Just when Tony Stewart thought his troubles were over, another one reared its head! The recent fiasco? Stewart, Ray Evernham, Sandy Montag, and George Pyne—the founders of the Superstar Racing Experience (SRX)—recently filed a lawsuit against Skip Barber Racing School.

SBRS, under the leadership of CEO Anthony DeMonte, was supposed to acquire SRX and signed an Asset Purchase Agreement (APA) on March 13, 2024, with the closing of the transaction scheduled for April 30, 2024. The APA included a confidentiality clause that required neither party to publicly announce the transaction until the deal was complete, which made sense, considering the amount of media coverage the big names have.

However, despite this, SBRS announced the acquisition on March 22, 2024, through a press release without the other parties’ consent. The stock car racing series’ CEO and Dale Earnhardt Inc’s former president (1993-2000), Donald Hawk, also moved to the racing school as its Chief Strategy Officer just a day before, thinking it’d be a promising partnership. He couldn’t be more wrong, though.

After SRX released a press release, leveling serious allegations, writing, “DeMonte and Skip Barber Racing have failed to pay any amount of the purchase price or otherwise fulfill their promise to close the transaction. Consequently, contrary to their false public statements, Skip Barber Racing did not purchase or does not own SRX or any the series’ assets,” Hawk came out with his side of the story.

Sharing Stern’s tweet, the veteran wrote, “This is why I’ve been laying low and quiet for a couple of months. I gave my notice to Skip Barber Racing (several months ago) and I was waiting to say anything publicly until I saw where the ownership group of @SRXracing would land. I tried to help facilitate the sale and the close, which as you read didn’t happen,” before adding, “Dang I hate to see this happen to the series, the owners, drivers, employees, race tracks, fans, sponsors, TV and all the other partners of SRX.”

DeMonte and Skip Barber Racing haven’t made any official statements yet. SRX’s debacle comes on the back of an already difficult year, as the promising series was forced to shut down breaking many hearts! 

The series where Chase Elliott got to compete with his father

The Superstar Racing Experience (SRX) was founded in 2021 and ran three consecutive six-race seasons from 2021 to 2023. Akin to the International Race of Champions, albeit with a twist, SRX even saw the dynamic duo of Chase Elliott and his father Bill Elliott go up against each other on July 17, 2021, at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. The podium that day consisted of Chase Elliott, followed by Tony Stewart and ‘Awesome Bill from Dawsonville’. 

1.25 million. That’s how many people tuned in to watch the series’ first season. That number dropped to around 1 million the next season, and soon came down 56% to just 436,000 in 2023. For the unversed, SRX used to field ten motorsports legends against current drivers (on a rotational basis) and regional champions. Each week, the crew chiefs would be randomly selected to pair with a different driver. Tony Stewart was the 2021 series champion, while Marco Andretti and Ryan Newman won in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

CBS televised the series on six consecutive Saturday nights in prime time before ESPN acquired TV rights for the third season and shifted races to Thursday nights—still six weeks in a row—and brought back a prior racing moniker that ESPN previously used known as ‘Thursday Night Thunder.’

In theory, the concept sounded interesting, but things went downhill before the fourth season with “market factors that have proven to be too much to overcome”. Perhaps the deal with Skip Barber Racing was alast ditch by the series owners to save it. But even with things going haywire, owners are still looking at the series’ long term potential—something they also reiterated in their latest press release.

Do you think SRX will be back? More importantly, do you want SRX to be back? Let us know in the comments below!