Even though the 2025 NASCAR season’s wrapped up for a couple of weeks now, the sport is very much in the headlines. All thanks to the latest update in the ongoing antitrust lawsuit about the leaked chats of NASCAR’s top leadership. This evidence has been pretty damning for NASCAR, as it’s revealed their true perception about their fans and the garage, which is not on the positive side.

How NASCAR has dug its own grave

To give some background, it all started with the charter agreement negotiations in 2022, set for the 2025 season. These negotiations ran for two years until NASCAR issued a ‘take it or leave it’ offer. Naturally, most of the teams felt threatened and coerced into signing the agreement, but 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports held out. CEO Jim France was against making the charters permanent.

That’s when 23XI and FRM acted, filing the infamous anti-trust NASCAR lawsuit, and the battle’s been going on for over a year now, with the December trial dates approaching soon. And that’s where the situation took a very hot turn, as the leaked text messages that are coming in daily are increasing problems for NASCAR day by day. The latest one is a chat exchange between Scott Miller and John Probst.

These messages were from 2022, and the subject was how the smaller teams like RFK, Kaulig, Rick Ware, and Spire could be more competitive. Miller and Probst both joked about some of the NASCAR teams being on ‘government welfare’ and just about surviving. Their casual roast references didn’t go well with the fans. Check out their messages here:

In one message, John Probst wrote, “You can help the ones that want help. The rest just suck up your resources.”

Scott Miller responded, saying, “Spire and Front Row may be ‘helpable’ but Ware and McCloud are already on the Govt teet, they’ll just make more babies LOL.”

“Spire is a tweener,” Probst said, agreeing with Miller.

Other leaked threads were also controversial, like how Steve Phelps said Richard Childress needed to be ‘taken out back and flogged’. Phelps also dubbed the 7-time Cup Championship owner and Hall of Famer a ‘stupid redneck’.

This insult by the leadership to its own employees and staff hasn’t gone down well with fans at all. And now, with the latest thread expose, fans are questioning their ethics.

Fans are not taking the insults lightly

“It seems that NASCAR hates its talent at all levels. Shameful.”

Fans did not find this funny at all. These leaked messages about owners and teams have just intensified the ongoing frustration, making many of them feel that NASCAR is not being ethical and not respecting the very people who keep the sport alive.

Others predicted that the higher-ups could be in for a huge fall from grace. As one fan put it, “The more texts that come out, the more NASCAR executives look like they will be soon seeing the unemployment line.”

Before this, another conversation leaked between Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson and an unnamed person, where the use of slurs like “DARFs” were used. Journalist Steve Taranto opined that it could be one of the teams, too, but Denny Hamlin’s response made it clear that it was someone from NASCAR.

Many fans agreed with the sentiment, saying, “Steve Phelps, Steve O’Donnell, Scott and John Probst should right now be drafting their resignation letter.”

All in all, everyone is seeing what the big bosses truly think. “I love all their true personalities coming out,” another fan said.

Yet more fans began calling for heads to roll, “I’ve seen enough, time to clean house at NASCAR. This is unacceptable.”

Some people brought up interesting points about chasing away potential teams, “Why would any team want to do business with nascar after finding out this what they think of everyone.”

The fans’ anger is completely justified. And with more such leaks, that justification is only getting stronger. If people at the top talk this way, then calling for a “clean house” doesn’t feel extreme at all.

And for others, the frustration makes sense too. Why would any new team want to join a sport where the leadership appears to look down on the very people who make it run?

“These clowns are ‘executives’ for NASCAR? Imagine if this was messages among execs at a Fortune 500 company! They’d all be fired! If there’s not a house cleaning next week I’m not sure they’ll survive as a sport.”

Given the kind of messages exchanged, if not a clean house in the leadership, then the sport might definitely lose out on its precious fandom. Whatever happens, one thing’s for sure: NASCAR might have indeed just dug its own grave with this move.