Last Sunday’s Daytona 500 win for JTG Daugherty Racing was historic as co-owner Brad Daugherty became the first Black NASCAR team owner to win The Great American Race.
Like 23XI Racing owner Michael Jordan, Brad Daugherty is the principal owner of his team, and both played basketball at North Carolina.
Jordan congratulated Daugherty on this historic win.
“Congratulations, my brother. Outstanding. I’m so proud of you,” Daugherty recalled MJ’s text to him, according to The Observer. “And I just told him, I said, ‘You know, I am so proud of you.’”
Daugherty’s team is the most diverse on the NASCAR circuit. In addition to Daugherty, Jodi Geschickter is a co-owner and became the second woman to win the Daytona 500 as an owner (Teresa Earnhardt was first).
Daugherty acknowledged Jordan’s role in opening the door for other minorities in the sport.
“The reality of it is,” Daugherty said of his friend Jordan, The Charlotte Observer reported, “without Michael Jordan, and I told him this, we don’t have an African American driver sitting in a seat who’s capable of winning a race every week.”
Bubba Wallace, who drives for Jordan’s 23XI Racing team, was the first African-American driver to win a Cup Series race in nearly 60 years and came very close last year to being the first African-American driver to ever win the Daytona 500, finishing second twice.
Over years, NASCAR has strived to be more inclusive in the sport, and it appears that it may be working.