Sorry Cole Custer: Stewart-Haas Racing expects Kurt Busch back for 2019 season

The reunion between Stewart-Haas Racing and Kurt Busch for 2018 may turn out to be a longer commitment than many fans expected.

You could be forgiven for thinking Stewart-Haas Racing and Kurt Busch only found their way back together for the current Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series out of convenience. Despite Busch’s 2017 Daytona 500 victory, the team let his contract expire last year and didn’t seem super pressed to sign him to a new deal.

All along, though, Stewart-Haas Racing downplayed rumors that Busch would land elsewhere, and sure enough, driver and team found their way back together for this season. The lack of urgency, though, suggested that maybe this was the shortest of fixes, and that the No. 41 Ford seat would open up in 2019 for someone else: say, Cole Custer, who drives for SHR in the NASCAR XFINITY Series and would give the overall driver lineup an infusion of youth.

However, that doesn’t seem to be the plan. Stewart-Haas Racing took the somewhat unusual step of releasing a statement to the SportsBusiness Journal (via Jayski) stating that it “fully expects to have Kurt Busch back” for next season. That statement carries more weight than the usual vote of confidence considering it’s pretty darn close to what SHR said this past offseason, and Busch is indeed still around.

This might be reading too much into it, but it also suggests that Monster Energy is going to stay past 2018 as well. The whispers were that the beverage company, currently in the midst of a much bigger decision on whether to remain as Cup Series title sponsor, might cut back its sponsorship at SHR, which might in turn affect whether the team re-signed Busch.

Now the question is whether Busch will back up that confidence with his performance. The 39-year-old hasn’t won since the 2017 season opener but is off to a better start in terms of average finish through six races this season. He’s also historically been a top-10 machine at Texas, where the Cup Series heads after Easter.

Next: Grateful Clint Bowyer says Tony Stewart could have chosen anyone for his ride

As for Custer, his time will come. The California native is just 20 years old and has just one XFINITY Series win (albeit a dominating one last year at Homestead), so keeping him in the fold in the lower series through 2019 wouldn’t be the worst thing ever. There’s also no real reason to shake up the Stewart-Haas Racing lineup when it’s as strong as it’s ever been, so expect it to look exactly the same next year. After that … well, we’ll see.