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2024 Top NASCAR Storylines: SHR Closes Its Doors

On May 28, Stewart-Haas Racing made an announcement that was highly anticipated yet still a bombshell within the NASCAR world.

The two-time NASCAR Cup Series and reigning NASCAR Xfinity Series championship-winning race team finally declared that it would be shutting its doors at the end of the 2024 season.

The aftermath sent ripples throughout the NASCAR world leaving many questions that would remain unanswered throughout the rest of the season – some of which still remain so as of this writing on Dec. 15.

Read all of Frontstretch‘s content looking back on 2024 here

In fact, the only facet of the news that wasn’t a mystery was why it was all likely happening in the first place.

It had been a difficult last couple of years for the organization. In 2023, SHR went winless for the first season in its history, which dated to its opening 15 years earlier in 2009. It was also the first season ever that none of its teams had qualified for the Round of 8 in the Cup playoffs.

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Additionally, the group now seemed to lack the star power that it needed in its drivers to compete with the more competitive teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing. Before this year, the common denominator of success for SHR was Kevin Harvick, the only driver to have won multiple races for the team in a single season since 2018.

However, the 2014 Cup champion retired from racing at the end of 2023, and with him went one of the team’s largest sponsorship partners in Anheuser-Busch. Also leaving was Aric Almirola, another race-winning elder statesman for the team, and like Harvick, his primary sponsor of Smithfield Foods left with him as well.

It left their respective seats open for late-model racing veteran Josh Berry and young prospect Noah Gragson to fill. However, despite Gragson’s proven talent and Berry’s experience, the beginning of the new season still looked grim for the organization as rumors continued to swirl around the garages of the possible selling of charters and loss of sponsors.

The first 14 races leading up the announcement didn’t help the outlook of the team, either. Throughout the first four months of the Cup season, there were only three top-five results across the board for all four teams, with the best result being third-place finishes for both Berry and Gragson.

The announcement of its closure eventually arrived two days after the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, but it still left some questions unanswered. Who would acquire the charters? Where would the drivers go? What about the crew?

However, there was still an entire season to finish, and those answers would have to be revealed throughout the season while the team tried to end its existence on a high note. One win was all it needed to change the course of the season and springboard the team into the playoffs.

On the Xfinity side, things looked positive. Both Cole Custer and Riley Herbst earned victories in July at Pocono Raceway and Indianapolis Motor Speedway, respectively. It would be their only race victories until the postseason.

In Cup, however, despite moments of brilliance, the summer swing of the series’ season was as unsuccessful as the beginning of it. While Berry earned another third-place result at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, it would be his last top 10 of 2024. For Gragson, only two more top-10 finishes highlighted the rest of his season. With the exception of a fourth-place finish at Nashville Superspeedway, Ryan Preece‘s year remained uneventful as well.

By the time the Cup Series reached the regular-season finale at Darlington Raceway, SHR’s best chances at winning its way into the playoffs seemingly had come and gone. Only a miracle win at the Lady in Black would give the team a chance at saving its final season in existence.

And that’s exactly what it got.

Despite being younger than both Berry and Preece, Chase Briscoe served the role of elder statesman for the team in 2024. The Hoosier was in his fourth year with SHR, more than the other three drivers, and was the only one that had ever earned a win for the team, coming at Phoenix Raceway in 2022.

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So, when he found himself in the front of the field at Darlington Raceway in the closing laps of the Southern 500, it was not unfamiliar territory.

Yet the pressure was almost certainly there, as the No. 14 had to hold off two-time Cup champion Kyle Busch to secure the victory. However, the 29-year-old was undeterred, and he put the No. 14, the flagship number that Tony Stewart piloted when the Hall of Famer started the team 15 years earlier, in victory lane for one last time.

The victory not only awarded the team its last chance at Cup playoff glory, but it also marked the organization’s 70th win in the Cup Series — a list of triumphs that included two other Southern 500s, three Brickyard 400s and one Daytona 500.

Briscoe went on to carry the team’s hopes into the Round of 12 after surviving elimination with two top 10s at Watkins Glen International and Bristol Motor Speedway. He was eliminated after the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, and Preece earned the organization its final Cup top 10 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

On the Xfinity side, however, reigning champion Custer qualified for the series Championship 4 and finished runner-up in the standings. Teammate Herbst, meanwhile, scored the group’s final victory in its final start at Phoenix, a fitting end to the organization, albeit in the lower series.

Despite its closure after only 16 years of operation, SHR leaves behind the story of a team that will likely be at the forefront of many highlight reels in NASCAR’s future.

It’s another team that came and went, but one that certainly left its mark, nonetheless.

Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loudcolumn, co-host of the Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.

Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT


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Phelps is absolutely clueless for sure. 20 million data base lololol they are having trouble getting interested people watching their joke during the season, off season is really a joke. Rumor is Denny has started wetting the bed again over the lawsuit. Last time his girlfriend left him.