2015 Reviews: BK Racing and Tommy Baldwin Racing
Welcome to our 2015 reviews. Instead of going driver-by-driver we’re going to review teams this year. We’re starting from the bottom of the standings and working our way up, so we kick off the series with BK Racing and Tommy Baldwin Racing.
BK Racing
Drivers (standings in parenthesis): Matt DiBenedetto (35th), Jeb Burton (38th), J.J. Yeley (N/A)
Highlights: DiBenedetto ended up with the best average finish of any of the BK Racing drivers at 32.0. Yeley had the team’s best finish of the season when he finished 14th at Talladega in the spring. DiBenedetto finished 18th in that race, two of the three top 20 finishes the team had all season. The other top-20 was Johnny Sauter’s 19th-place finish in the Daytona 500 while driving the car DiBenedetto took over. Burton’s best finish was a 27th place finish at Martinsville in the fall.
Lowlights: Burton didn’t qualify for nine races including the Daytona 500. DiBenedetto missed the second and third races of the season. Both Yeley and Burton had four DNFs in 2015.
Burton was also responsible for a crazy practice crash that Kasey Kahne attempted to replicate the next day at Pocono.
Overview: BK Racing is treading water at the back of the Sprint Cup Series field. But just how deep is that water? The team has run 345 races since 2012 and has one top 10 (Travis Kvapil in 2012). It’s tough to run fast when most of the teams ahead of you have factory funding. Will BK be able to get some Michael Waltrip Racing equipment cheap for 2016 and hope for an incremental upgrade? You have to give the team props for its persistence, but it’s also hard to be optimistic for anything other than the occasional top-20 finish.
Tommy Baldwin Racing
Drivers: Alex Bowman (33rd), Ryan Preece (44th)
Highlights: Much like BK Racing, Bowman’s season highlight was at Talladega in the spring where he finished 16th. It was his only top-20 finish of the year. His next-best finish was at Martinsville in the fall where he finished 22nd. Preece had sponsorship, so he made five starts and brought the team some money.
Lowlights: Bowman failed to qualify for the Daytona 500 and had six DNFs.
Overview: Bowman is back with the team in 2016. Along with BK Racing, this is a team that prospective franchising in NASCAR could help. The value of Baldwin’s team grows significantly if he has a spot on the grid – provided NASCAR’s franchising model applies to a team with one top five and two top-10 finishes in its existence. TBR is a success story; it’s not very often you can see a team with limited resources survive for seven seasons. However, it’s also an example of how lopsided the playing field is in the Sprint Cup Series.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
