The Stewart-Haas Racing NASCAR team is closing up shop.
In a joint statement released late Tuesday afternoon, team co-owners Tony Stewart and Gene Haas said that the team will cease operations at the conclusion of the 2024 season.
The Ford team currently fields drivers Josh Berry, Noah Gragson, Chase Briscoe and Ryan Preece on the Cup side, and Cole Custer and Riley Herbst in the Xfinity Series.
The team was founded in 2002 as Haas CNS Racing. Tony Stewart came on board to drive for the team in 2009 and received a reported 50% stake in the team as part of that deal.
The team has won 69 NASCAR Cup Series races and two championships since the beginning of the Stewart-Haas alliance. The team won Cup championships with Stewart driving in 2011 and with Kevin Harvick behind the wheel in 2014.
Here’s the joint statement outlining reasons behind the decision to close up shop:
“We have made the difficult decision to close Stewart-Haas Racing at the conclusion of the 2024 season. It is a decision that did not come easily, nor was it made quickly.
“Racing is a labor-intensive, humbling sport. It requires unwavering commitment and vast resources, with a 365-day mindset to be better than everyone else. It’s part of what makes success so rewarding.
“But the commitment needed to extract maximum performance while providing sustainability is incredibly demanding, and we’ve reached a point in our respective personal and business lives where it’s time to pass the torch.
“We’re proud of all the wins and championships we’ve earned since joining together in 2009, but even more special is the culture we built and the friendships we forged as we committed to a common cause – winning races and collecting trophies.
“That is the same commitment we made to our personnel, our partners and our fans coming into this year, and that commitment will remain through the season finale at Phoenix.
“We have tremendous respect and appreciation for all of our employees, and we will work diligently to assist them during this transition to find new opportunities beyond the 2024 race season.”
Mike Pryson covered auto racing for the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot and MLive Media Group from 1991 until joining Autoweek in 2011. He won several Michigan Associated Press and national Associated Press Sports Editors awards for auto racing coverage and was named the 2000 Michigan Auto Racing Fan Club’s Michigan Motorsports Writer of the Year. A Michigan native, Mike spent three years after college working in southwest Florida before realizing that the land of Disney and endless summer was no match for the challenge of freezing rain, potholes and long, cold winters in the Motor City.
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