Steve O’Donnell named chief executive officer of NASCAR in leadership change

NASCAR announced a series of key leadership moves Saturday morning, naming Steve O’Donnell as its Chief Executive Officer and tapping Ben Kennedy as Chief Operating Officer.

Jim France will step away from the CEO role he has held since 2018, but remain as NASCAR Chairman. The move makes O’Donnell the first chief executive outside of the France family in the organization’s 78-year history.

It’s the second major appointment in nearly a year for O’Donnell, who has spent 30-plus years in guiding NASCAR’s marketing and later competition departments, and was named president on March 31, 2025. From the lounge of the NASCAR officials’ hauler, parked in the Talladega Superspeedway garage for this weekend’s races, O’Donnell expressed his gratitude to Jim France, Lesa France Kennedy and the board of executives for the opportunity, but he also said he plans to take a measured approach early on as he rounds into the role with long-term growth as a priority.

“I think it would be a bit presumptuous of me to come in right away and say, ‘here’s the plan,’ ” O’Donnell told NASCAR.com. “What I’m going to do is go out and do a lot of listening, especially the first 90 days. We’ve got so many talented people in the industry — team owners, drivers, track, sponsors, even our own internal personnel that I want to go have some conversations with about what do they see and what are the opportunities? I think the great news is, we’ve got an unbelievable foundation, right? We’ve got a great broadcast deal. We’ve got charters in place, a strong schedule. So all those nuts and bolts are there, and it’s really taking that and looking at how do we make NASCAR an absolute must-have sport in the future.”

O’Donnell says he’s seen plenty in his tenure as president, from a challenging offseason to the well-received adoption of a new version of The Chase as a postseason format. The 57-year-old executive says he’s tried to embrace the new developments as opportunities, learning from them and encouraging the sport’s stakeholders to work together. That unifying message has come with O’Donnell’s hope for “getting a little bit more fun back in the sport” — a feeling that he hopes trickles down from drivers to fans.

Though the current season is just a quarter of the way through heading into Sunday’s Jack Link’s 500 (3 p.m. ET, FOX, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Talladega, O’Donnell says he senses some of those initiatives taking hold as he looks forward.

“There’s certainly things we can always improve on, but for me, I look at this season as the start of that foundation, of kind of that next generation of NASCAR, and that foundation is really solid,” O’Donnell said. “So I think it gives us the opportunity right now to go talk about the future. From time to time, we get stuck in kind of the day to day, and I think we all recognize right now that we have a really good thing that we can build on, but let’s talk about what does it look like five years from now and make those changes, because it’s going to take time. We’re going to need everyone to be aligned, and so now’s the time to say, all right, we’ve got a good thing going here in the first quarter. Let’s get through this year, let’s not take anything for granted, but let’s really think about where we want to be in 2030 and beyond.”

France took the helm on an interim basis in the middle of the 2018 season from his nephew, Brian, and was installed as chairman and CEO full-time the next year. It has been an eventful tenure, one that included guiding the sport through the global COVID-19 pandemic, negotiating a blockbuster new deal for media rights, making an agreement final on team charters after a drawn-out legal dispute and expanding the sport into dynamic new circuits and markets.

The 81-year-old’s management style has been regarded as quiet and unassuming, but with assured strength out of the public eye. At the heart of it has been France’s passion for a wide variety of motorsports — from stock cars to sports cars to motorcycle competition — and the racer mindset that’s been both a lifelong trait and a steadying hand.

“Jim came in at a time when this sport really needed it,” O’Donnell said, “and I can speak for myself on the competition side that we were struggling a little bit in terms of having someone who understood that aspect of the sport, could be a voice to help maybe back up some of the things we wanted to do, and Jim was just credibility right away. When he came in and spent the time at the track, he was always there and had conversations. He would certainly challenge you on certain decisions you made, but incredibly supportive of everything we did, and I think his goal coming in was to get the right people in place, get a great television partnership in place, get through the charters, and then really have the people to see the sport continue to grow.

“He’s still going to be involved, obviously, but for me, personally, he’s a guy who behind the scenes always listens, but always knew what was going on and does not get nearly enough credit for everything he puts into the sport.”

O’Donnell said France’s scaling-back of his executive duties was a matter of well-suited timing.

“I think when you look at it, it was more always the plan of, ‘Here’s what he wanted to get accomplished,’ and part of that was also, do we have the leadership team that can continue to bring us to where he saw things going?” O’Donnell said. “Ben’s really stepped up as well, and I think he looked at this and said hey, now’s a good time for me to continue to be part of the sport, but also spend time with my family, and also be involved in the sport and IMSA and everything else. He’s got a ton of interest, but I think it was just perfect timing across the board for us.”

Kennedy shifts into his latest role after serving as NASCAR executive vice president and chief venue & racing innovation officer. Though just 34 years old, Kennedy has a rich history with the sport dating through his youth to his driving days in the Craftsman Truck Series, a circuit he later managed. In the years since, he’s been a key figure in creating new strategies and initiatives, especially with launching the debuts of bold, new events on the racing schedule.

O’Donnell said he anticipates Kennedy’s role to expand further into the competition world and that his reach will grow to include more parts of the racing industry. He added that Kennedy has already been a reliable asset both to him and the company, confirming what he’d gathered from his earliest impressions of him as a manager.

“I think when you look at Ben, he’s done everything,” O’Donnell said. “He’s grown up in the sport, he’s driven, he owns race teams, he’s worked at tracks, but when he first started working for us, worked with me in competition and we put him in charge of the Truck Series, and I think anyone wondered, like, how’s he going to do? And we said one of the biggest challenges we have is the relationship with owners, and we need to go out and talk to them. In three days, he had talked to every single truck owner, had a plan, and it told me right away that this guy’s all-in, and he cares, and he has great style, and he’s continued to do that.”

NASCAR remains a family business, one that’s had firm leadership from “Big” Bill Sr., to Bill Jr., to Brian to Jim. For those counting, that’s a line of CEO succession that now goes France, France, France, France, O’Donnell. “Incredibly humbling,” is how O’Donnell puts it, and though he’s still trying to grasp the magnitude of the moment, his vision for the sport’s future stays true.

“It’s something that I want to make sure that this sport is left in a better place than when I started, and the work is certainly not done,” O’Donnell says. “I think we’ve got a huge opportunity to build upon the foundation.”

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