Mears surprised by his options

The 30-year-old has admitted that the lack of results relative to his teammates have been the main reason for his departure from the team after completing only his second season with them.

"At the end of the day, this is a performance-based sport," Mears said. "My uncle (Rick Mears) has always said you've got to put the numbers on the board and that's how you keep your job and keep your ride.

"And unfortunately for a few different reasons we just haven't been able to do that this season. It's kind of funny because I say that now and we still have the whole second half of the year to work on."

Mears moved from the No. 25 team to the No. 5 for this season, hoping to see an improvement in his results after finishing 15th in the championship last year as the only Hendrick driver out of the Chase.

It was believed that last year his team did not have absolute technical parity with the other three Hendrick cars but Mears denies that has had anything to do with his results, especially during this season.

"It's funny to say this now, but more than ever Hendrick Motorsports has got the parity that it needs," Mears added. "What you're finding with these cars is we've got some different stuff throughout the shop, but everybody has the advantage of grabbing a hold of all that."

The Californian says he has been pleasantly surprised by the number of options that he could have available for next year, when he hopes to race for a fifth different team in as many seasons, and also his third different squad at Sprint Cup level.

"Right now there are a lot of things out there, surprisingly," Mears said. "I wasn't even thinking about it. I wasn't thinking about next season. I was thinking oh my God, when I heard the news; I'm thinking there's not going to be anything going on.

"But the more you dig into it; there are a lot of things that are happening for next season. There are a lot of teams that are continuing to grow and add new teams and making changes for next season."

Reigning champion and teammate Jimmie Johnson - who is one of his best friends - claims Mears could be a valuable asset to any rival squad because he considers him to be a great team player.

"He's a great, great teammate so I don't think it would hurt him being a top guy at another team but I really wished it could have worked with us at Hendrick because he's everything that you would want in a teammate," Johnson said.

"He's loyal, dedicated, bites his tongue when he probably shouldn't or doesn't need to. He just really is focused on the overall performance of the team instead of himself. He's a special guy for that."