Judge Halts Sale of Rick Ware Racing NASCAR Team Amid Charter Dispute
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – A North Carolina judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing Rick Ware from selling his NASCAR team. The decision comes amid a legal dispute over one of the team’s charters.
At the beginning of this year, Legacy Motor Club and Rick Ware Racing agreed that Ware would sell one of his two Cup charters. These charters are comparable to franchises in other sports. Legacy, owned by seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, was looking to acquire the charter.
Johnson and Legacy intended to expand their entries to three cars and agreed to pay Ware $45 million for one of his charters. Ware currently uses one of them for his own team and the other is leased to RFK Racing for 2025.
Ware had already agreed with RFK to exchange charters in 2026 under another lease agreement. Ware argued that, because of that existing agreement, he agreed to sell a charter to Legacy in 2027.
Legacy filed a lawsuit arguing that Ware signed a contract for a sale in 2026, which would effectively put him out of business, as he had already promised a charter to RFK. Meanwhile, Ware reached an agreement with the broker who negotiated the charter deal with Legacy for the latter to buy all of his NASCAR equipment for $150 million.
Judge Clifton Smith of Mecklenburg Superior Court issued a court order preventing Ware from selling the organization to T.J. Puchyr, co-founder of Spire Motorsports and now a motorsports consultant. Puchyr was the intermediary in the disputed charter sale agreement.
Smith’s order extends a previous temporary restraining order that had paused the sale. The judge ruled that Legacy demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of its case, that it would likely suffer irreparable harm unless an injunction was issued, and that the potential harm to Legacy outweighed any potential harm to Ware.
Smith maintained the $5 million bail that Legacy had presented.
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.
