“As the Executive Director of Race Team Alliance, I work with NASCAR Cup Teams to create new opportunities and improve the sport’s sustainability and diversity,” reads Jonathan Marshall’s LinkedIn bio. On the surface, this is a calm, corporate description. But it doesn’t show the big controversy he got pulled into this week in the ongoing NASCAR charter lawsuit.

Inside the courtroom, Marshall wasn’t speaking like a polished executive. He was the whistleblower of the moment, peeling back layers of financial politics that teams claim have quietly tilted the sport’s economics in NASCAR’s favor. As he came to the witness stand, his testimony dismantled NASCAR’s long-standing claim that teams receive 49% of the sport’s revenue.

Jonathan Marshall exposes NASCAR’s financial narrative

On Friday, Race Team Alliance Executive Director Jonathan Marshall took the witness stand, and what followed was one of the most revealing testimonies of the entire NASCAR lawsuit saga. Calm, methodical, and armed with documentation, Marshall stepped forward not to speculate. But to clarify. And the centerpiece of his appearance was a memo he wrote for teams shortly after the 2025 charter agreement was signed, a document that now threatens to upend NASCAR’s polished financial messaging.

The memo, originally crafted as internal talking points, paints a drastically different picture of the revenue landscape than the France family has publicly asserted. NASCAR has long touted that Cup teams receive 49% of the sport’s revenue, a number used repeatedly to justify the structure of the new charter deal. But Marshall’s analysis dismantles that claim.

According to his breakdown, teams didn’t receive 49% of anything. Instead, they received 46.8% of the TV money, and that percentage only reaches 49% after NASCAR “attributes” money paid to outside entities, like CAA’s media-rights negotiation fee, as if it were going to the teams.

Marshall testified that teams walked away from negotiations with just “half a win” out of their four major goals. On money? A partial victory. The year-one payout was $429 million, not the $450 million teams believed they had secured. On permanent charters? They lost ground, agreeing to seven-year terms with renewals, far from the evergreen protection they fought for. On governance and shared new revenue? Complete losses. Teams surrendered nearly every decision-making mechanism they once held.

And the concessions list, as Marshall described, was stunning: agreeing to institutional investor limits, scrapping team approval procedures, giving NASCAR control of ancillary revenue, paying for cost-cap administration, and even rolling team websites into NASCAR.com.

In one morning of NASCAR lawsuit testimony, Marshall didn’t just expose contradictions. In fact, he exposed a structural imbalance that teams say has quietly defined the sport for years.

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Michael Jordan testifies too

Retired NBA icon Michael Jordan was another personality to testify in the NASCAR lawsuit on Friday. Jordan spoke with the same calm intensity that once defined his presence on the court. He told the jury that he has been a NASCAR fan since childhood, but despite his passion, he felt boxed into a corner, left with no choice but to sue the sanctioning body over what he views as a fundamentally unfair business structure that squeezes the very teams keeping the sport alive.

Jordan testified for nearly an hour before a packed courtroom, drawing lighthearted remarks from the judge and even the defense team. But humor couldn’t undercut the weight of his words. Explaining 23XI’s decision to join Front Row Motorsports in taking NASCAR to court, he delivered one of the trial’s defining statements:

“Someone had to step forward and challenge the entity. I sat in those meetings with longtime owners who were brow-beaten for so many years trying to make change. I was a new person, I wasn’t afraid. I felt I could challenge NASCAR as a whole. I felt as far as the sport, it needed to be looked at from a different view.”

Jordan’s appearance came just hours after explosive testimony from Heather Gibbs, daughter-in-law of Joe Gibbs, who recounted the frantic, pressure-filled six-hour window teams were given to sign the charter extension. Her description left the room stunned.

“The document was something in business you would never sign,” she said. “It was like a gun to your head: if you don’t sign, you have nothing.”

Together, their testimonies painted a picture of a system many inside the garage have felt, but few were willing (or able) to articulate publicly. Jordan brought star power, yes, but more importantly, he brought credibility to a fight that teams say has been simmering in silence for years. The trial now heads into its next phase with the sport’s biggest name making one thing unmistakably clear: this battle is about respect, sustainability, and the future of NASCAR’s competitive soul.