The most immediate question – who would drive for the team – was cleared up last weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway when current Stewart-Haas Racing Xfinity Series driver Cole Custer was named driver of the No. 41 Cup team beginning next season.
The move wasn’t a surprise considering Custer – the reigning Xfinity Series champion – has previously driven for Haas in Cup and his father, Joe, will manage the HFT operation.
The younger Custer has won in all three NASCAR national series – Cup, Xfinity and Trucks – and certainly provides the new Cup program with a talent behind the wheel.
An uphill climb for a single-car team
Perhaps the more important question for HFT is can it do what other single-car operations have historically struggled at – consistently competing for wins?
Haas never won a Cup race in his first foray into the series with Haas CNC Racing. It wasn’t until after NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart was added as a co-owner of the rebranded SHR that the team took a big step forward in competitiveness and began to win races and championships.
Certainly, there is no reason to believe Haas has any intentions of returning to an “also ran” organization.
In fact, it would be counterproductive to his intentions of promoting his own companies on the car. Why invest millions into something that wouldn’t draw attention and be front and center of the sport’s media spotlight?
Joe Custer said his directive is to build a team that “can compete for wins a championship” and he has already secured several pieces to complete that puzzle.
HFT has entered into a technical alliance in 2025 with RFK Racing, which has undergone a remarkable uptick in performance in the last two seasons. HFT will also continue its relationship with Ford Performance.
“Taking all the resources that we bring to the table and combining it with their success and the resources they have, we look forward to RFK and Haas Factory Team competing for wins and championships shoulder to shoulder,” Custer said.
“Along with Ford as a partner, we’re lacking no resources going into next year. People-wise, human capital, I’m happy to say we’re well on the way there to putting together the team capable of competing for wins.
“We’re focused on everything related to human capital, from the pit crew to engineering resources. So, we won’t have any excuses going into next year. We’ve got the driver, we’ve got the team, we’ve got the relationship, we’ve got the OEM.”
"Gene [Haas] is committed"
The lingering question – one that won’t be answered until the team hits the track in 2025 – is whether HFT can produce the results?
Many single-car operations in recent decades have not fared well in competitiveness but the introduction of the Next Gen car in the 2022 season may have made the pathway to success a bit easier.
Teams now purchase virtually the entire car from single-source suppliers rather than spending millions engineering their own parts and pieces, which was an advantage of larger and more financially stable organizations.
The separation between teams seems to have become smaller and more refined, focused more on areas like individual driving characteristics, pits crews and strategy calls.
“It's quite a bit different for sure,” Joe Custer said about beginning this venture in the Next Gen era. “The resources necessary are different. Gene is committed to it. I think the future is more things like software development, sim, a different set of tools in the toolbox.
“We can check the box on the physical parts and pieces and capital investment that we had and the successes we enjoyed at Stewart-Haas were using a different set of tools than the NextGen is offering.
“So candidly, we’re leaning on Brad (Keselowski) and his group at RFK to add to what our knowledge base is and help us evolve. Strategically, we there’s resources that we can offer that can make their program stronger and vice versa.”
Time will tell whether that’s the case.
But Cole Custer, for one, has no intentions of squandering another shot at competing in the Cup Series and believes HFT can help his career thrive.
“At the end of the day, every single driver in the Cup Series can probably go out there and go fast. But it’s a matter of how you consistently get that speed and how you can work with your team to get the feel that you need in the car consistently,” he said.
“I think being able to have those skills more polished now, and I think, just like my dad said, having the resources to go out there and compete with the best out there, I’m really excited.
“I think we can do some great things.”
