Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing launches new home base

HUNTERSVILLE, NC ( CHARLOTTE SPORTS LIVE ) — At first glance, the 114,000-square-foot building that’s called “Airspeed” can be a bit overwhelming.

“The coolest part about this place?” Bubba Wallace pondered.  “I don’t know. Everything is so shiny and so new.”

Here, it’s easy to get lost in the grandeur, but at the heart of it, the official home of 23XI Racing wasn’t meant to be bigger than the competition’s shops. It was just to be better.

“It’s the efficiency of it,” said 23XI president Steve Lauletta.”It was built for the cars that we race today in NASCAR, as opposed to the traditional shops that have been around for a while that are built to the previous cars.”

Still, that doesn’t mean expenses were spared in the project’s development overlooking Interstate 77. While officials at the public grand opening wouldn’t tell us the cost of the building, they did admit to spending twice as much as they originally planned.

Hey, as co-owner Michael Jordan would tell you, championships don’t come cheap.

“We have to create a differentiator in our place of work,” said fellow co-owner Denny Hamlin. “I feel like we are trying to give our employees the best place to work, and this is the good step.”

Unlike a lot of other shops, this one has a gym as well as a cafeteria. There also are lots of rooms where people can just come and talk. In designing the project, Hamlin didn’t want to just create a place where people would go work, he wanted them to hang out as well.

“One of the main things is probably the environment,” agreed Mike Wheeler, Sr. Director of Planning and Operations at 23XI Racing. ”It makes you kind of want to come to work.”

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Employees have been working hard since they first moved in last December. While it’s still early, a difference in their performance has been noted.

“I would say numbers say it’s our best season yet,” Wallace said.

And we would say 23XI Racing just made a super-sized upgrade.

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