Kevin Harvick reacts to 23XI Racing, Front Row Motorsports not signing charter deal, what comes next
Kevin Harvick made some interesting points regarding 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports declining to sign the new charter agreement from NASCAR during this week’s edition of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour.
The former Cup Series champion elaborated on why he believes 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports were surprised the rest of NASCAR’s competing organizations signed the deal, and where both teams will have to go from here.
“I think they obviously expire when they get to the end of the year,” Harvick stated. “So, you know, I think — I don’t know enough about the ins and outs of the strategy that they’re trying to employ, but I just can’t imagine that they thought that many teams were going to actually sign the charter deals, and you’re going to have two teams that didn’t sign them.
“I for sure didn’t see Front Row not signing. But, you know, 23XI, I don’t know — I don’t think that they thought everybody was going to sign them, but it sure made them look like an oddball. … You’ve got to remember, Front Row is supposedly going to buy that third Stewart-Haas — the third car from them will be another charter from Stewart-Haas, so it’s all very interesting soap opera at this point.”
The whole situation has the feel of it being in the beginning stages, not the end, and that could affect the future of both teams in the sport. As the saga rages on, Denny Hamlin of 23XI Racing has declined to further elaborate on the situation, aside from the belief that his team is standing up for themselves against NASCAR.
“Yeah, really not gonna comment a whole lot further than what was said in my media availability, which is a whole lot of nothing,” Hamlin stated, via the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast. “You know, just because, you know, this is a serious situation, obviously, and you know, I think the statement that 23XI put out kind of accurately summed it all up. And then, you know, I believe Curtis Polk had a few media members ask him questions yesterday, to which he answered, and I would just kind of echo those statements. But yeah, it’s certainly an unfortunate situation, you know.
“We were just put under a kind of a crazy timeline there, and just thought that, you know, it was not appropriate, and decided to kind of stand up and say, ‘This is not right.’”
Evidently, the future of 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports in NASCAR has never been murkier, even as both organizations seem to be on the upswing. Time will tell when the situation is resolved, but Kevin Harvick and the rest of the motorsports world will be keeping a keen eye on whether an agreement can be reached.