Charters are like the financial heart and soul of the NASCAR Cup Series today. A charter promises a team a start in every single race of the Cup Series so you can understand just how much value one holds. The asking price for one has risen 11 times in recent times and one of the people responsible for that is BJ McLeod. Last year, in November, he sold the charter of Live Fast Motorsports to Spire Motorsports for a reported fee of $40 million. Now, several months removed from the sale, the motorsports veteran opened up about his decision.

Lack of competitiveness spelled the end of BJ McLeod in the Cup Series

The NASCAR Cup Series is one of the most competitive motorsports competitions in the world. If you’re not finishing high up consistently, the money is not gonna come in. If the money is not coming in, your team and your bank balance are as good as finished. On a recent episode of DJD Reloaded, BJ McLeod said that he had invested a lot of money to improve the car but the results just did not show on track. The #78 car consistently finished outside the top 20 last year and it was just disastrous for everyone involved.

“Yeah I mean it basically comes down to, you know we had goals when we started and honestly planned on owning our charter for a couple of decades. The longer we went, we built up some sponsorship, we’re making progress with that, we were able to spend more money and have better vehicles and ultimately the last year we ran, which was last year, we spent a lot of money on our side to improve and our finishing position didn’t improve one spot,” he said.

“It became to be a realization that we weren’t going to be able to grow as fast as the sport had grown and with the charters and the values, the way they build up, it just was a bad business decision to keep going and I’m not about that. The quickest route for me to be able to drive a competitive car in the Cup Series was to sell and have more capital and just run less races,” McLeod added.

The 40-year-old does not hold any hard feelings against anyone involved in the Cup Series but when he sold his charter last year, he said that the Truck or the Xfinity Series would be a better place for them to go and be competitive.

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Those two competitions do not have a charter system, so the cost of running a car is a lot lower. Several teams decide to build their future in these competitions if they’re unable to compete in the Cup Series. BJ McLeod could very well be heading that same road. It’s good that the 40-year-old is not entirely quitting NASCAR because he truly is someone that a lot of the fans admire.

“I like Cup headed the direction it’s headed because it guarantees its security. I think the sport growing to the level that it has and everything being as particular and perfect as it is for Cup is great for Cup. Then we have Xfinity and Trucks where you can have a real shot at building a competitive Xfinity team. That system is there for us to go do that with that platform,” he had said when he sold the charter in November of last year as per Autoweek.

He has taken part in four races in the Xfinity Series so far this season and has finished in the top 15 twice. Things have already gotten off to a much better start than in the Cup. However, can the motorsport veteran maintain this decent run of form? Only time will tell.

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