Trackhouse Turbocharges It’s Future With Avenue Sports Fund Investment

Trackhouse is getting an infusion of capital that could raise their competition level on the track, and off. The Avenue Sports Fund announced Wednesday that they have secured a “significant” minority stake in Trackhouse Entertainment Group, the parent company of Trackhouse Racing.

Trackhouse started as the little team that could and did. Founded as a one car operation with driver Daniel Suárez in 2020 by former driver Justin Marks, in 2021 they stunned the NASCAR world when they added as a partner Armando Perez, a Grammy award winning artist who is known by his stage name Pitbull. Not content with adding Mr. Worldwide, that same year they also acquired the assets of Chip Ganassi Racing and added a second car with driver Ross Chastain to its lineup.

In 2022 the team added its Project91 initiative as a way to bring racers from other motorsports into NASCAR. Drivers there have included former F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen and most recently Australian Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen who won the inaugural NASCAR street race in Chicago last season.

Overall, the team has won seven NASCAR Cup Series races with Chastain finishing second in the season championship in 2022. Not content racing on four wheels Trackhouse Racing made the ambitious move to the MotoGP grid in 2024 becoming the only American team in the MotoGP class.

Investment groups are rare in NASCAR. Perhaps the most famous, and one of the first, was the 50% stake in Roush Racing purchased by Fenway Sports Group in 2007. After the merger the team changed its name to Roush-Fenway Racing and today is known as Roush-Fenway Keselowski Racing after driver Brad Keselowski became a team co-owner in 2022.

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Last year Joe Gibbs Racing partnered with Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE) and Arctos Partners making those entities minority owners in that NASCAR team. Joe Gibbs who founded JGR in 1992 is an NFL Hall of Fame coach who once led the Washington football team then known as the Redskins. HBSE’s co-founder is Josh Harris who last year led a group that bought the NFL team, now known as the Washington Commanders.

Launched last year, Avenue Sports Fund, led by Marc Lasry is a fund of Avenue Capital group, a global investment firm founded by Lasry, a man who presumably sleeps on a mattress stuffed with dollar bills, in 1995 with headquarters in New York and offices in Europe, Asia and Abu Dhabi. Avenue has assets under management of approximately $12.5 billion.

“NASCAR has long held its position as the most popular racing series in North America,” Lasry said. “And MotoGP is now one of the most popular motorsports in the world with millions of cumulative race attendees and a substantial digital audience – all compelling attributes for an investment by Avenue Sports.”

Trackhouse Entertainment Group is headquartered in Nashville, Tenn. while the race shop is in Concord, North Carolina. According to Marks the investment will not only make the company more valuable in the marketplace, but more competitive on the track.

“From the day of Trackhouse’s inception it has been a central goal to build a valuable, diverse, and global motorsports platform,” Marks said. “Partnering with Avenue is a monumental step forward in continuing to develop and execute that vision. With Trackhouse in the Avenue portfolio, the company will be able to draw on the experience and expertise of a leading global sports fund to scale into one of the most powerful motorsports companies in the world with best-in-class on-track competitiveness, partner services, and racing event experiential assets.”

NASCAR is the premier racing series in North America and MotoGP draws crowds all around the world. Now with a new infusion of cash the once humble one-car Trackhouse Racing, the little team that could, and did, can now look forward to doing even more in its next chapter and put an even bigger smile on the face of Mr. Worldwide.