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Tony Stewart is taking one of his biggest risks in a racing career full of them.
Next season, the 37-year-old is leaving the competitive comfort of that orange No. 20 Home Depot car that he has driven for a decade at Joe Gibbs Racing. He has won two NASCAR Cup series championships and become a top driver with that color scheme and number. He has worked with crew chief Greg Zipadelli for his entire 10 years at JGR, the longest-running such relationship in the Cup garage.
But the lure of running his own show and starting the next phase of his racing career led Stewart to leave all that behind. He’ll become a driver and co-owner of Haas CNC Racing, which will be renamed Stewart Haas Racing. It didn’t hurt that he was essentially given 50 percent control of the team in return for his name, talent and ability to secure sponsorship. That’s a rare offer for a driver and one Stewart couldn’t turn down.
Stewart said he looks at current owners who were drivers, like Richard Childress and Richard Petty, and wants that kind of legacy.
“To put my name in the record books as a car owner was important to me,” Stewart said at Chicagoland Speedway.
It’s a major change for one of the sport’s biggest names. And it’s a huge risk.
“There’s no guarantees that this is going to be successful,” Stewart said. “But after sitting down and evaluating what the potential of this team is, I wouldn’t have made this decision if I didn’t think it would be successful and if I didn’t think it had the potential to be great.”
Stewart will be given a 50 percent ownership stake in the team, which will be renamed Stewart-Haas Racing. The two-car team currently fields the No. 66 car for Scott Riggs and the No. 70 car for Jason Leffler, and both cars are outside the top 35 in owners points going into Saturday’s race at Chicagoland Speedway.
“I wondered how it was going to feel,” Stewart said. “I wondered how everybody was going to react.”
But Stewart said after he spoke, several employees stood in line to congratulate him.
“We could never be mad or hold that against him,” said Stewart’s longtime crew chief, Greg Zipadelli. “His success, our success as a group, would not be possible without him.”
Stewart said the hardest part about his decision to leave was the fact that Zipadelli isn’t coming with him. Zipadelli will stay with Gibbs, and may end up being paired with 18-year-old racing phenomenon Joey Logano on the No. 20 team next year.
The move also means “I can still be involved heavily in NASCAR” after his driving days are over, Stewart said. “It’s hard just to walk away from this sport.”
Stewart-Haas is looking at “a big list of drivers” who might pilot the team’s second car next year, along with potential new sponsors.
Ryan Newman of Penske Racing, this year’s Daytona 500 winner, is considered a strong candidate to join Stewart next season.
Many owner/drivers in NASCAR have struggled in the past, and Stewart was asked whether he could buck the trend.
“There are no guarantees that this is going to be successful,” he said but added that he hoped the team would “be competitive right away. We’re going to do everything we can to make it successful.”
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