Judge Halts Sale of Rick Ware Racing NASCAR Team at Legacy Motor Club’s Request
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – A North Carolina judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing Rick Ware from selling his NASCAR team. The decision was made amid a legal dispute over one of the team’s participation permits.
At the beginning of this year, Legacy Motor Club and Rick Ware Racing agreed that Ware would sell one of his two NASCAR Cup Series charters. These charters, similar to franchises in other sports, guarantee a car’s entry into the 38 NASCAR races and determine the financial compensation for the team.
Jimmie Johnson, seven-time NASCAR champion and Legacy owner, was looking to acquire this permit to expand his team and increase the entries to three. To do this, they agreed to pay Ware $45 million for one of his permits. Ware currently uses one of them for his own team and the other is leased to RFK Racing for 2025.
Ware already had an agreement with RFK to exchange permits in 2026 under another lease. Ware argued that, because of this existing agreement, he agreed to sell a permit to Legacy in 2027.
Legacy filed a lawsuit, alleging that Ware signed a contract for the sale in 2026, which would essentially put him out of business, as he had already promised a permit to RFK. Meanwhile, Ware reached an agreement with the intermediary who negotiated the deal with Legacy for the latter to buy all his NASCAR equipment for $150 million.
Judge Clifton Smith of Mecklenburg Superior Court issued a court order preventing Ware from selling his organization to T.J. Puchyr, co-founder of Spire Motorsports and now a motorsports consultant. Puchyr was the one who negotiated the sale agreement for the disputed permit.
The judge’s order extends a previous temporary restraining order that had paused the sale. Smith ruled that Legacy demonstrated the likelihood of success in its case, that it would likely suffer irreparable losses if the injunction was not issued, and that the potential harm to Legacy outweighed any potential harm to Ware.
The trial is scheduled for January, but Legacy has filed a second lawsuit against Puchyr for interfering with its agreement with Ware. Legacy has also terminated its consulting agreement with Puchyr.
