CHARLOTTE, N.C. — One of the founders of Spire Motorsports has entered an agreement to purchase the NASCAR organization owned by Rick Ware and is jumping back into the stock car series because he believes the current charters are grossly undervalued.
T.J. Puchyr, who in 2018 alongside Jeff Dickerson launched Spire Motorsports to take over the Cup Series charter that Furniture Row Racing could not unload, told The Associated Press on Thursday he and Rick Ware Racing have a deal for him to take over Ware’s organization next season.
When Dickerson and Puchyr bought the FRR charter, the market for NASCAR’s version of franchise models was essentially dead. Their agency had been hired by Furniture Row owner Barney Visser to sell the charter, and when they couldn’t find a buyer, the two decided to purchase it themselves for $6 million and launch their own organization.
That decision jump-started the charter market, and the most recent charters sold — when four-car Stewart-Haas Racing went out of business at the end of last season — went for approximately $30 million. Dickerson and Puchyr are largely credited with pumping life and value into an otherwise dormant charter system.
Puchyr last year sold his shares of Spire Motorsports to Dan Towriss, the CEO of TWG Motorsports and head of the new Cadillac team in Formula 1, the international open-wheel series.