Thought she was Carson Hocevar out there running over people on the track.
NASCAR issued their weekly penalty report yesterday, and there was one name that caught everybody’s attention on there. Along with two penalties to teams for loose lug nuts, NASCAR also issued a suspension to someone named Evanna Howell, with the reason for the indefinite suspension being listed as “behavioral.”
Howell is, according to her LinkedIn profile, a Senior Account Manager at 23XI Racing, and was apparently arrested on Saturday, May 23 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. According to an arrest warrant, the 35-year-old allegedly used a golf cart to assault a 77-year-old man, identified in court records as Dennis Manchester. The man reportedly suffered a “severe laceration.”
The race team employee was charged with assault with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury, a felony, and was released from the Cabbarus County Jail on Tuesday on a $125,000 bond.
Howell was suspended by NASCAR for a violation of Rule 4.4 A of the NASCAR rulebook, which states that the sport may issue fines, suspensions or expulsions for, among other things, “actions by a NASCAR Member that NASCAR finds to be detrimental to Stock Car racing or NASCAR” and “NASCAR Member-to-NASCAR Member confrontations with physical violence … and other violent manifestations.”
It’s unclear at this time whether the victim was an employee of NASCAR, the track, or another race team. So far, neither 23XI Racing nor NASCAR have made any comment on the incident.
23XI Racing, which is owned by Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin, has been the dominant team in NASCAR this year. Tyler Reddick has won 5 races and currently holds a 122 point lead in the points standings, while Bubba Wallace is also currently inside the cut line for the postseason Chase for the Championship, sitting at 13th in points following a couple weeks in which the team has been caught up in various incidents on the track.
The team first made their NASCAR debut in 2021, but their recent success comes after a turbulent offseason that saw that team take NASCAR to court in a high-profile trial that ultimately resulted in several changes to the sport.
Ahead of last season, 23XI and Front Row Motorsports filed an antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR over issues they had with the new charter agreement. I’m not going to break down the whole lawsuit, but needless to say things were obviously awkward for the team last year as they competed while also challenging NASCAR in court.
The teams were forced to race most of the season without charters, meaning they got a smaller portion of the prize money, and were also facing the uncertainty of whether they’d even be able to continue as a team if they lost the lawsuit and weren’t given their charters back.
But this past December, NASCAR agreed to settle the lawsuit after an embarrassing 8-day trial, and in that settlement 23XI Racing not only (reportedly) got a large payout but also got the permanent charters the teams had long been asking for and an increased voice in the governance of the sport.
