The market for NASCAR drivers is not one, we’ll admit, that we tend to watch very closely. But this latest development has certainly caught our eye.
Motorsport reports hat Stewart-Haas Racing has dropped Kurt Busch from its lineup in the top-tier Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series next year. This despite winning the flagship Daytona 500 earlier this season.
For those unfamiliar, Busch is one of the leading drivers in NASCAR today. He’s won 29 races, finished an astonishing 252 in the top ten, and won the Cup (then under Nextel sponsorship) in 2004 – the first year of the current Chase playoffs format, which he has made in ten of the past 14 seasons.
And that doesn’t even include his record in the second-tier Xfinity Series or the Camping World Truck Series. He even raced in the 2014 Indianapolis 500, where he finished a very respectable sixth place and was named Rookie of the Year.
The son of former NASCAR driver Tom Busch and older brother of 2015 champion Kyle Busch, Kurt made his Cup debut in 2000 with Roush Racing, switched to Penske in 2006, bounced between a couple of teams in 2012-13, and has been with the front-running Stewart-Haas Racing team since 2014.
To put his dismissal into perspective for F1 fans, it would be like if former champion Kimi Raikkonen had won the Monaco Grand Prix this year and was then let go by Ferrari. Both have came pretty close to happening this year, but Kimi missed the Monaco win and looks like he’ll still keep his seat, while Busch won at Daytona and is being shown the door. Even at 38 (around the same age as Raikkonnen), though, we wouldn’t be surprised to see another team pick up the veteran Busch.
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