Tony Stewart is expected to announce today that he has been granted his release from the final year of his contract at Joe Gibbs Racing. (Geoff Burke/Getty Images Photo)
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Stewart admitted at the time that he’d caught JGR off-guard. “Obviously it’s a shock when they don’t know anything about it.,” said Stewart. “We wanted to be up front and honest with them and tell them, ‘Listen, this is what’s being presented to us.’ They’ve been such great partners all along — there’s not something broke, there’s not something that needs to be fixed and there’s not a problem over there. We felt like the best thing to do was to be up front and honest with them from day one about it and at least let them know what was being offered to us and let them know what was going on and why we were taking longer to discuss our contract with them than what we had planned.”
While JGR President J.D. Gibbs said at first that he would not release Stewart early, the emergence of NASCAR Nationwide Series rookie phenom Joey Logano may have played a deciding factor in the team’s change of heart.
In four Nationwide Series starts since reaching the minimum
age of 18, Logano has one victory, one runner-up finish, three top-10s and two poles. It is not known yet whether Logano will replace Stewart or whether JGR will choose a veteran replacement.
SPEEDtv.com will have much more on this story as it develops.
Tom Jensen is the Senior NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,” and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to
