What’s at Stake for NASCAR with Stewart-Haas Racing Departure?

What does it mean in NASCAR’s Cup Series playbook to lose a team like Stewart-Haas Racing?

Formed in 2009 when Tony Stewart took on half-ownership duties at Haas CNC Racing and facilitated the name change to Stewart-Haas, the initial successes of the reformulated squad rested on its driver and squad decisions. There was Tony Stewart as the lead driver, having left Joe Gibbs Racing when that team decided to move to Toyota engines. Stewart was a Chevrolet driver; he didn’t want to change allegiances.

That was only part of it. The team hired Ryan Newman and between the two of them, Stewart and Newman’s work ethics, popularity with fans and their ability as drivers to meld teams around them and work magic on racetracks around the country brought Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) into elite territory. The team’s first of two championships came with Stewart in 2011; their second arrived in 2014 with new arrival Kevin Harvick at the steering wheel.

With its successes, SHR expanded its operations. First it added a third car for Danica Patrick for a six-season stint and then for 2004 champ Kurt Busch. Stewart hung up his helmet at the close of the 2016 season, as the team segued from Chevrolet to Ford engines suppled by Roush Yates Engines. Newman had departed with Harvick’s 2014 arrival from Richard Childress Racing as there wasn’t sufficient sponsorship at the time to run four cars.

The writing was on the wall at the start of the 2024 campaign as Harvick retired and his Busch sponsorship went to another squad, the Trackhouse Racing team that’s running Chevrolet cars and engines. The foursome currently working with SHR are capable, but the lack of financing to give them the robust equipment and crew members just hasn’t been there.

While rookie Josh Berry had good results as a substitute at Hendrick Motorsports in 2023, he hasn’t shown the spark needed to be a team leader. Neither has the volatile Noah Gragson, nor Chase Briscoe and Ryan Preece. Perhaps any one of these drivers could be successful in NASCAR Cup Series competition but it just wasn’t happening with SHR.

And what, again, does this mean for NASCAR?

Take a look at the Cup Series garages and you’ll find the massive squads that once occupied grids have been displaced by smaller teams coming into the sport from its other traveling series or as startups. There are more inter-team affiliations than ever before and there are more new team owners and co-owners, like racer Justin Marks of Trackhouse, seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson taking on part-ownership duties with LEGACY Motorsports, Denny Hamlin at 23XI affiliating hoops star Michael Jordan, and Brad Keselowski a part owner/driver with Roush Fenway Keselowski (RFK) Racing.

That’s just for starters. And while Hendrick, Penske and Jack Roush still have larger teams, two-car squads are the rule for many. Add too many cars and the resources necessary to be successful are quantified even more drastically. And with SHR closing at the end of this season – hopefully on a positive note in the overall Cup Series standings – charters are available for teams that otherwise couldn’t get into the game. In fact, Front Row Motorsports announced the purchase of a third NASCAR charter the day after news of SHR arrived. They didn’t say where they got the charter but it’s pretty easy to guess.

NASCAR is definitely healthy, even with this team’s departure, and both Gene Haas and Tony Stewart have other motorsports activities in their immediate and future sights. Haas’ involvement in the Formula One World Championship needs his attention more than ever before, as his team is in a state of flux with team management, drivers and crew not exactly working well together, as the departure of Gunther Steiner shows.

Tony Stewart has now learned to love nitromethane, and has become an NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series Top Fuel rookie, angling for the first-year driver’s award and, perhaps, a race win or two in one the series top categories. Stewart already has a championship in Funny Car, thanks to four-time titleholder Matt Hagan’s 2023 win in the team’s Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat. That title came in only the team’s second year of operations, and Stewart’s wife, Leah Pruett nearly gave him a championship double-up before falling, in the last race of the year to Doug Kalitta.

It’s never a happy occurrence to lose a large team like Stewart-Haas Racing, but NASCAR will survive this change easily. There are enough teams wanting to be a part of the Cup Series and a change in the landscape means even more opportunities to get involved.