NASCAR: Who is on the hot seat at Stewart-Haas Racing for 2022?

Stewart-Haas Racing have changed their NASCAR Cup Series driver lineup after five consecutive seasons. But is anybody on the hot seat in 2021?

The 2021 season is the fifth consecutive NASCAR Cup Series season in which Stewart-Haas Racing entered with a different driver lineup than the previous season.

Following two seasons of full-time competition for the organization’s Xfinity Series team, Chase Briscoe was called upon to replace Clint Bowyer behind the wheel of the #14 Ford.

This move came just one year after Cole Custer was called up from Stewart-Haas Racing’s Xfinity Series team to replace Daniel Suarez behind the wheel of the #41 Ford.

Prior to that, Stewart-Haas Racing had been on a three-year streak of driver changes. Team co-owner Tony Stewart retired from driving after 2016, freeing up the #14 Chevrolet-turned-Ford for Bowyer. After 2017, Danica Patrick retired, and Aric Almirola replaced her behind the wheel of the #10 Ford.

Suarez ended up replacing Kurt Busch behind the wheel of the #41 Ford after Busch left for Chip Ganassi Racing following the 2018 season, although that replacement ended up being short-lived with Custer having been called upon as Suarez’s replacement the following year.

So should we expect more of the same from the sport’s largest Ford team by the time the 2021 season ends?

The team haven’t maintained the same quartet since between the 2015 and 2016 seasons, when they had Stewart, Patrick, Busch and Kevin Harvick.

Notably, however, despite the fact that they have changed their driver lineup after each of the last five seasons, they have only ever replaced one driver at a time. They have always taken three of the previous year’s drivers into the next year.

“We’ve had a history of having long-term relationships,” Stewart assured Beyond the Flag.

If a driver change were to come ahead of the 2022 season, who would be on the hot seat?

The obvious answer would be Almirola, but the correct answer appears to be nobody.

“We’re happy with our lineup, we’re happy with our guys,” Stewart continued. “We feel like they’ve all contributed and worked really well together to try to find solutions. This is the lineup I want for next season.”

Almirola carries significant financial backing from Smithfield, which he has had since long before he arrived at Stewart-Haas Racing, and while many believed that he only signed a one-year contract last season, a recent report indicates that this deal was actually a multi-year extension.

The 37-year-old Tampa, Florida native entered the 2021 season seeking his first victory since he led only the final lap at Talladega Superspeedway in October of 2018 when Busch ran out of fuel, and he secured it at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to earn an unlikely playoff berth. The win was his first ever at a track other than a superspeedway.

As for the rest of the team’s lineup, there really isn’t much to discuss silly season-wise .Harvick may be 45 years old, but he is still performing at a high level, having won a career-high nine races in 2020. He has also done a respectable job so far in 2021, despite the organization’s overall struggle to find competitive speed.

The lone constant throughout these five seasons of driver changes signed a multi-year contract extension before the 2020 season to continue driving the #4 Ford through the 2023 season, which would be his 10th straight season of competition for the team.

Custer and Briscoe, meanwhile, are both seen as long-term options. The former was a rookie last year and the latter is a rookie this year, and both are products of Stewart-Haas Racing’s Xfinity Series team with high upside. It is highly unlikely that either one of them will be released at any point in the foreseeable future.

So perhaps a sixth consecutive offseason of change will not take place at Stewart-Haas Racing and they will indeed enter next year with the same driver lineup as they did this year.