HUNTERSVILLE, NC – Denny Hamlin wanted 23XI Racing’s new headquarters to be different and represent a quantum leap for new NASCAR team facilities. He also wanted the details to matter, and the 43-year-old driver – co-founder of the team with friend, collaborator and NBA legend Michael Jordan – personally took care of those details.
The greenery hanging above the lounge area in the team break room? Hamlin spent hours installing it, at the cost of a sore back. The 45 Air Jordan shoes arranged to form number 23 in a conference room wall display? These are all extras that Hamlin brought out of storage. The tiles, wood and other surfaces – right down to the choice of laminate style in the bathroom furniture? Hamlin sorted through countless samples and swatches to find the right fit.
“I wanted it to feel like the Google of race shops,” Hamlin said during a tour last week, and indeed, the 114,000-square-foot building has a Silicon Valley feel. But “race shop” isn’t what those involved call it, because that almost trivializes what the place wants to achieve. And if there were a version of a “race shop” curse jar at the lobby reception desk — the one with the custom elephant-print backdrop plucked from the Jordan Brand color palette looming behind it — it wouldn’t look out of place. .
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With these basic rules understood, Airspeed opened its doors to the public last week, welcoming fans and giving them an inside look at the activities involved in one of stock car racing’s growing teams. When the organization launched in 2020, the team’s name was a composite of Jordan’s uniform – No. 23 – and Hamlin’s car – No. 11 – the latter stylized in the form of Roman numerals. The name of the headquarters – coined by longtime Jordan business manager Curtis Polk – is also an amalgam, combining Jordan’s “Air” nickname with Hamlin’s speed on the track.
“This is not a race shop. It’s a place where we work, yes, we put cars on the track, but it’s so much more than that,” says Hamlin. “Would you say that if we’re sitting 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 – there was a race shop and a garage. This is not. This is something different, and therefore it must be properly named.”
The unique name and environment seem fitting for a team born on the cusp of the sport’s Next Gen era. Hamlin started working in 2021 on the first concept sketches of what the organization’s new home base could look like. In collaboration with Charlotte-based design firm Merriman Schmitt Architects and Choate Construction, the first walls went up just over a year ago. Facing a hard deadline of January 1, the team remarkably moved eight months later to prepare for the season.
What greeted fans at the premiere was not just an interactive video wall and windows giving access to the different departments, but an innovative workspace that feels like an arena beneath the square, an elevated hall one floor up. Hamlin drew inspiration from the workspace of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team, among other things, and the 23XI cars for drivers Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace pop with color against the sterile, hospital-white floors.
Even more charming details abound, from the coincidental 23 interior paint choices, using colors exclusively from the Jordan Brand catalog, to the intentional 23-degree tilt of the windows that surround the building, creating an airy space. “A lot of us have worked in dungeons in racing,” says Mike Wheeler, former crew chief and now senior director of planning and operations for 23XI Racing, noting the contrast. This building is not a damp warehouse and Hamlin has maximized the open floor plan, giving him panoramic views of the various departments and the ability to quickly locate staff throughout the building.
‘It’s crazy. What we were in, compared to what we have now, is almost incomparable,” Reddick said last weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “It was crazy that we did the things we could do in the space we had. We were spread out over different buildings and we were all a bit spread out, and it’s great to be under one roof as we are now.
Other intentional design choices have a direct impact on 23XI’s match preparation. Cars roll from department to department along a purpose-built workflow line before being loaded and unloaded into the team’s transport vehicles, parked at the far end of the main entrance. Like most tier one teams, 23XI has a race day war room, staffed by about a dozen competition staffers for a given event. “As a former crew chief, I’m amazed at how much quieter it is here than in the pit box,” Wheeler says from the rows of theater-style workstations opposite a row of flat-screen monitors.
Crew leaders and engineers eschewed traditional offices and worked on desk clusters that make direct communication easier. “We just want to be able to do this here, talk to each other directly,” Hamlin said. “That’s really important for us, for the way we function as a team, and for each team to just be able to talk to each other and discuss strategy.”
The competitive side is one part, but building a strong support staff is another. Hamlin estimates that 23XI Racing’s workforce now numbers about 100 people, and says that company-wide “welcome to the team” emails introducing new members have been arriving regularly in the internal inbox.
Airspeed and its facilities have been used as a recruiting tool, both for sponsor partners and for its growing roster of employees. Hamlin says 23XI Racing has made an effort to reach potential applicants outside of the NASCAR industry, and the organization has been recognized by a Sports Business Journal survey on the Best Places to Work in Sports list.
“It’s cool to see everything coming together and people thriving there,” Wallace said. “I think people enjoy coming to work there, and that’s what you need, because these seasons are long, and so you have to have that camaraderie and that sex appeal that we call it, to just show up and wanting to work. ”
The team’s on-track efforts to date are displayed in the lobby with the winning cars from 23XI Racing’s first Cup Series victory and its sixth and most recent. Wallace’s confetti-covered No. 23 Toyota faces Reddick’s No. 45 Jordan Brand Camry XSE, with the main doors between them. Both cars are flanked by the sculpted Vulcan trophies – each weighing more than 130 pounds of solid iron – from their Victory Lane visits to Talladega Superspeedway.
Another trunk with room for more trophies is located upstairs. Hardware from some of Hamlin’s 54 Cup Series victories is nearby.
“I like empty trophy cases. It’s motivation,” says Hamlin. “We’ve only been around for a short time, but we have a few. This will grow. This will definitely grow.”
There is also room for physical growth. Airspeed currently sits on about nine of the 16 acres the team purchased along Interstate 77. As for the remaining seven hectares, Airspeed can expand from the back walls, and the land will also be used as permanent housing for the pit crews. for practice, replacing the section of the parking lot where 23XI’s over-the-wall staff currently get their reps.
Hamlin politely declines to reveal dollar figures when asked how much the venture cost, other than “a lot.” He recalls how the former Kyle Busch Motorsports shop was considered “outlandishly expensive” upon completion in 2010. Airspeed, he says, is “much, much, much more – a few multiples of that.”
Still, Hamlin says the foundation that created 23XI represents an investment in the future of the sport. That commitment, he says, is based on the passion he and Jordan share.
“I think Michael said it well: We’re all in for the sport,” Hamlin says, “and I think when you walk through this, there’s no way you can doubt that. From the performance we’ve had on the track to what we’ve built here, I can’t imagine anyone coming in three years who would spend this kind of investment to fully focus on the sport.”
