At Darlington, Chase Briscoe brought Stewart-Haas Racing their 34th win with Ford Performance as the dedicated manufacturer. And with that, the Blue Ovals will have six Mustangs battling it out for the ultimate prize in the 2024 NASCAR Playoffs. That is quite ironic, considering the ‘Dark Horses’ went winless until Brad Keselowski of RFK broke the slump with a win at none other than Darlington in Race 13 of the 2024 calendar. Since that opportune Goodyear 400 in May, the tables have turned on Chevy and Toyota’s initial dominance.

However, in the foreground of Ford losing a key partner with SHR shutting down next season, Denny Hamlin ponders exactly what the dynamics have been like for someone like Chase Briscoe. A driver who’s set to race under a new manufacturer with Joe Gibbs Racing in 2025.

Denny Hamlin contemplates the data-sharing ethics of Ford Performance

The 2025 silly season started with a bang after Michael McDowell’s switch from Front Row Motorsports, a Ford Performance team, to Chevy-backed Kaulig Racing, made headlines early in May. This mid-season move has birthed more than a few data-sharing problems for McDowell. But only a few days later, the entire 2025 season received a massive jolt when SHR announced its foreclosure on the 28th. Around that time, Austin Cindric became the third Mustang driver to win a race in the present year at the WWT Raceway for Tier 1 partner, Team Penske.

All three drivers from Team Penske have won a race this season, effectively locking themselves into the playoffs. Contrarily, Briscoe’s SHR teammates are busy prepping for another place to call home in 2025, with no wins to their name. This makes many speculate about what has gone wrong for a former Tier 1 partner of Ford Performance in NASCAR. Denny Hamlin is just one of those many, and he put the question forward on the September 2 edition of his pod, Actions Detrimental. In his words, “If you have an agreement with someone through the end, say the term years through the end of 2024, don’t you have to live up to that obligation until that time?” 

“Or can you say, ‘Oh, you’re going somewhere else? I’m stopping that information now.’ I’m just thinking out loud here,” stated Denny Hamlin. He reiterated his original inquiry for a better understanding to co-host Jared Allen one last time: “How’re the teams in such a precarious spot where they can have the information they agreed to be taken away before the season ends?”

To answer that question, Hamlin conferred, “I mean. You would think so, right? You know, with the manufacturers, they have so much control kind of over the race teams and kind of what they do, and what they get, that certainly you know no manufacturer wants their information shared to any other teams. No doubt about that.”

“But yeah, I just was thinking out loud of like, wouldn’t that be a breach of a contract if you don’t give the information you agreed to give?” – inquired Hamlin rhetorically.

Elaborating further, he opined, “Maybe they get it for the playoffs now ‘cause Ford now has the most cars in the Playoffs of any other manufacturer.” 6 Mustangs have found themselves in the 16-driver post-season field, to be exact. Hence, Allen made a note of Briscoe’s emphatic victory for SHR’s alliance with Ford and agreed with Denny Hamlin. He followed through and asked his co-host, “Well, didn’t they win all 3 championships last year?” Hamlin replied, “They did, and in a very, very bad and off year, you know, by their standards” as if to dispel the underdog narrative that was pushed on Ford Performance cars during that winless streak earlier.

Sure, some could claim these discussions coming from a TRD driver might look like the opinions of a rival from the outside looking in. However, SHR insider Greg Zipadelli provided a much better insight into how things have been for the team in a recent interview.

Insider revelations: The impact of an information cut-off

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2025 would’ve been a year of renewal for Stewart-Haas in a hypothetical parallel universe. Their contract with Ford Performance would have expired at the end of this year. This would’ve likely spurred the ownership to make some notable changes next year, potentially a manufacturer switch since we’re talking about the imaginary. Instead, the entire team and all its 300+ employees were suddenly in the dark, reassessing their resumes on a cold, unrelenting night in May, thanks to the devastating news of SHR’s permanent liquidation.

But fate works strangely in the high-speed theatre of NASCAR. And after claiming that last spot in the playoff field, Chase Briscoe gave all those people something to cheer about, even warranting a call from Tony Stewart himself! It is only prophetic that this win would end up being the Blue Ovals’ 735th win in NASCAR’s premier-most level. Briscoe also won his first-ever Southern 500 in Smoke’s former #14 car this past Sunday and became the sixth driver entering the Round of 16, with a little help from NASCAR’s ‘win-and-you’re-in’ playoff format. The same one that allowed Harrison Burton to become the fifth Ford driver after winning at Daytona the week prior.

But Tony Stewart’s 2x championship-winning crew chief and potentially SHR’s last competition director, Greg Zipadelli, outlined the harrowing circumstances plaguing the race team with an impending shutdown in the waiting. In an interview with Matt Weaver earlier, ‘Zippy’ said, “Ford is, you know, cutting off our information. I have guys here at the track who come to the tracks. Their laptops don’t work.”

Indeed, this throws a huge wrench into the plans of drivers in the present season. If the OEMs decide to pull the needful information from a race team aiming to win a certain race, one could even call it base-level race manipulation in simple words.

Adding to Zipadelli’s claims, Michael McDowell had made an interesting note to Bob Pockrass in a July interview. When asked if he’s been receiving lesser data at FRM after the Spire announcement., McDowell said, “I feel like (we receive) maybe 10% of the information. I mean, It’s been tough. There’s no doubt about it. And it’s not just one thing, or one person or one entity, right? There’s a lot of moving parts and a lot of factors.”

The #34 is also winless this season. And barring a couple of Busch Light pole awards, there has not been a lot to look forward to in 2024 for McDowell’s advances. Therefore, Denny Hamlin’s observations certainly hold its weight. But should the OEMs even be allowed to exercise this kind of power in the probable future?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.