Team owner Rick Hendrick confirmed that driver Kasey Kahne will be joining Hendrick Motorsports for the 2012 Sprint Cup season.The Hendrick plan, although not finalized, would place Kahne in the No. 5 cars, currently driven by Mark Martin, in 2012 as Martin’s contract with Hendrick expires at the end of 2011.
Kahne has not been happy in his current situation in Petty Motorsports amd has expressed his will not to renew his contract for the 2011 season. However, as each NASCAR team is limited in 4 cars lineup there is no available slot for Kahne. Martin is committed to the team through 2011, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, who have eight Sprint Cup titles between them, are in long-term contracts and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is in the third year of a five-year deal with Hendrick.
"Determining the next step in my career has been an important process, and I’m excited and relieved to have the decision made and announced. Now it’s my responsibility to put all of my energy into winning races and having a successful 2010 with my current team and our sponsors."
Conventional wisdom is that he moves over to Stewart-Haas Racing, a team with strong ties to Rick Hendrick personally and Hendrick Motorsports as well. It is already known that Rick played a huge, behind the scenes, role in putting together the deal and form SHR in the first place, helping Tony Stewart became 50 percent owner of the team in late 2008.
SHR gets its engines and chassis from Hendrick and the team has the capacity to add a third car. And in less than one-and-a-half years, SHR has established itself as a championship-caliber team.
To make such a move, though, logic would dictate that the team would want to keep three cars permanently. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense for SHR to make a bunch of new hires to campaign Kahne’s car for a single season and then go back to being a two-car team.
There is also no clear indication about the future plans of Budweiser, Kahne’s sponsor. Although the brewery has been a Hendrick sponsor in the past, would a sponsor sign a multi-year deal with SHR, knowing they’d only have the eminently marketable Kahne in the car for a single season? Possible, but not likely.
From the Hendrick side, team owner Rick Hendrick is one of the most influential people in the U.S. racing world, and certainly is at the top of the General Motors pecking order. He could probably easily cut a deal with another Chevrolet team to get Kahne a one-year ride.
If Kahne can bring significant sponsorship and Hendrick provid state-of-the-art cars, motors and technical support, even a small, independent team may run Kahne for a year. In that case Kahne would owe much more than his salary to Rick Hendrick and surely he has to prove his racing talent through 2012 and beyond.
