"Years ago, I was in the garage at Darlington Raceway chatting with David Pearson, Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough. All three are among the greatest racers in NASCAR history. All three had long since retired as drivers, but all three had only recently given up trying to be Cup Series team owners, the experience having crushed them all financially. Yaborough said to me, "You are looking at three NASCAR dinosaurs." Pearson laughed and replied, "But we're doing better than the dinosaurs because we're still here.""
"As the finer details of the agreement were still being revealed into late afternoon, there was no doubt that the victory belonged to the teams over the sanctioning body because we already knew that their ultimate goal had been achieved. In the end, this was about their fight for NASCAR to make team charters, as close as stock car racing gets to stick-and-ball franchises, permanent -- or as their attorney Jeffrey Kessler described it, "evergreen" -- as opposed to a contract-to-contract model, renewed in conjunction with NASCAR's massive media-rights deals."
David Pearson, Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough retired from driving and later abandoned attempts at Cup Series team ownership after suffering financial losses. They described themselves as NASCAR dinosaurs who exited before extinction. 23XI Racing (co-owned by Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin) and Front Row Motorsports filed an antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR seeking permanent, "evergreen" team charters rather than contract-by-contract renewals tied to media-rights deals. The teams reached a settlement in a Charlotte courthouse that favored the teams and secured their objective. Most Cup Series participants viewed evergreen charters as the correct move, though many later stepped back from the legal fight.
Read at ESPN.com
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