By all accounts, nothing is finalized yet, but Cole Custer is definitely throwing his name into the mix for the sole NASCAR Cup Series ride at what will soon be called Haas Factory Team.
And logically speaking, he has to be considered a frontrunner too.
Haas Factory Team will be comprised of the one remaining ownership charter leftover from the sale of Stewart-Haas Racing at the end of the season, a new organization that will also retain both Xfinity Series cars, fully under the ownership of just Gene Haas.
The president of that team will be current Stewart-Haas Racing chief operating officer Joe Custer, Cole’s father.
“Yeah, I mean, I’d love to,” Custer said when asked on Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway about his interest in returning to the Cup Series under the Haas Factory Team banner. “You know, that’s what my career has been, I guess is, you know, it’s always tied to – that relationship.
“I think you know what Gene Haas has done in this sport and you know it would be a dream come true to get to run that Cup car. I’ve tried to go back to the Xfinity Series to prove what I can do and try and make the most of it and you just kind of try and hope it all sorts of itself out.”
From a merit standpoint, Custer has done everything he was supposed after returning to the Xfinity Series following a three-year stint in the Cup Series with Stewart-Haas. He claimed the championship with three wins last season in his return to the SHR Xfinity Series program and is the current championship leader, albeit without a win.
So, call it SHR or Haas Factory Team but Custer has always wanted to get back to racing in the Cup Series with a team that Haas owns and that his father oversees.
“Whenever I went back to this series, my goal was always to go back to cup, you know,” Custer said. “So, I’ve been trying to work on what I can do to get myself better over the past year and a half. At the end of the day you try and do as best you can and you hope it all sorts itself out. I really don’t have much to say or anything right now.”
Custer won nine races over three Xfinity Series seasons in his first tenure, won a Cup race at Kentucky in 2020, and took his demotion with great maturity.
“I think the biggest thing is you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror,” Custer said. “You’ve got to figure out the ways that you can be better. You just can’t put it all off to the side and say that you’re good enough and that you don’t need to work on anything. You got to try and work on yourself and try and keep making gains in those areas. Cause at the end of the day, like it’s never always a perfect situation. You got to try and make the most of it and work with your team and try and fix problems. There’s very few weekends except for maybe the weekend when I showed up here 10 years ago, the truck’s just perfect. You’ve got to go out there and really work at it to make it how you want it to be. So you just got to work on those areas to keep that getting better and better.”
The biggest thing he needed to improve on, he says, was his communication with the team.
“I think just knowing how you need to communicate with your people,” he said. “If that isn’t right, it’s just not going to work and you just have to make sure that you can go out there and really work with your team and try and fix problems the best you can. And if you’re not able to talk with your team openly and really fix those problems that’s where it gets tough. So I think that would be the biggest thing that I’d probably learn from.”
For now, Haas Factory Team appears set to remain with Ford Performance and will operate out what is now the Stewart-Haas Racing shop in Kannapolis, North Carolina. It appears increasingly likely that Haas will rent space out of that building for a partner, like Front Row Motorsports, that could strengthen its competition interests.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
