Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports notched a major win in their antitrust fight with NASCAR on Tuesday, tightening the case’s scope and turning up the pressure for a settlement.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell granted the teams partial summary judgment on a critical threshold issue: the relevant market. He ruled the case will proceed under the definition of “premier stock-car racing,” rejecting NASCAR’s argument that teams unhappy with its terms could simply pivot to IndyCar or Formula 1. In other words, those open-wheel series aren’t substitutes for NASCAR’s Cup Series in this dispute.

Bell leaned on NASCAR’s own filings to get there, pointing to the sanctioning body’s counterclaim that framed the market as “the market for entry of cars into NASCAR Cup Series races

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