Judge Halts Sale of Rick Ware Racing NASCAR Team at Legacy Motor Club’s Request
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 his charters.
Earlier this year, Legacy Motor Club and Rick Ware Racing reached an agreement. Ware would sell one of his two Cup Series charters to Legacy, owned by seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson. A charter guarantees a car’s entry into all 38 NASCAR races and determines how a team is paid.
Johnson and Legacy sought to acquire the charter to expand their participation to three cars and agreed to pay Ware 45 million dollars for one of his two charters. Ware currently uses one of them for his own team, while the other is leased to RFK Racing for 2025.
Ware already had an agreement 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 alleging that Ware signed a contract for a sale in 2026, an agreement that would essentially 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 his NASCAR equipment for $150 million.
However, Mecklenburg Superior Court Judge Clifton Smith 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 broker who negotiated the sale agreement for the disputed charter.
Smith’s order extends a previous temporary restraining order that had suspended 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 presented by Legacy.
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.
