TC Daily Pit Stop: Hamlin Emotional in Day 1 of Testimony in NASCAR Antitrust Lawsuit; NASCAR Claims This Was Curtis Polk's Plan All Along
TC Daily Pit Stop: Tuesday, December 2, 2025
Hamlin Emotional in Testimony on Day 1 of Antitrust Lawsuit Against NASCAR
We officially slipped into uncharted territory on Monday as the highly anticipated antitrust lawsuit pitting 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports against the NASCAR sanctioning body and the France family is underway.
In a trial that is expected to be 10-12 days long, the opening day was every bit of a full day inside the Charles R. Jonas Federal Building in uptown Charlotte, NC. At the end of the opening day, the nine-person jury (six jurors and three alternates) was officially selected, and both sides were able to present lengthy opening statements.
And at the end of the day, Denny Hamlin was called to the stand as the first witness to give testimony in the trial.
In the opening moments of Hamlin’s testimony, which concluded near 5 PM ET and will resume when the court’s recess is lifted at 9 AM ET on Tuesday, the 60-time NASCAR Cup Series race-winning driver showed a lot of emotion when the topic of how he became a NASCAR Cup Series driver came up.
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NASCAR Claims Lawsuit Was ‘Curtis Polk and 23XI’s Plan From The Start’
In the first day of the NASCAR v. 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports antitrust lawsuit in Charlotte, North Carolina, NASCAR continued to hold firm in the stance they’ve had since the complaint was first filed last October.
John E. Stephenson, Jr. made that clear very quickly when delivering NASCAR’s opening statements on Monday, asking the jury a simple question: “Why are we here?”
The first of 10 scheduled days of this trial included jury selection (where six jurors and three alternates were selected out of a pool of potential candidates), opening statements were heard from both sides, and the first part of testimony from Denny Hamlin, one of three co-owners of 23XI Racing.
After all of that came to a natural stopping point, around 5:00pm local time, Judge Bell dismissed both parties and all the interested onlookers, and both went their separate ways without making any comments, whatsoever. About 90 minutes later, though, NASCAR broke its silence and made its stance known following an eight-hour day in court.
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