Legendary NASCAR owner Richard Childress was forced to admit having held talks over selling a stake in his team in court on Tuesday.
Childress was testifying in Charlotte, North Carolina, as part of the ongoing antitrust lawsuit between NASCAR and two of its teams, 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports.
The 80-year-old team owner founded Richard Childress Racing (RCR) in 1969 and currently owns a 60% stake in the team headquartered in Welcome, North Carolina, with the other 40% owned by Chartwell Investments.
However, that 60% stake could well have been reduced after Childress testified that he was previously in talks with an investment group led by Bobby Hillin Jr. over the sale of a stake in the team.
Richard Childress reveals team sale talks
Childress explained that Chartwell Investments had been looking to get out of its ownership role with the team for as many as five years, and at the same time, also revealed that he was open to selling a portion of his own 60% stake in RCR.
In the end, nothing came of the talks with the investment group led by Hillin Jr., with Childress claiming they were too 'pie in the sky', as per Toby Christie.
Fascinatingly, Childress was thrown off by the line of questioning from NASCAR's attorney, Christopher Yates, and it turned out he had good reason.
First of all, Yates had been reading from a document that had not been made available in discovery, and second, Childress claimed that any talks over a stake in RCR had been subject to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
At the end of the day, Judge Bell, who is presiding over the case, ruled that the document NASCAR had used was 'improper' for those reasons, instructing the two parties to come up with a resolution on the matter. Otherwise, the court will step in.
