could abandon [them] if they have to compete as open teams and do not qualify for all of the races.” 23XI had noted that their sponsor agreements specifically mention that they must run all of the races, which is only a certainty when a team holds a charter. They also argued that there is a risk they could lose their drivers, as Tyler Reddick — who is set to battle for the Cup title on behalf of 23XI in less than two days — could terminate his contract.

The teams also teams argued that competing as an open team “could threaten [their] continued existence” due to the loss of revenue. But perhaps the most important argument is the team’s assertion that “NASCAR has the power to exclude open competitors completely” under the new Charter Agreement.

The judge’s reasoning

However, the judge countered by saying that anyone seeking a preliminary injunction must “demonstrate that irreparable injury is likely in the absence of the injunction … A showing of the ‘possibility of irreparable harm’ is not sufficient.”

It goes on to say in perhaps the most critical statement made by the judge: “Although the Plaintiffs have alleged that they will face a risk of irreparable harm, they have not sufficiently alleged present, immediate, urgent irreparable harm, but rather only speculative, possible harm. That is, although the Plaintiffs allege they are on the brink of irreparable harm, the 2025 racing season is months away — the stock cars remain in the garage.”

Todd Gilliland, Front Row Motorsports, Ruedebusch Ford Mustang, Michael McDowell, Front Row Motorsports, Benebone Ford Mustang

Photo by: John Harrelson / NKP / Motorsport Images

23XI and FRM are allowed to appeal, which is likely to happen.

This ruling is a critical step in the teams’ fight against what they’ve lawsuit against NASCAR where they’ve labelled the France family as “monopolistic bullies.” If the decision holds, it will have a huge impact on the financial viability of both 23XI and FRM, while also forced to race their way into the 2025 Daytona 500. To complicate this issue is the fact that both organizations have made clear their intentions to purchase a third charter from Stewart-Haas Racing as the team shuts down. 

NASCAR already announced they plan to move forward with 32 charters next year instead of the usual 36. To combat this, the teams filed this motion for a preliminary injunction. 23XI co-owners Michael Jordan, Denny Hamlin, and Curtis Polk were all present at the Monday hearing, as was FRM’s Bob Jenkins and Jerry Freeze. 

Race manipulation isn’t a new concept in NASCAR or racing in general. Stock car racing had SpinGate with Clint Bowyer in 2013, Formula 1 had CrashGate with Nelson Piquet Jr. in 2008, and IndyCar had its recent P2P scandal involving Team Penske. But as Penske’s own Joey Logano pointed out during Championship 4 Media Day, the way a sanctioning body reacts to such moments will be critical for keeping the sport intact.

“Well, it’s everything, right?” said Logano when asked about the maintaining the sport’s integrity. “I mean, you see plenty of documentaries on how sports and people have kind of done things in the wrong way, how it can destroy a sport. NASCAR is backed up against the wall to where they had to do something, right? They have to do something to control us. It’s everybody, right?

“Whatever the rule is, whether it’s this 100% rule or it’s putting the cars together, if the rules aren’t enforced, the sport will fall apart. It’s important to keep that.”

The 100% rule was implemented following Michael Waltrip Racing’s attempt to influence the 2013 playoff race, a very gray-area rule that essentially says all competitors must race at 100% of their ability with the goal of achieving their best possible finishing position in an event. 

The growing influence of manufacturers 

But while race manipulation has been a hot topic this week, so has the role of the manufacturers and how tightly aligned teams representing the same OEM now are. Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon weren’t Hendrick Motorsports drivers and neither team even runs Hendrick engines. Despite that, they put their own race aside to safeguard the No. 24 of William Byron. 

Earlier this week, Denny Hamlin said that the manufacturers have “way too much say in the outcomes of these races,” but Logano looked more at the current car and its role in all of this.

Joey Logano, Team Penske, Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang, Harrison Burton, Wood Brothers Racing, MotorcraftQuick Lane Ford Mustang

Photo by: Matthew T. Thacker / NKP / Motorsport Images

“Yeah, I mean, in some ways it’s grown and in some ways not,” explained Logano when asked about manufacturer influence. “But I think the Next Gen car itself has kind of made the manufacturer matter a lot more because there’s only certain things that we can control, right? The car is the car. The body becomes important. That’s one thing that the OEM can control. The engine. There’s your other one, right? Those are two big speeding ops.

“The teams, they have the ability to tune and make a car better than others. There’s times where we’ve seen it, right, what happened earlier this year, the Fords were off, all of them. You tell me all the teams were off? No. The OEM matters. We’ve been able to turn that around all together, which is great.”

Are the penalties enough?

The penalties issued by NASCAR this week did not factor in the car makes, focusing on the three teams accused of race manipulation. However, said penalties were substantial, totaling $600,00 in fines, nine suspensions, and the loss of 50 driver/owner points between each organization. But was it enough?

“I don’t know,” admitted Logano. “I know that NASCAR had to do something just because if you let that go, it will just keep becoming more extreme every time. They put their foot down. Is it enough? Well, we’ll see this week. If they do it again, then you know the penalty wasn’t big enough.”

Trackhouse attempted to appeal the penalties this week, but lost. Both RCR and 23XI withdrew their own appeals. Now onto Phoenix where each manufacturer has at least one car in the Championship 4 fight. With all four title combatants entering the finale on equal ground, there will surely be temptation to meddle again if the opportunity arises. For the sake of the sport and for the reasons already stated by Logano, hopefully they do not.

It was only a few years ago that some of Formula 1’s brightest minds were predicting a future where wind tunnels were no longer needed. Think of the wasted expense powering a giant fan in a massive, empty room filled with nothing but a 60% scale model of a car, and all the time spent poring through the data readouts.

It seemed that technological progress was reaching a cross-over point, one where computer simulations could do all of that and accurately – and effectively – predict flow patterns around a car.

And here we are, the year 2024 of the common era, and two F1 teams are in the process of either building or finalising brand-spanking-new wind tunnel designs. Aston Martin is in the commissioning phase of its new in-house facility, while Red Bull is aiming to have a new wind tunnel in operation by 2026. McLaren, for its part, had finished its own new build in 2023.

The anticipation for both incoming wind tunnels among the teams will be stratospheric. These are often held up as a significant influence on performance, one that can change the fortunes of a team and stall any hints of a decline. But, as ever, it’s not quite as simple as that – even after construction, there are months of work ahead before the wind tunnel is even remotely useable.

In those months, there will be significant challenges in getting the wind tunnels ship-shape. Aston Martin is already delving into those, while Red Bull will have to go through the entire rigmarole in about 12 months’ time when it moves out of its Bedford tunnel – which dates to the Cold War as part of an aeronautical research site.

These are the challenges we don’t hear about; the narrative always seems to lean towards the following phraseology: “Team X has a new wind tunnel, it’ll work off the bat and the car will be competitive”. Let’s set the record straight and explain how to set up a wind tunnel, and detail the work that Aston Martin and Red Bull have ahead.

Alain Prost, Ferrari, Jean-Claude Migeot

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

To do that, we’ve asked former F1 aerodynamicist Jean-Claude Migeot – formerly of Tyrrell and Ferrari, and the architect of F1’s high-nose era – to assist. Migeot has been heavily involved in the development of multiple wind tunnels over his post-F1 career, including the Aerolab and Fondtech facilities in Italy, so he’s the perfect person to help us untangle the key details.

“First of all, I don’t think you get benefits straight away,” Migeot begins. “You have to build confidence. A wind tunnel is not reality, it’s a laboratory. So, you have to trust it behaves like a laboratory, which means if you’re ever going to repeat something, it’s that the results are going to repeat perfectly.

“That’s the minimum required, and then [you build] confidence between the real thing and your simulation in the wind tunnel, and it takes some time to build that confidence. But it depends on the background of the people using it.”

In this, he cites the example of McLaren switching to its new wind tunnel – ending its reliance on the Toyota facilities in Cologne – and the perceived impact that this had on the Woking team. This coincided with the team’s upward mobility in 2023, as upgrades took the team from one floundering in the mid-pack to one fighting at the sharp end of the grid. Building the wind tunnel is only the first step.

Once the building has been completed, with all monitoring equipment installed, the tunnel then needs to go through what’s known as ‘commissioning’, and that’s before the work can even start with a wind tunnel calibration model. It’s a lengthy process, and one that Aston Martin is currently mired within as it hopes to get its tunnel working in time for the 2025 season.

“Step zero is commissioning,” Migeot explains. “This is where you have to check what has been sold to you is effectively achieved. You know, the air distribution, the turbulence, the temperature control, which is hugely important.

“You have to run the tunnel in all conditions and first check your builder has done a good job, then run all the electronics for the control [units]. It’s a huge work for a group of people and is taking at least one month. And then if that’s okay – because if that’s not okay, you are fixing something which is not hours, but days and weeks of changes – then you start to work with the model.”

Zak Brown, Lando Norris and Andrea Stella in the new wind tunnel at the McLaren Technology Centre

Photo by: McLaren

Explaining commissioning and correlation

Formula 1’s current ruleset is now into its third year, and the increased competitiveness of the 2024 field has demonstrated the level of convergence that is starting to be achieved with steady regulations. Teams are having to dig deeper to find lucrative opportunities to improve, but this is leading a number of teams to encounter correlation issues between the wind tunnel and their on-track findings.

For example, a new floor tested in the wind tunnel might churn out data that suggests it would be an upgrade worthy of entering the production phase for a future race. Once ready, the team tries it over a race weekend – but it either fails to offer the promised downforce gains or, more alarmingly, creates instability in the car.

There are a few notable examples of this happening over 2024. Ferrari went through a mid-season phase of floor iterations that progressively worsened high-speed bouncing through corners, while Aston Martin’s Imola upgrade made the car much harder for the drivers to handle. RB and Mercedes have both rolled back on floor upgrades, and Red Bull’s updates mid-season took a long time to untangle after introducing a variety of balance issues.

The catch-all explanation is that it’s a correlation problem and, at surface level, this is correct. Some of that is down to how a wind tunnel is calibrated, and perhaps there are losses somewhere in the tunnel that make it hard to achieve the right figure. Take Renault’s 2007 decline, for example; the then-reigning champion team appeared to suffer with its switch from Michelin to Bridgestone tyres due to the change in tyre profile.

Migeot explains that a tunnel doesn’t have to be perfectly calibrated to what is experienced on track, but the difference between the tunnel and real-world readings must be consistent.

“The tunnel will not give you the truth. It will give you something which, in the best scenario, is consistent with reality. If you have a quite fixed difference between reality and the tunnel, that’s fine; it can’t be identical. If you’re confident that, when you improve in the tunnel, you know it’s going to improve on the track, you’re saving a huge amount of time.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“I hear this doesn’t work very much like that for many, the upgrades are brought to the track and then they return to the old configuration quite often these days. So I think a lot of teams are in correlation problems.”

So, can you ever achieve perfect correlation? “It’s endless, it’s a quest you never finish,” Migeot states. “You’re in a happy situation when you have confidence, but the situation can change quickly, and it would be radically changed by these rules of two years ago with a completely new floor.

“There’s many imperfections, like in the rubber tyres (on the model), maybe you don’t have the right tyre profile under yaw, there are many compromises and there’s maybe a hundred differences which you cannot have in the tunnel. You try your best and, if these things are kept to a very small influence, you’re okay.

“Then you are in the case of a fixed error, and you can make your development and improvements. But if suddenly one of these things becomes influential on the results, and you are again in correlation work. For example, a change of tyre dimension is not very often these days, but even the rubber state between new and used can make a difference on the track.

“All these things you have to collect, and it takes time. So it’s an endless subject. I think you have people on that all the time, measuring what’s happened on the track. If it’s only in some occasions you don’t correlate, it doesn’t stop you. But when you see a car which is on the front row on one race, and on the third or fourth row on the next race, then you have a problem.”

F1 Academy points leader Abbi Pulling finished fastest in the all-female Formula E test at the Jarama circuit on Friday.

The all-electric championship held a test exclusively for female drivers with all 11 Formula E teams required to field at least one driver, as 18 in total sampled the new Gen3 Evo machines.

Pulling, who can clinch the F1 Academy title at the next round in Qatar which would give her a fully-funded drive in the UK’s GB3 Championship next season, posted a 1m30.889s inside the final 60 minutes of the three-hour session.

The outing was her first time in a Formula E car, and after just one session her best lap left her just 4.5 seconds behind the quickest time from the four-day pre-season test, which was set by Jaguar’s Mitch Evans on Friday morning.

Three-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick finished second, her final effort leaving her 0.320s behind Pulling.

The 26-year-old Briton, who also completed the most laps during the session with 39, previously tested Formula E machinery with Jaguar during the 2020 rookie test and will conduct the same test next season.

The female drivers

Photo by: Malcolm Griffiths / Motorsport Images

McLaren’s Bianca Bustamante became the first driver to dip below the 1m32s barrier during the second hour, and the F1 Academy driver finished the session third, 0.826s behind Pulling.

Miki Koyama also improved with her final effort to move into fourth for Lola, from Sauber Academy driver Lena Buhler (Mahindra) as Beitske Visser completed the top six for DS Penske.

Running in the final hour was curtailed after F1 Academy driver Jessica Edgar found the barriers in Jean-Eric Vergne’s DS Penske at Turn 3, which brought out a red flag as the car was recovered to the pits.

Simona de Silvestro returned to Formula E action having competed in 12 races between 2014-2016 during the Gen1 era with Andretti.

The Swiss-Italian, who has been a reserve driver for Porsche in Formula E, was driving for customer team Kiro but only completed six laps due to technical problems.

Jaguar’s second driver, Lilou Wadoux was the only driver unable to complete a lap at all as problems with her seat meant she was unable to take to the circuit.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has opened up on details surrounding Lewis Hamilton’s shock move to Ferrari – and how he got an early tip-off from Carlos Sainz Sr.

Hamilton told Wolff during a visit to his house at the end of January that he would be activating an exit clause in his Mercedes contract and joining Ferrari for the 2025 season.

But while Hamilton’s announcement was the first official confirmation that Wolff had of his driver’s departure, he has now spoken at length about how he had been alerted to the prospect for a little while.

Speaking to the High Performance podcast, Wolff said that an initial call from Sainz Sr., father of the Ferrari driver Carlos that Hamilton is replacing, had been where he first got word that something was in the offing.

“So I heard the bells ringing two weeks before,” said Wolff. “Yeah, the old man Sainz called me and said, this is what’s happening.

“And then there were a few drivers’ dads rang me up that didn’t before. So I thought, Okay…there’s something going on there.

“And then I sent a text to [Ferrari boss] Fred Vasseur saying: ‘You’re taking our driver?’ Didn’t get any response. Very unusual for Fred. He’s a good friend. So yeah, I saw it coming.”

With his suspicion about the intention of Hamilton’s visit to his house, Wolff also revealed that he threw a curveball into their chat by first telling the seven-time champion about Mercedes having signed former Ferrari chief designer Simone Resta.

Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO, Mercedes-AMG, with Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

“When Lewis arrived in the house, like he did so many years before, we had a bit of a small talk, like we always do about the Christmas holidays and all of that,” explained Wolff.

“Then I said, “Well, we’re recruiting from Ferrari now. We got this guy.” And Lewis was, “Oh, there’s something I need to tell you.” And yeah, when he said that, that initial moment was a little bit of… so this is really happening?”

When news of Hamilton’s Ferrari decision was made public, it became one of the biggest shock news events of recent F1 history.

But Wolff said that he was able to deal with the situation in quite a calm manner.

“Well, I had much worse in my life, happening, like real drama and trauma,” he said. “This is not even moving the needle.”

He added: “It’s just a new situation. It has risks and opportunities, risks in the sense of how do I inform the sponsors as quickly as possible? Because it was leaking… And on the other side, what are we doing about next year?”

Wolff also made it clear that there was no temptation from his side to try to persuade Hamilton to change his mind.

“I think if someone decides to go, then you need to let them go,” he said. “I had a chat with Pep Guardiola a long time ago, and he is a friend. I said, ‘What do you do if this and that player leaves?’ And he said, ‘What do you mean I do?’ I said, ‘Well, do you try to convince them to stay?’

“He said: ‘No, if somebody thinks he can play elsewhere better or earns more – you have just got to let them go.’ And it is something that I embrace in the same way here. Somebody wants to go – then let’s make it as good as possible for each of the parties.”

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