TALLADEGA, Ala. — Presenting a united front, Joe Gibbs Racing officials said Sunday that the status of contract talks with two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart was ongoing.
Late last week, a report broke that Stewart had asked for his release from the final year of his contract with Joe Gibbs Racing in order to pursue “opportunities.”
“We’ve had no conversations of him leaving before the contract is up,” said team president J.D. Gibbs. “There’s too much in there from Home Depot’s standpoint, from our team’s standpoint — there’s too much that we’ve built and invested in that.”
Stewart acknowledged over the weekend that he had gotten offers from some teams, including a couple with options for team ownership. At 36, Stewart has said he won’t be doing this forever, and this might be the first step toward his post-driving career. He also owns his own open-wheel teams under the Tony Stewart Racing banner, Ohio’s Eldora Speedway and stakes in tracks in Paducah, Ky., and Macon, Ill.
“Obviously, it’s a shock, when they don’t know anything about it,” Stewart said of the reaction at JGR. “But we wanted to be up-front and honest with them and say, ‘Listen, this is what’s being presented to us.’
“Like I said, they’ve been such great partners all along that it’s not something — like I said, there’s nothing broke at Joe Gibbs Racing. There’s nothing that needed to be fixed. There wasn’t a problem over there. So we felt like the best thing to do was to be up-front and honest with them from day one about it and at least let them know what was being offered to us and let ’em know what was going on and why we were taking longer to discuss our contract with them than what we had planned.”
Among the potential suitors for Stewart’s services is Haas CNC, which is in ownership flux after team owner Gene Haas went to jail earlier this year.

“It’s pretty exciting as a driver to be in this position. For me, it’s been a huge honor to get these offers, because it kind of gives me a perspective of where I fit in this series, and what the car owners think of me.”
— Tony Stewart

“There’s a couple groups that have thrown some ownership in the mix,” Stewart said. “We didn’t go out and say we’re looking to leave Joe Gibbs Racing. We haven’t made a hundred-percent decision yet on what we’re going to do, but we’re going to look at all the options — and the options are exciting all the way around.
“It’s pretty exciting as a driver to be in this position. For me, it’s been a huge honor to get these offers, because it kind of gives me a perspective of where I fit in this series, and what the car owners think of me.”
One of the main components of the talks is, according to sources, a desire to get back with Chevrolet, which sponsors his open-wheel stable. Stewart has been a GM man for most of his career, and this year switched to Toyota with the rest of JGR.
Another suitor could possibly be Roger Penske. Bob Nardelli, former CEO at The Home Depot and a close friend of Stewart’s, has reportedly been lobbying hard to get Smoke in a Dodge, given his new role as CEO of Chrysler.
J.D. Gibbs called a team meeting at the shop in Huntersville, N.C., last week, when the story first broke.
“We got our guys together at the race shop and said, ‘here’s where we are — we’re going to run as hard as we can the next two years with Tony and hopefully somewhere in there he feels like this is where he wants to retire.’ He’s got a lot of options; most drivers do every time a contract negotiation comes up.
“Our hope is, long-term, when you do that, this is the spot he chooses to retire. The reality is that we only control the next couple years, and we went through this the last time in his last contract negotiation. He had a lot of options then, too, and a lot of things out there.”
Stewart said that he wasn’t in a hurry to bolt JGR, and that it’s just good business to listen. He has history with the team, and he’s weighing options carefully.
“You have to look at that,” he said. “I’ve had a 10-year history with JGR and won two championships and won over 30 races on the Cup side. You don’t just throw all of that out of the equation — you weigh that in very heavily. We went through a situation like this the last time we had contract negotiations, and I actually took a lesser deal to stay where I was at because of the history and our performance with this organization.”