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Tony Stewart watches race from pit box.
Tony Stewart is not happy with Stewart-Haas Racing and its lackluster overall performance over the last several years. He made that abundantly clear during his February 6 appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
“We’ve had two miserable years in a row and I’m tired of taking the blame from everybody why the cars aren’t running good,” Stewart candidly admitted. “It’s like, I think the fans need a reality check and a reminder that I’m not the crew chief. I’m not the engineer. I don’t dictate the setups on the cars. I give these guys the tools to do the job and we just haven’t got it done the last couple years.”
And Stewart was just getting started. Moments later, after the NASCAR Hall of Famer said he was excited about the energy in the shop with the organization’s young roster of Chase Briscoe, Ryan Preece, Noah Gragson, and Josh Berry, he was questioned how long the leash would be on the 2024 season before he’d consider making changes.
“We’re going to have to get some races into it, but if we’re not having the results we’re looking for, we’re going to start making some major changes,” he said. “Everybody knows that. Everybody understands that.
“And it’s those guys’ jobs at SHR to take what we have and make it better. It doesn’t mean we got to go out and win eight or 10 races this season, but we need to see the needle move in the right direction. We need to make progress.
“And, you know, last year, two years ago, the first year with the new car, you can understand that you might have an off season trying to figure out a new product, but to have that season two years in a row, we will not stand for that and let that be the standard.”
Tony Stewart Doesn’t Paint Complete Picture of Issues
Throughout the interview, Stewart mentioned multiple times how the team specifically struggled during the last two years. However, that’s not painting the full picture. The organization’s struggles actually started in 2021, the final year of the Gen 6 car.
That season, Kevin Harvick, who had won nine times in 2020, went winless. Aric Almirola recorded the lone win for SHR that year. The team owner addressed the “frustrating” situation in an August interview with reporters.
“It’s not been a season that we’re proud of by any means,” Stewart said. “We definitely have a problem in our organization, and it’s not with people. But there’s something that we’re missing on that’s cost us the entire season up to this point and we can’t find it, but we know there’s something fundamentally wrong. So it’s frustrating because we’re all sitting there scratching our heads trying to figure out what is wrong and what’s going on.”
Chase Briscoe Identifies Specific Issues at SHR
In 2021, Stewart was insisting it wasn’t a people problem. In 2024, his tone has dramatically shifted. He didn’t mince words about a willingness to change personnel near the end of his latest interview: “They are going to have to find something or we’ll find people that will find it because we can’t perform at this level.”
Interestingly, according to Chase Briscoe, a couple of well-publicized departures in the offseason has already made a difference within the organization because the four drivers are now on the same page and planning to work together, something the 29-year-old driver surprisingly admitted wasn’t that common in the past.
“The biggest thing is just trying to work together,” Briscoe said during a January 30 interview on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio about the tough but honest conversations within the organization this past offseason. “That’s something that we did to a certain extent but we kind of ran as four separate companies under one roof. Where this year going forward I think we’re trying to be just more of one team with four drivers and four teams but they all kind of work in the same direction and try to help each other out.
“From that standpoint, I definitely think with this Next Gen car that makes more sense. You know, with the old car, you could kind of get away with doing four different things. But now with everybody getting the same stuff, the more information you can get and work together and find that one common setup, I think it’s definitely the best direction to go.
“I think that’s the biggest thing from our conversations in the offseason is trying to work together from a team standpoint but also all four drivers kind of working together. That’s something that we probably haven’t done a great job of at least the whole time I’ve been in the Cup Series at SHR. We don’t always help each other out on the race track. We almost race each other harder. Just trying to work together as a team and kind of all us pull the rope in the same direction.”
It’ll be interesting to see where SHR goes in 2024 and if the young drivers are able to improve on the organization’s performance over the last several years. If that happens, then, based on what Briscoe said, Stewart will know the source of his problem and have already addressed it. If not, then there will likely be more changes coming.
Kyle Dalton covers NASCAR for Heavy.com. He has more than 30 years of experience covering high school, college and professional sports, including stories for the Austin American-Statesman, San Antonio-Express News, Detroit News and Sportscasting.com. More about Kyle Dalton
