I Don’t Have That Income”: Tony Stewart Owns Up NHRA Struggles Weeks After Ripping Into NASCAR

Money and superstar status alone don’t ensure profitability and success for a team on the racetrack. This is something Tony Stewart experienced with his NASCAR team, Stewart Haas Racing. SHR represents one of the biggest names in NASCAR. But they struggled to maintain their success in the Next Gen era, falling to blue chips like Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports. The lack of track success coincided with a loss of interest among sponsors. SHR lost a pair of big-time endorsers when Smithfield bowed out of NASCAR entirely and Anheuser-Busch pinned its hopes on Trackhouse Racing, instead. The organization was also set to lose Ford at the end of the season.NASCAR racing isn’t exactly going through the best phase, with teams fighting tooth and nail to secure sponsorship. As far as the charter system is concerned, it has yet to prove its reliability in helping the owners run their race teams with proper backing and financial aid. This was one of the major reasons why Tony Stewart left NASCAR, as he wasn’t sold on the new charter agreement. He even aimed digs at NASCAR, stating that “The charter agreements are a joke,” but it seems like he ran into similar troubles with his NHRA Top Fuel team.Just like NASCAR, NHRA is dominated by powerhouse racing organizations. Dough Kalitta, the 6-time runner-up and 2023 Top Fuel champion, has the backing of his airline company, Kalitta Charters. Meanwhile, Steve Torrence and his son Billy have the backing of their company, CAPCO Contractors. This is something similar to what we see at the NASCAR level, with Rick Hendrick supporting his team with HendrickCars.com and Roger Penske doing the same with Penske Entertainment.So it has not been easy going for Smoke and his team, TSR Nitro, to compete against the top dogs. Aligning the similarities between the two racing series, Stewart, speaking at Race Industry Week, opined, “Not everybody is a Conard Kalitta and has an air service. You know the Torrance family has Capco. They do great business in Texas. But for me, I’m a professional race car driver that retired from NASCAR, right? I don’t have that income coming in. So anything I’m spending out of my pocket is literally coming out of retirement that I have to live with the rest of my life.”To put things into context, the 3-time Cup Series Champion (and one more as an owner) made a lot of money from his time in NASCAR. His earnings of over $130 million make it a big number, but there are several considerations to be made. Stewart’s SHR team put on a string of poor performances. The lack of business for the team forced it to shut down. Although there is money yet to come with the sale of two of the team’s charters, the deal is on hold until the NASCAR lawsuit clears. To race in the NHRA series, a team, on average, needs at least $3-4 million every single year.Stewart also opened up about not being able to break even after the end of the 2024 season. Now that is a let-off given that he had already decided to depart from his role as an owner at NASCAR. “It has to make sense financially to run these cars and we struggled for the first two seasons as a team owner. We never did even come close to breaking even for this season, but at the end of this season our books look a lot better, and I think we’re finally going to be in a situation where hopefully we can at least break even for the season financially.”