Emotional Tony Stewart informs employees Stewart-Haas Racing to close after 2024 season
Stewart-Haas Racing is coming to an end. According to Matt Weaver, an emotional Tony Stewart is at the Stewart-Haas Racing shop telling employees the team is shutting down at the end of the year. Stewart and Gene Haas confirmed the news with a statement.
“We have made the difficult decision to close Stewart-Haas Racing at the conclusion of the 2024 season,” Stewart and Haas said in the statement. “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.”
Rumors of Stewart-Haas Racing surfaced before the heartbreaking announcement
There were rumors that Stewart-Haas Racing was going to end its run before the announcement. Dale Earnhardt Jr. addressed the team’s future while appearing on Dirty Air.
“I heard that their range is $20M to $30M, for a charter. One of the last ones that sold was for $40M, and so now they’re kind of going through a bit of a reset. I mean, I know one sold for $40M, but from everything that I’ve learned, and all the things that we’ve dug up over the last three or four years, the true value is not near $40M. So yeah, $20M to $25M is more in the ballpark of what I think they should be going for. The question is, will Stewart-Haas sell all four of them? Does Tony Stewart and [Gene] Haas get out entirely? Holy s—. That would be weird,” Earnhardt Jr. stated. “But I mean, it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of — I don’t know. I don’t want to speculate. But I hope that Tony Stewart doesn’t leave NASCAR entirely. That would suck. I just think he’s an icon. He’s a motorsports icon. Done it all.”
Stewart-Haas Racing was originally founded in 2002 as Haas CNC Racing. Haas teamed up with Stewart in 2009, and the team has been a mainstay in NASCAR ever since. The current roster features Cup Series drivers Josh Berry, Noah Gragson, Chase Briscoe and Ryan Preece. The team also has Xfinity Series Drivers Cole Custer and Riley Herbst.
On3’s Steve Samra contributed to this story.