Michael Jordan recently made the trip out to Huntersville, North Carolina, to get a firsthand look at 23XI Racing’s new “Airspeed” headquarters.
The NBA legend sounded impressed as he was guided around the building and saw some of the amenities.
Airspeed opened in May, and 23XI Racing co-owner Denny Hamlin laid out the grand ambitions for the project when he told NASCAR.com’s Zack Albert he “wanted it to feel like the Google of race shops.”
“This is not a race shop. It’s a place that we work, yes, we put cars on the track, but it’s so much more than that,” Hamlin said. “Would you say sitting right here, we’re in a race shop? No, it certainly doesn’t feel that way. So I think what we were in—in Mooresville, in the old Germain (Racing) building—was a race shop and a garage. This is not. This is something that is different, and so it needs to be named appropriately.”
According to Racer’s Kelly Crandall, Airspeed features its own cafe and gym, the latter of which boasts a training room, hot and cold tubs, and a sauna.
Jordan’s foray into sports ownership with the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets didn’t go well in a competitive sense. The franchise only had a winning record four times after he took control in March 2010.
The Hall of Famer did turn a massive profit, though, as he turned his initial $275 million investment into a sale with a $3 billion valuation.
23XI Racing, which has Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick racing full time, has fared a little better on the NASCAR Cup Series. The team has one win and six top-five finishes, and it sits sixth in the owner standings with 473 points.
Given the amount of work that was put into Airspeed, Jordan and Hamlin have major ambitions as NASCAR owners.
