Twenty-five years ago, Richard Childress sat atop the peak of NASCAR’s explosive growth.

Six NASCAR Cup Series championships with Dale Earnhardt. Wins in the sport’s crown jewel races from the Daytona 500 to the Brickyard 400 to the Southern 500.

His team’s success, through Earnhardt, was built directly on a blue-collar foundation of fandom that sold out racetracks all over the country. Millions showed up.

Today? He’s exhibit A at the funeral.

“Childress needs to be taken out back and flogged,” NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps once wrote in a text message, revealed last week for the world to see. “He’s a stupid redneck who owes his entire fortune to NASCAR.”

The insult was part of an unsealed exhibit as a lawsuit between NASCAR and two of its race teams heads to trial starting Dec.1. It’s a dispute between 23XI Racing, Front Row Motorsports and the sport at large that’s dragged all of stock car racing inside an uncontained five-alarm fire.

The flames only get fanned the second the gavel drops on this trial. But no outcome here fixes irreparable harm already inflicted on this Jenga tower’s wobbly lower level: owners and fans who serve as NASCAR’s foundation. They’ve spent their hard-earned money supporting it and, at one time, supercharged its growth to a level rivaling any sport in the country outside the NFL.

Childress, himself on the witness list for the trial, reacted the way anyone would under the circumstances: with verbal venom and potential legal action behind it.

“These comments reflect the way certain NASCAR executives have historically viewed and treated many team owners like Mr. Childress who have devoted their lives to strengthening the sport for its fans, its sponsors and all who compete in it,” a Richard Childress Racing spokesperson said in a statement last week.

“RCR and Richard Childress are equally disappointed for the NASCAR fans, with whom Mr. Childress closely identifies given his humble and hard-working background.”

You would think from those quotes alone that Childress would be saddling up alongside 23XI and FRM in court. Those two teams are claiming NASCAR is a monopoly, utilizing heavy-handed, Mafioso styles of negotiation to maintain control of an organization that solely enriches them.

But that’s where you’d be wrong. Childress is actually part of a group fighting to stop the trial, urging last month both sides to settle before the torrential downpour ripping the sport into pieces gets any worse. He joined longtime owners Rick Hendrick, Roger penske, joe Gibbs and five other teams on NASCAR’s side looking to ensure the upcoming case doesn’t fundamentally change stock car racing as we know it.

“Undoing what we have collectively nego

What Will NASCAR Gain From This Legal Battle?

What, on either side, will result from this trial which will increase demand for NASCAR over time? Fans follow this sport for entertainment, not legal analysis, after all.But for all the posturing, discussion and controversy in this case, that’s the question no one seems to be able to answer.

My money, in a best-case scenario, is on some potential long-term growth down the line if 23XI/FRM win the case. But even then, the fan they’re envisioning in a new-school NASCAR and the direction the sport may evolve may not feel so inclusive to those who have championed the sport for the past 40 years or so. Their visions of the past may soon clash precipitously with a future they had no hand in creating.

Childress would take the term redneck and hold it as a badge of honor, while Hamlin would likely see it as a derogatory term. The gap between the two is wide, and it’s a gap that’s only going to grow as NASCAR tries to appeal to a broader audience.