Daytona Beach, FL – February 14: Justin Marks, co-owner of Trackhouse Racing Team … [+]
Trackhouse is receiving a capital injection that could improve the level of competition on and off the track: Avenue Sports Fund announced Wednesday that it has secured a “significant” minority stake in Trackhouse Entertainment Group, parent company of Trackhouse Racing.
Trackhouse started as a small team with talent and action. Founded in 2020 by former driver Justin Marks as a one-car team with driver Daniel Suarez, the team surprised the NASCAR world in 2021 by adding Grammy Award-winning artist Armando Pérez, known by his stage name Pitbull, as a partner. Not content with adding Mr. Worldwide, the team also acquired the assets of Chip Ganassi Racing that same year, adding a second car to its lineup with driver Ross Chastain.
For 2022, the team added the Project 91 initiative as a way to attract racers from other motorsports to NASCAR. Participating drivers include former Formula 1 champion Kimi Raikkonen and Australian Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen, who recently won the inaugural NASCAR street race in Chicago last season.
The team has won seven NASCAR Cup Series championships, with Chastain finishing second in the season championship in 2022. Not content with racing on four wheels, Trackhouse Racing is making an ambitious move to the MotoGP grid in 2024, becoming the only American team in the MotoGP class.
Investment groups are rare in NASCAR, with perhaps the most well-known and one of the first being Fenway Sports Group’s purchase of a 50% stake in Roush Racing in 2007. After the merger, the team changed its name to Roush Fenway Racing, and with driver Brad Keselowski becoming a part-owner of the team in 2022, it is now known as Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing.
Last year, Joe Gibbs Racing partnered with Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE) and Arktos Partners to take a minority stake in the NASCAR team. Joe Gibbs, who founded JGR in 1992, is the NFL Hall of Fame coach who once coached the Washington Football Team, then known as the Redskins. HBSE’s co-founder is Josh Harris, who led the group that bought the NFL team now known as the Washington Commanders last year.
The Avenue Sports Fund, which was launched last year, is a fund of Marc Lasry’s Avenue Capital Group, an international investment firm founded in 1995 by Lasry, who appears to sleep on a mattress stuffed with dollar bills. The firm is headquartered in New York with offices in Europe, Asia and Abu Dhabi. Avenue has about $12.5 billion in assets under management.
“NASCAR has long maintained its position as the most popular racing series in North America,” said Lasry, “and MotoGP is currently one of the most popular motorsports in the world, with millions of cumulative race attendance and a significant digital audience – all attractive factors for an investment by Avenue Sports.”
Trackhouse Entertainment Group is headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., with its race shop in Concord, N.C. Marks said the investment will not only make the company more valuable in the marketplace, but also more competitive at the racetrack.
“From the very beginning, Trackhouse’s core goal has been to build a valuable, diverse, global motorsports platform,” said Marks. “Partnering with Avenue is a groundbreaking step in continuing to develop and execute on that vision. The addition of Trackhouse to the Avenue portfolio will enable the company to leverage the experience and expertise of one of the world’s leading sports funds and grow into one of the world’s most powerful motorsports companies with best-in-class on-track competitiveness, partner services and race event experiential assets.”
With NASCAR being North America’s premier racing series and MotoGP attracting audiences around the world, Trackhouse Racing, once a tiny one-car team, is hoping that with a fresh infusion of capital, they can achieve even more in their next chapter and bring an even bigger smile to Mr. Worldwide’s face.
