2015 Reviews: Stewart-Haas 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. Only three more to go.
Driver (standings in parenthesis): Kevin Harvick (2nd), Kurt Busch (8th), Danica Patrick (24th), Tony Stewart (28th)
Highlights: Harvick was a top-10 machine. He tied Logano for the lead in top 10s with 28 and had the most top-five finishes of any driver with 23. He won at Phoenix (where else?) and Las Vegas earlier in the season and then got his third win of the year at Dover.
The Dover win had to happen to move on in the Chase, too. After poor finishes at Chicago and New Hampshire, Harvick was in a win-and-in scenario and led 355 of 400 laps to win the race and move on in the Chase. Can we use the word “clutch” here?
Busch had speed and he had some consistency. He won at Richmond and Michigan and almost had a third win at Auto Club Speedway. He had 21 top-10 finishes and made the third round of the Chase after he was eliminated in the first round in 2014.
Patrick finished seventh at Martinsville and ninth at Bristol in the spring. And that’s all the top-10 finishes she had. She was 13th after the spring Bristol race and never got any higher in the standings.
Stewart … well, he was sixth at Bristol in the spring, ninth at Pocono and got a 10th-place finish at Martinsville in the fall.
Lowlights: Harvick’s lowlight is probably missing out on back-to-back titles. After you win a championship, it’s a disappointment not to defend it, right? He also would have liked to have turned some of those second-place finishes into wins. Harvick finished second 13 times. 13!
Busch was suspended for the first three races of the season because of a domestic abuse civil court ruling. NASCAR reversed its course after there would be no criminal charges filed against Busch and reinstated him. The win at Richmond came shortly after his reinstatement.
The suspension didn’t cost Busch in the Chase thanks to his excellence and his wins, but it’s fair to think Busch would have gotten another top-10 finish or two if he had run the entire season. And the suspension looks more and more ridiculous in hindsight.
Patrick spent the first half of the season inside the top 20 in points. She didn’t crack the top 20 at all in the second half. She fell to 22nd at Kentucky with a 34th-place finish and, thanks to no more top-10 finishes, didn’t move back.
There were a lot of lowlights for Stewart. The three-time champion couldn’t find the right balance to succeed with the 2015 rules package. He was fast (and, fittingly in 2015, was caught in a wreck) at Kentucky and led 10 laps at Darlington before he got a top-15 finish. Both those races featured what became the 2016 rules package.
Overview: It was a tale of two teams for SHR. Or something.
The 16-spot gap between Busch and Patrick for second and third within the organization is the biggest gap between teammates in the Cup Series. And it’s not even close. The next biggest gap was the nine-spot difference between Aric Almirola (17th) and Sam Hornish Jr. (26th). Hornish is without a job for 2016.
We know that Busch and Harvick will be fast in 2016. It will be a major stunner if they aren’t. But will the gap close between the two and Patrick and Stewart? It’s reasonable to think that Stewart will bounce back with a new crew chief — a former engineer for Harvick’s team — and Patrick will have a new crew chief as well.
But Billy Scott is Patrick’s third crew chief in four full-time Sprint Cup seasons. Can he elevate her to the top 20? Her 24th-place finish in 2015 was a four-spot improvement from 2014. Another four-spot improvement … and yeah, you know where we’re going.
Is the top 20 enough? For Patrick, possibly. For Stewart in his final season, probably not. While many will be wondering if Stewart can replicate the run Jeff Gordon had in 2015, that’s not a realistic expectation for Stewart following the past few seasons. Instead, it’s simply getting to victory lane. And if he does it in the Daytona 500, then the season should be considered a success no matter what happens over the next 35 races.
Previous Reviews: Hendrick Motorsports, Furniture Row Racing, Team Penske, Richard Childress Racing, Chip Ganassi Racing, Michael Waltrip Racing, Richard Petty Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, JTG-Daugherty Racing and Germain Racing, HScott Motorsports, Front Row Motorsports, BK Racing and Tommy Baldwin Racing.
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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!
