Up to Speed: How Are the Former Stewart-Haas Racing Drivers Running?

In late May 2024, Stewart-Haas Racing announced that the team would close at the conclusion of the season. Although there had been rumors for several months that the team could downsize, it was shocking to hear that the once-powerful organization would not return to NASCAR in 2025.

SHR won NASCAR Cup Series championships in 2011 and 2014, and the team came close to a few more titles with Kevin Harvick in the years that followed. However, Harvick’s retirement after 2023 and Tony Stewart’s departure from NASCAR team ownership truly signaled the end of an era.

SHR’s impending closure left its four Cup Series drivers in a tight spot. Chase Briscoe, Josh Berry, Noah Gragson, and Ryan Preece had to scramble to find new rides for 2025. Fortunately, all of them reached deals with new Cup Series teams.

Joe Gibbs Racing signed Briscoe to replace the retiring Martin Truex Jr. in the No. 19 Toyota. Berry took over the famed Wood Brothers Racing No. 21 Ford. Gragson moved to a new third team at Front Row Motorsports. Preece’s future was unclear for a long time, but he eventually found a new home with RFK Racing, which expanded to a third team.

Now, the first quarter of the 2025 Cup Series season is complete, and the former SHR drivers have had some time to get acclimated to their new teams. How are they running now? Who has gotten off to the best start in 2025? How many of them reach the playoffs or contend for the championship?

Going into the new year, Briscoe had the most potential to make a splash. He was the only SHR driver to have any Cup Series wins at the end of last season, and he made the postseason in two of his four years driving the No. 14. He was also joining a strong organization in JGR and taking over a team that competed for championships with Truex. The relationship started with a bang as Briscoe won the pole for the Daytona 500 and wheeled his Toyota to a fourth-place finish. Days later, NASCAR hit the No. 19 team with a 100-point penalty for an illegal modification to the rear spoiler assembly. The penalty effectively gave Briscoe negative points to start the season and put the No. 19 team in a serious hole. However, the penalty was later overturned on appeal and the points were restored.

Briscoe is right in the hunt for a playoff spot. He is 13th in points and 14th in the playoff grid, 15 points above the cut line. He has equaled his Daytona 500 finish of fourth on two other occasions, most recently in Sunday’s (April 13) race at Bristol Motor Speedway. What Briscoe and the No. 19 team do not have is race-winning speed. He has led only nine laps this season and none since the second race of the year. The No. 19 team also struggled mightily at Darlington Raceway two weeks ago. Briscoe captured SHR’s final win there last September.

“Whenever you have a run like last week (at Darlington), it can go two different ways,” Briscoe said after Bristol. “You can either just dwell on it, or you can just move on from it. I’m proud of our Bass Pro Shops Toyota team to be able to move on from it. To come here and just put it in the rearview, that was a good, solid day for us. It’s what we needed to do. Just have a clean, solid day and have a good finish.”

Briscoe may be the highest former SHR driver in points, but Berry is off to the best start. He scored his first Cup Series win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last month. Prior to that, the No. 21 team showed great pace at Atlanta Motor Speedway but lost a shot at victory while fighting for a win in the closing laps. Berry was outside the top 30 in points three races into the season, but a top five at Phoenix Raceway and the Las Vegas win quickly turned things around. The victory puts the Wood Brothers on track to make the playoffs for the second year in a row.

Yet just as Berry’s fortunes appeared to be changing, the pendulum swung again. A battery issue ruined a promising run at Martinsville Speedway. The No. 21 crashed at Darlington while running in the top 10. Berry escaped Thunder Valley with a 12th-place result, his best finish since the Las Vegas win. Do not be surprised if the No. 21 is fast in the next Cup Series event at Talladega Superspeedway.

For Gragson and the new FRM No. 4 team, almost nothing has gone right. His only top-10 finish is an eighth-place run at Circuit of the Americas (COTA). He showed some speed in front of his hometown crowd in Las Vegas, but a crash with 25 laps to go spoiled that run. Gragson also got collected in accidents at the Daytona 500, Atlanta and Martinsville Speedway. In virtually all those incidents, he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet the No. 4 team has not run well enough on its good days to make up any of the points it has lost to crashes. As a result, Gragson is 32nd in overall points, ahead of only four other full-time drivers. But there is still a lot of racing left to do in 2025 and plenty of time for Gragson to turn his season around.

Finally, there is Preece, who has had the most surprising start to 2025 of the former SHR drivers. Preece’s deal with RFK did not fully materialize until the offseason and, even with RFK’s improvement over the previous few years, expectations for the new No. 60 team were low. Preece had never finished better than 23rd in points in five full-time seasons of Cup Series racing, and questions lingered about his ability to race at NASCAR’s highest level. Yet after nine races, Preece is 15th in the playoff grid, three above the cut line and very much in the postseason conversation.

Even with the encouraging outlook, it has not been an easy road for the No. 60 team. Preece kicked off the season by flipping his car near the end of the Daytona 500. The team made good strategy plays at COTA and Phoenix but did not get the finishes to show for their efforts. The real breakout came at Las Vegas, Homestead-Miami Speedway, and Martinsville, where Preece scored three consecutive top 10s for the first time in his career. Aside from Berry’s win, Preece may be the biggest positive surprise of 2025 thus far.

So, what should fans watch for from the former SHR drivers? Berry currently is berthed in the playoffs, while Briscoe and Preece have a good chance to get there too. Berry and Preece have exceeded expectations, while Gragson has generally run worse than he did in 2024. Briscoe could still win a race before the postseason if the No. 19 team finds a little more speed. Even Berry could score another win if the No. 21 can shake off the recent bad luck. While none of the former SHR drivers look like championship contenders, it is good to see them all in new rides with another chance to race in the Cup Series in 2025.