Tony Stewart puts his team on blast after going winless in 2023
Driver skips practice to attend his child’s birth
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Tony Stewart put his NASCAR team on blast ahead of the Daytona 500 and in the wake of a winless 2023 season: get to victory lane, hang banners — or else.
Stewart-Haas Racing is in more than a small slump. SHR has been downright dismal.
The team once among NASCAR’s best hasn’t won in the last 84 Cup races headed into Sunday’s Daytona 500. This season’s four-driver lineup, which includes holdovers Chase Briscoe and Ryan Preece and newcomers Josh Berry and Noah Gragson, have a combined one career Cup victory — Briscoe won in 2022 at Phoenix.
Stewart, so fiery as a driver he was nicknamed Smoke, had enough of the failures. The threetime Cup Series champion and NASCAR Hall of Fame driver said the standard at SHR — where Stewart and recent retiree Kevin Harvick each won championships — was set too high for the team to now languish far outside title contention.
“We’re going to have get some races into it,” Stewart said this month on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, “but if we’re not having the results we’re looking for, we’re going to start making some major changes. Everybody knows that. Everybody understands that.”
SHR’s stumbles on the track led to other losses off it, with premier sponsors Anheuser-Busch and Smithfield leaving the team. SHR’s deal with Ford ends after this season and negotiations could hinge on how many checkered flags Berry, Briscoe, Gragson and Preece chase.
The four drivers have heard the criticism — already harsh from fans and the media — but it hits harder when it comes from Stewart.
“We hear everybody, we hear you guys, we’re not just ignoring it,” Preece said. “And as you heard Tony say, mediocrity isn’t acceptable.”
Aric Almirola and Harvick both left at the end of last season. They were veteran leaders in the race shop and at the track, and their voices will be missed. But even a proven winner such as Harvick wasn’t immune to the troubles that plagued the Fords in 2023. He won 37 races and the 2014 title in his 10 seasons at SHR, including nine wins in 2020, but scuffled to just six top-five finishes in his farewell season.
BABY ON BOARD? NASCAR driver Chris Buescher has left the Daytona 500 to return home for the birth of his second child.
Buescher traveled back to North Carolina to join his wife Emma and daughter Charley. He is expected to return Sunday morning ahead of the Daytona 500.
Fellow Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing driver David Ragan will turn laps in Buescher’s No. 17 Ford during practice sessions Friday and Saturday.
Ragan is driving a third car for RFK at Daytona, the No. 60, and will shake down both cars in practice.
Buescher won the last Cup Series points race at Daytona, the regular-season finale in 2023. He also is coming a career year, winning three races in 2023 and finishing seventh in the championship standings.