Elated Noah Gragson Has His Hands Tied as He Leaves Stewart Haas Racing Amidst His Redemption Season

The Stewart-Haas Racing exodus is well underway. After the 15-year-old stellar Cup team announced its untimely demise over a month ago, it left NASCAR baffled. The SHR drivers had their careers hanging in the balance. However, as three of them finally secure their futures, strings of attachment still tug at them. This applies especially to Noah Gragson, who recently announced his Front Row Motorsports entry for 2025 and beyond.

After a slump in reputation and rank last year, Noah Gragson embarked on an arduous path to recovery. And the No. 10 SHR team was there to guide him. As he took a new path, the young star could not help but look back.

Noah Gragson slips an emotional wish

From 2019 to 2023, Noah Gragson had been part of Josh Wise’s heralded driver preparation program. The program provided data and information to drivers about the upcoming races, and Gragson made the most of it. After securing two wins in the Craftsman Truck Series and 13 wins in Xfinity, his full-time Cup debut was a success. But after leaving Wise’s program in 2023, he was left at sea about his racing career. And then, Gragson’s legal penalty (after a racially insensitive post featuring George Floyd), leading to ejection from Legacy Motor Club, only worsened things.

That is when Stewart-Haas Racing extended a helping hand, allowing Noah Gragson to build a strong rapport with Drew Blickensderfer and his team of engineers. By holding meetings regularly and putting their heads together, the team improved drastically. With their sixth-place result at Dover, the team had secured six top-15 finishes, while also securing threeTop-10s till then. This contrasted with Noah Gragson’s one top-15 finish in 21 NASCAR Cup Series starts a season ago. Notably, the crew chief had previously worked with drivers like Michael McDowell and Aric Almirola, among others, and even helped McDowell clinch his first-ever Cup and Daytona 500 win in 2021.

Hence, as SHR wraps up its operations and Noah Gragson makes his way out of the crumbling empire, he is nostalgic. Considering the hard work put into the No. 10 team, Gragson slipped an innocent wish recently. “The 10 team that we have right now at Stewart-Haas have built great relationships with that group – Drew Blickensderfer. All the guys have been awesome. So I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. But if it were up to me, I’d just pick them up and place them over at Front Row.”

But his hands are tied, as he admitted: “There’s obviously a lot of stuff that needs to go into the works.”

Moreover, while expressing worry about his colleagues’ futures, Noah Gragson also acknowledged his excitement to join the No. 34 Ford team, which is about to be vacated by Michael McDowell. “But we do have a great group… I know whoever we end up with will be exciting. And I’ll be pumped up and ready to go to the racetrack every weekend.”

Despite Gragson looking back sadly at his team, his Front Row Motorsports entry truly relieves him. There is one reason for that: Stability.

Gragson is glad to call FRM home

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Finally, Noah Gragson would be able to call a team home! If one thing stands out in the 25-year-old’s racing career so far, it would definitely be unpredictability. Ever since he made his NASCAR entry in 2017, Gragson has been going from one team to another. He drove for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Truck Series, scoring his first win at the Martinsvile Speedway in his debut year.

The next year, he moved to JR Motorsports to drive in the Xfinity Series. Then, in 2022, he had part-time stints at Kaulig Racing and Hendrick Motorsportsin the Cup Series, before entering LMC in 2023. Then, in what seemed reminiscent of a permanent home at the time, Gragson entered SHR as a full-time driver ahead of the 2024 season. However, a cruel twist of fate rendered him homeless yet again!

Perhaps that explains why he’s so thankful for the timely intervention by FRM co-owners Bob Jenkins and Jerry Freeze. “I think just from a young age, I was taught loyalty and loyalty in people. Bob and Jerry have given me an opportunity so I do feel like there’s an opportunity to grow as a leader, as a driver on and off the race track, and have that stability,” the young driver revealed. “The most important thing was to find a place where I could run for multiple years and get my feet underneath me and make it my home,” the driver said in another conversation with The Athletic. However, his path to redemption has definitely been treacherous!

The No. 10 SHR driver talked about the unpredictable situation he faced before his mid-season joining, revealing “I probably let it consume me more than I needed to in the last month-and-a-half, two months. It kind of got to the point where I’m like, ‘Man, I’m thinking about this stuff constantly on what’s going to happen next year and it’s hard for me to focus’ because a lot of my time, effort and energy is more spent talking about what’s going to happen next year and it’s taken away from my on-track performance.” After SHR’s dreadful announcement on May 28, Gragson’s performances had evidently taken a hit.

At the Worldwide Technology Raceway on June 2, the racer had finished with a measly P22. Subsequently, he finished P26 at Sonoma, P16 at Iowa and P27 at New Hampshire. This is in contrast with his performances earlier in the season, where he was even seen clinching P3, P6 and P9 at Talladega, Dover and Kansas, respectively. But, now with a new deal signed with another Ford Tier-1 team, Gragson can finally concentrate on his racecraft. And even FRM general manager Jerry Freeze is optmistic of the winning prospects Noah brings to the team!

“Obviously, his on-track performance speaks for itself with success he’s had in the Truck Series then in the Xfinity Series. We just think he’s a total package to come to Front Row Motorsports and to really build a nice program around him for years to come,” he said.

Hopefully, Noah Gragson will be able to build a strong rapport with his new team, similar to the precious relationship he cultivated at SHR, and finally get his maiden Cup Series win. Or do you think he’ll do it this year itself? Let us know in the comments below!