Stewart-Haas demise might ignite NASCAR’s ongoing charter feud
Start your valuations, racers.
The 2024 NASCAR season has officially entered the “interesting times” phase, and it has nothing to do with what transpires on the racetrack, despite months of being under a caution flag. Rather, it’s all about the people in the Cup Series garage figuring out who they really are, who everyone else really is, and, most importantly, how much the teams really deserve.
Take it from me, please. “Charter truth is going to be out there now,” a NASCAR team executive told me recently. Emotions are going to suffer. Considering that nobody genuinely wants to hear their true worth. It’s never as much as you think, unless you’re Jeff Bezos.”
Charter truth, ah.
Usually, in an election year, I steer clear of the conversation about NASCAR team charters just like I steer clear of friends and family on Facebook. My eyes glaze over at the mere mention of charters. Charters, however, are no longer just a topic. Since the announcement last month that Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), an organization with two Cup titles, will be closing its doors after this season takes its final checkered flag at Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 10, they have become the— all caps THE— topic.
Still, only part of the mystery surrounds the actual charters. The meaning behind them and the leverage they offer or do not offer in a tug-of-war will ultimately determine NASCAR’s future course.
It was not shocking to hear about the sale. Gene Haas has been preoccupied with his Formula One endeavors for some time, and Tony Stewart—who is currently an NHRA drag racer—has been vocal in recent months about his dislike of running a NASCAR team. That does not lessen the sadness of SHR’s closure. Many decent people, the NASCAR lifers, are now struggling to find employment in 2025 and beyond.
However, the extremely interesting phase of determining what comes next and what that implies has begun as the initial shock of the May 28 announcement starts to wear off. It also has great significance.
Stewart-Haas is a charter member of the NASCAR charter group, which is made up of the teams that were initially given 36 charters, distributed among 15 teams, in 2016 in exchange for what is effectively a franchise tag for each full-time car they field in the Cup Series. Four charters are owned by SHR. For the time being. It was no secret that, as their interest in NASCAR dwindled, Haas and Stewart had been shopping those highly sought-after charters to teams that were already in the game and wanted to add more players, as well as long-running single-car teams that wanted to get the charters that they had been denied in 2016 for whatever reason, and outsiders who wanted to get into NASCAR.
The original purpose of charters was all of the aforementioned reasons. to add value where none previously existed. having, after seven decades of teams rolling the financial dice, a theoretical stake in the success of the stock car racing industry as a whole.
