NASCAR mailbag: Why Stewart-Haas Racing signed Aric Almirola over Matt Kenseth

Each week SB Nation’s NASCAR reporter Jordan Bianchi answers your questions about the latest news and happenings within the sport. If you have a future mailbag question, email jordanmbianchi@gmail.com.

I look at the guys who have rides next season and Matt Kenseth is better than at least 20 of them. Are you really telling me that no team wouldn’t want Kenseth driving one of its cars next season? How can it be where a driver who’s still good finds himself on the sidelines?

--Mike

There are few if any team owners who wouldn’t want Kenseth driving for them and couldn’t improve their organizations on and off the track. “I’d love to have Matt in one of our cars. He’d help us a lot in a lot of areas,” a team executive told SB Nation this summer.

Then the same team executive who lauded Kenseth’s virtues added the all important caveat: “But, unless he’s going to come for cheap or bring sponsorship with him, we can’t afford him.”

These comments underscores the current situation where veteran drivers are finding themselves out of favor because of the high contracts they demand. Amid a time when sponsorship is hard to come by for many teams while budgets remain robust, owners have taken steps to save costs with one of the biggest expenditures they’ve trimmed is what they are paying the person behind the wheel. Especially if the performance tradeoff in going with a young driver is minimal compared to what the higher priced veteran produces — such as Joe Gibbs Racing electing to go with 21-year-old Erik Jones over the 45-year-old Kenseth.

Although not necessarily fair, this is the current reality. In many aspects it is no different than how stick-and-ball sports teams manage their rosters where often a veteran players finds himself jettisoned for someone cheaper because the team must get underneath the salary cap. And in this instance Kenseth is essentially a cap casualty.

So Aric Almirola ends up with Stewart-Haas Racing while Kenseth gets shafted. Whatever. Just another sign that NASCAR is in a big trouble when its top stars are pushed out because they don’t have sponsorship. Am I wrong in thinking that if Stewart-Haas really wanted the better driver it should’ve picked Kenseth?

--Chris

All things being equal, Stewart-Haas Racing is best served choosing the perennial title contender Kenseth over Almirola, a driver who has all of one win in 242 Cup Series starts and never finished better the 16th in the season standings.

Except things aren’t equal; both Tony Stewart and Smithfield Foods are strong proponents of Almirola, each believing his results doesn’t accurately correspond to his talent. Not a misguided argument when you consider the 33-year-old has never previously been with a top-flight organization having spent his career largely with middle-class teams.

But while Stewart and Smithfield execs tout Almirola’s ability and say he got this chance strictly on merit, it also cannot be ignored that his five-year stint as a Smithfield spokesman certainly helped sway the company to continue its association with him. Nor the fact that if Kenseth had sponsorship to bring with him he would’ve been in the mix at SHR, Furniture Row Racing, and maybe even Hendrick Motorsports rather than in his current situation where he’s essentially being forced out.

It is the unfortunate byproduct of a sport dependent on sponsorship, compounded by how difficult it has become for many teams to find the necessary funding to remain in existence. In SHR’s case, not only did the No. 10 team lack an anchor sponsor this season so too did Clint Bowyer’s No. 14 team, while Kurt Busch’s No. 41 team was just partially supported.

Signing Almirola fills one of the significant sponsorship gaps. Therefore when the opportunity came to sign Smithfield, SHR couldn’t say no even if it also meant Almirola was part of the package — even if better drivers were available. This was a move more about the bottom-line than anything else. And you cannot fault the team for acting in its best interests even if the decision is unpopular.

Any chance Kenseth comes back next season or is he completely done?

--Shawn

Were an upper echelon team in need of a driver because of injury or underperformance, Kenseth is absolutely on any team owner’s short list of replacements. But he isn’t going to return just because. He’s made that much clear.

For Kenseth to eventually come back will require the right combination of team and situation. One where he feels he can be competitive and challenge for wins. Ending his end career on a high note and not with a whimper like so many greats wrapped up their careers is something Kenseth has stressed is important to him. And it’s unlikely that ideal opportunity will materialize.