Final 2015 Report Cards for NASCAR's Top Stars
Now that we’ve covered the winners and losers from the 2015 NASCAR season and we’ve ranked the biggest moments, it’s time, at long last, to hand out report cards before the drivers head off on school vacation.
A note on grading criteria:
Wins are heavily weighted. (Duh.)
How far each driver advanced in the Chase (every driver on this list had, at one point, yellow spoilers and splitters) plays a factor.
Measured against early and midseason hype, how did they finish?
You get an A-plus if you win the Sprint Cup championship.
Office hours start...now!
Martin Truex Jr.
1 of 10
Season in a Sentence: Finished fourth overall in the Sprint Cup standings and earned one win on the season.
A Closer Look: Martin Truex Jr. drives for a one-car team, Furniture Row Racing, and he performed as well as—and often better than—the four-car teams through the season.
He had eight top fives and 22 top 10s. Looking at 2013 and 2014 combined, Truex earned 20 top 10s and eight top fives. In half as many races, Truex stepped into the big time with a championship-caliber season.
2016 Outlook: If he can parlay this season into next, he will be much like he was this year: a sleeper. But he does need to win more races.
Grade: A, based on reaching Homestead.
Brad Keselowski
2 of 10
Season in a Sentence: Won one race early in the season and reached the Eliminator Round of the Chase.
A Closer Look: In 2014, Brad Keselowski won six races and failed to reach Homestead. He didn’t reach Homestead again, but he wasn’t nearly as formidable. More accurately, Kez couldn’t close in 2015.
He led 1,185 laps on the season and the greatest irony came at Fontana, the race he won, where he led only one lap. He led over 100 laps four times in 2015 and a stunning 312 laps at Texas before relenting to Jimmie Johnson late in that race.
2016 Outlook: Team Penske, with its two cars, is a force. Expect the 2012 Sprint Cup champ to have a bounce-back, multiple-win year.
Grade: B-minus.
Kevin Harvick
3 of 10
Season in a Sentence: Played bridesmaid all season and was the week-to-week best driver for nine months.
A Closer Look: Kevin Harvick tallied 13 runner-up finishes to go along with three wins. He also earned 28 top 10s. Looked at another way, he only finished outside the top 10 eight times all year, and 23 of those top 10s were top fives.
And, yes, he finished second at Homestead and second in the Sprint Cup standings.
He led 2,294 laps and 4,431 over two seasons.
2016 Outlook: Harvick turns 40 on December 8, and is there any reason to think he won’t have another two or three years at this level as his team becomes more efficient as a unit? If he’s not the favorite to win the Sprint Cup next year, he’s the second choice.
Grade: A-plus.
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Dale Earnhardt Jr.
4 of 10
Season in a Sentence: NASCAR’s favorite driver won three races but couldn’t get past the Contender Round of the Chase.
A Closer Look: Dale Earnhardt Jr. owned the plate races—he, along with Joey Logano.
Junior won at Talladega and Daytona, just not the 500 or the Chase cut race. Those two pivotal honors went to Logano.
Earnhardt also won the rain-shortened Phoenix race.
2016 Outlook: Does he have the entire package to win a Sprint Cup? This past year, you could say, was a transition year given it was Greg Ives' first year in the pit box. Expect about the same win output, but maybe more timely wins to advance him deep into the Chase.
Grade: B-plus.
Jimmie Johnson
5 of 10
Season in a Sentence: Was the team to beat…in May.
A Closer Look: Jimmie Johnson won five races in 2015, but an otherwise terrific season is, by all accounts, relegated to a footnote.*
He won the second, seventh, 11th and 13th races of the season, with that latter becoming his 10th at one track—Dover. He didn’t win again until the Chase race at Texas, when he had already been bounced from the Chase in the first round…at Dover.
Given how strong he was early, the performance late affects his grade.
2016 Outlook: The last time Johnson went two years between Sprint Cup titles (2011, 2012), he went out and won it the next year.
The difference now? The new Chase format is far too random. It's too full of chaos to adequately predict if a driver can win.
Grade: B-plus
*See?
Matt Kenseth
6 of 10
Season in a Sentence: A five-win season is subdued because of the Martinsville Incident (MI).
A Closer Look: Turning back the clock, Matt Kenseth won a Cup-high seven races in 2013. He followed that by winning as many races as Danica Patrick in 2014. He followed that by winning five over the course of the year.
And he did it in the beginning (Bristol, 1), middle (Pocono, 1, Michigan, 2) and late (Richmond 2, Loudon, 2).
He was all set to win at Kansas, 2, until, well, you know.* This set up his revenge against Joey Logano at Martinsville where Kenseth flew from the corner of the ring and pinned Logano into the fence.
A two-race suspension followed what marred an otherwise terrific rebound year for Kenseth.
2016 Outlook: Joe Gibbs Racing is flying high after winning 14 races. It’s unrealistic to expect five wins from Kenseth, but another year in the Chase feels right.
Grade: A
*For those who don’t know, Logano spun out Kenseth effectively eliminating Kenseth from advancing in the Chase.
Carl Edwards
7 of 10
Season in a Sentence: Won two of the most prestigious races on the calendar: the Southern 500 and the Coca-Cola 600.
A Closer Look: The season started out slow for Carl Edwards, who joined Joe Gibbs Racing for the first time and drove like someone desperate to prove he belonged.
With an average start of 9.1 and an average finish of 14, he clearly didn't have the right degree of staying power to compete every week.
Nearly half (seven) of his top 10s (15) were top fives. So when he was on, he was on.
2016 Outlook: Getting that first-season-with-a-new-team jitters out of the way will serve him well and could translate into a berth at Homestead.
Grade: B
Jeff Gordon
8 of 10
Season in a Sentence: Yes, he made it to Homestead and finished third in the standings, but he didn’t have what you would call, a great season.
A Closer Look: It’s hard to denigrate a driver who (somehow) made it to Homestead. But when you look at Jeff Gordon's performance all year from week to week, it was one of his worst seasons in decades.
Yes, decades.
He led 265 laps all season, his lowest output since 1993 when he led 230. Despite that, his experience earned him 21 top 10s and five top fives.
His experience at Martinsville (nine wins) is what made the Chase feel sunny amid a whole slew of chaos.
It allowed the Farewell Season to keep going up until the very end. But it’s hard to argue that he had a great season as compared to how other drivers performed.
This is a tough one to grade.
2016 Outlook: Probably puts on about 10-15 pounds, gets a tan, works on a book titled What a Ride!*
Grade: B
*I hope not.
Joey Logano
9 of 10
Season in a Sentence: Was the hottest driver in the Chase and won three of his six races in one round of the playoffs, yet didn’t make it to Homestead. Also won the Daytona 500.
A Closer Look: Joey Logano's 22 top fives were surpassed only by Harvick. On top of that, Logano earned six poles.
What his season will always be remembered for was how he spun out Matt Kenseth at Kansas. Then while leading at Martinsville, Logano felt the business end of Kenseth’s splitter.
A tire issue six laps into the Texas race postponed any chance the No. 22 had of advancing to Homestead, and Logano didn’t have a strong-enough car at Phoenix to get to the front.
His 11 wins over the past two years are tops in NASCAR.
2016 Outlook: Definitely a favorite to win the Sprint Cup. He went to Homestead in 2014, was arguably the car to beat in 2015 before the MI and should contend yet again.
Grade: A-plus.
Kyle Busch
10 of 10
Season in a Sentence: Missed 11 races due to injury; won five races and the Sprint Cup.
A Closer Look: A commenter on an earlier slideshow mentioned that despite Kyle Busch only running 25 races all year and getting that waiver from NASCAR to qualify him for the Chase, his team still competed for 36 races.*
I thought that was a good point. So when Busch got back behind the wheel after 11 weeks of intense rehabilitation, he started picking off drivers and then he started winning…a lot. He won three in a row, four out of five and was the steadiest, un-Rowdy-like car throughout the Chase.
Then in the final restart at Homestead with Keselowski down on the inside, Busch made them all eat Crispy M&Ms and drove off to victory.
2016 Outlook: Busch is one of the most talented drivers in the sport, and renewed focus at home and on the track makes him a contender, (think Harvick after Harvick became a dad), yet again.
Grade: A-plus.
*This comment was in response to someone who thought Busch winning the championship was a sham since he didn’t drive the entire season.
All stats provided by Racing-Reference.
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