Stewart-Haas Racing, the NASCAR team co-owned by racing Hall of Famer Tony Stewart and Gene Haas, founder of Haas Automation Inc., announced it will close its doors at the end of the season.
While the team did not explicitly point to why it is ceasing operations, Stewart and Haas released a joint statement on X (formerly Twitter) describing the sport as “labor-intensive” and “humbling.”
“The commitment needed to extract maximum performance while providing sustainability is incredibly demanding,” the statement said. “We’ve reached a point in our respective personal and business lives where it’s time to pass the torch.”
The team is expected to sell its four charters. The charter system forces teams to rely on sponsorships to cover costs, and it costs a team roughly $10 million to run a single car.
The Stewart-Haas team started with two cars but expanded to six, four of which are in the NASCAR Cup Series. Chase Briscoe, currently 16th in the NASCAR standings, is the team’s highest-ranked driver. The team has not won at the Cup level since August 2022.
Haas has been racing NASCAR teams since the 2003 season, and started Stewart-Haas when the Hall of Fame driver joined him in 2008. In the team’s first season on the track in 2009, Stewart posted four victories, with Ryan Newman being the other Haas driver. Stewart claimed the team’s first NASCAR Cup title in 2011.
Kevin Harvick and crew chief Rodney Childers joined Stewart-Haas in 2014 and won a NASCAR Cup title in their first year with the team.
With assistance from Cora Veltman.