![Tony Stewart]()
Is Smoke looking to get rid of his
NASCAR team?
Tony Stewart became an owner-driver in 2009 when he bought 50% of Haas-CNC Racing and took over the #14 car for the renamed Stewart-Haas Racing team.
And SHR had quite a bit of success early on, with Tony Stewart himself taking home the Cup Series championship in 2011 and Kevin Harvick winning his only championship in NASCAR's top series back in 2014.
But over the past couple years, it seems that Stewart-Haas has fallen off quite a bit when it comes to performance on the track. With the retirement of veteran Kevin Harvick, the team currently fields cars for Chase Briscoe, Ryan Preece, Noah Gragson and rookie Josh Berry. And of those four drivers, the only one with a win in the Cup Series is Briscoe, whose sole trip to victory lane came at Phoenix in 2022.
The only driver that SHR had in the playoffs last year was Harvick, who was eliminated after the first round. And of their other three cars, none finished higher in the final points standings than 22nd, with Briscoe coming in at a disappointing 30th.
Now, the team seems to have made some small improvements this year, with Gragson running the best of the 4 cars and Berry showing some decent performance at times. But for a top NASCAR Cup Series team, it's a safe bet that nobody at Stewart-Haas is happy with how things are going right now.
So are owners Tony Stewart and Gene Haas looking to get rid of their team altogether?
Reports have been swirling for the past few weeks that the team was looking for buyers for two of their charters, which guarantee teams a spot in each race. Obviously that means that SHR is likely planning on at least downsizing to two cars next season.
But a new report says that SHR is open to selling off its entire operation, including their race shop.
According to veteran NASCAR reporter
Matt Weaver, not only is Stewart-Haas courting potential buyers for two charters, but their entire organization is on the market - and with more than two teams reported to be looking for charters for next season, it's entirely possible that somebody like Front Row Motorsports scoops up the entire organization, keeps the charters they need, and sells off the others.
https://twitter.com/TheHestercution/status/1788228000879644717
It would be far from an unprecedented move. Just a few years ago, Trackhouse Racing bought the entire Chip Ganassi Racing operation, including its two charters and race shop.
And Stewart has seemingly been distracted from his NASCAR team for a while now, with his focus on his NHRA drag racing career after he announced that he would be competing for the full 2024 season in place of his new wife, Leah Pruett.
It seems like at the very least, Stewart-Haas will be downsizing next year, leaving the team to figure out which two drivers are going to be the odd men out. (If that happens my guess are that Berry and Briscoe stay, but who knows).
But it's also apparently a very real possibility that this is the final year in the Cup Series for Stewart-Haas Racing.
Gonna be a wild silly season, and it's kicking off early this year.
