 Image & Article By: Tom Luttermoser
When Gene Haas brought Tony Stewart on as co-owner of the newly rebranded Stewart-Haas Racing in 2009, they saw instant success with 4 wins in their first season. Including teammate Ryan Newman they would go on for a total of 13 victories in the first 3 years alone PLUS the teams first championship in 2011. 2014 brought in former Cup champion Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick from RCR. Together the duo would score 6 victories and the team's second title with Kevin Harvick. Since then the team has gone on to be a major success scoring 69 Cup victories to date. Harvick has been a constant threat to win nearly every single week for several years with Kurt Busch winning in each of his seasons with the team and solid runs from Almirola as well. But over the last 2 years we have seen the team sort of... fall off. Harvick fresh off a 9 win 2020 season went winless in 2021. '21 saw a single win for the team that otherwise has been a terrifying opponent. Aero changes for the Mustang in 2021 and the NEXT Gen car in 2022 seemed to be challenges that took the team a while to overcome finally scoring 3 victories this season. Added to that, early in the 2022 season Aric Almirola announced that he would retire after the end of the season even though it was announced that he signed a new contract later into the year. With him likely would have gone longtime Almirola sponsor Smithfield Foods who came with Aric from Richard Petty Motorsports. Also going into 2023 we know that Kevin Harvick's contract is up, if he retires (which seems very likely), SHR's veteran backbone driver is gone. Possibly major sponsorship as well if he was to go. Technical alliances are also a big deal to major teams like SHR. This postseason we have seen SHR lose 2 alliances, Rick Ware Racing was first. RWR made the announcement a couple weeks ago that they would leave their technical alliance with SHR and move over to Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing for 2023. Then, just last week, Live Fast Motorsports made the change over from Ford to Chevrolet. A technical alliance is where 2 or more teams join resources to share data, parts, knowhow and sometimes shop space, for a cost of course. So that means SHR just lost 2 streams of income. This is just another issue that the team has not publicly addressed nor have I seen any of my fellow Media members look into. (Edit): As of this past week SHR and AM Racing announced an Xfinity Series technical alliance for the 2023 season. Is this a sign that something is off internally at SHR? Maybe the team just needs a bit of a refresh, you've got 2 young and hungry drivers in Chase Briscoe and now Ryan Preece. We all know Stewart hasn't been happy with the sanctioning body lately. Plus with focus going on NHRA and SRX, Stewart seems to maybe have his focus a bit more on the other 2 ventures rather than NASCAR. We reached out to the team and will share any answers or responses we get.
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