ANALYSIS: Potential XFINITY drivers for SHR
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Stewart-Haas Racing’s rapid rate of expansion received another significant add-on Monday with the announcement that it will field a single-car entry in the NASCAR XFINITY Series next season.
To hear Tony Gibson — the team’s most veteran crew chief — tell it, the move serves only to strengthen an already flourishing organization.
“I think there’s a lot of plusses to it,” Gibson, Kurt Busch’s crew chief, said during a break in Day 1 of a two-day organizational test at Watkins Glen International. “Obviously, it’s a lot more work and it’s just something else you’ve got to keep track of as a company, but I think in all, when you weigh out the pros and cons, there’s a lot more pros.”
The main positive to potentially emerge is the creation of a farm system for developmental drivers and crew personnel. On Monday, SHR said that the driver and sponsor lineup for the XFINITY Series campaign would be announced at a later date.
But for Gibson, the benefits extend beyond having a feeder system to cultivate the next star with his or her name on the windshield. It’s about developing all the parts and pieces that boost performance as well.
“You look at all these guys that are real successful on the (Sprint) Cup side like Penske and Gibbs, they learn a lot from their XFINITY programs,” Gibson said. “I know their drivers talk really highly about it, especially not so much on the car side of it. When we go to these race tracks where something’s changed or we’ve got a new tire, it helps those guys learn more about the tire and what it does throughout a run. That part’s a huge gain, but also it lets you experiment and bring up younger crew chiefs and crewmembers and the pit-stop side of it is huge.
“I’ve said the whole time that my guys on the 41 (team), they do way better on Sunday when they do the XFINITY car or trucks on Saturday. It seems to warm them up and they’re in that right frame of mind come Sunday.”
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Stewart-Haas co-owner Gene Haas indicated in Monday’s news release that expanding into the XFINITY ranks had long been in the works. It’s the latest stage in the evolution of the group that he formed with owner-driver Tony Stewart ahead of the 2009 season. In the years following its debut as a modest two-car Sprint Cup outfit, SHR grew to a three-car operation for 2013 and reached the NASCAR-mandated four-car maximum the following year.
But the winds of change have turned gustier of late. Early this year, as Haas was preparing to expand his racing reach a first season in Formula One, SHR announced that it would switch its manufacturer affiliation from Chevrolet to Ford in 2017. Add the birth of an XFINITY Series entry to the mix and it makes for a busy stretch ahead at the team’s Kannapolis, North Carolina, headquarters.
Gibson said it’s a tricky balance to strike, forging ahead with progress while doing the best to buoy this season’s efforts with three of the organization’s four drivers virtually locked into Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoff berths.
“It’s difficult whenever you do that because you want to be the best at both,” Gibson said. “But right now as far as me and the rest of our guys, the four teams we have right now, we’re just focusing strictly on this year. We have a lot of resources there that are working on projects going forward. You have to do that. You have to structure it or you’ll burn everybody out and then you lose them. Keeping the guys focused on what we’ve got to get done this year is more important.”