2015 Reviews: Joe Gibbs 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): Kyle Busch (1st), Carl Edwards (5th), Denny Hamlin (9th), Matt Kenseth (15th)
Highlights: The team’s first Sprint Cup Series title since Tony Stewart won in 2005. Busch returned from missing the first 11 races of the year and beat Kevin Harvick over a late-lap sprint in the season’s final race for the title. He had five wins and 16 top-five finishes in his 25 races. While there are some that disavow Busch’s title because he missed nearly a third of the season, his statistics make him a worthy champion. And even more so when you extrapolate them out to a full season.
Edwards garnered the forgettable honor of being the highest driver in the Chase that didn’t make the final four. He scored wins in two of the season’s biggest races (Coca-Cola 600, Southern 500) and was spending the entire season happy he wasn’t still at Roush Fenway Racing. Greg Biffle was the team’s highest-ranking driver and he was 20th.
Hamlin won the first race of the Chase and got a pass to the second round. He also won in the spring at Martinsville and his 14 top-five finishes tied him for fourth on the circuit.
Kenseth tied Jeff Gordon for the series lead in pole positions with four and, much more importantly, had five wins as well. Kenseth took home victories at Bristol, Pocono, Michigan, Richmond and won the week after Hamlin in the Chase. But, much like Hamlin, the third round was not too kind to him.
Lowlights: You know what Busch’s lowlight is – his wreck at Daytona in the Xfinity Series. While you can argue that the recovery process from his broken leg and broken foot made him a better driver (and combined with the birth of his son, helped put life in perspective), it’s still a little tough to focus only on the positive in such a severe accident.
Edwards simply didn’t have the speed his three teammates did. The win in the 600 was a strategy play and the Southern 500 win came with NASCAR’s experimental rules package. His 15 top-10 finishes were the fewest of all the JGR drivers and the team went ahead with a crew chief swap for the 2016 season. Dave Rogers, formerly Hamlin’s crew chief, will be Edwards’ new crew chief.
Hamlin’s new crew chief will be Mike Wheeler, a former team engineer who has been Hamlin’s interim crew chief before. Hamlin was eliminated in the second round of the Chase thanks in part to a faulty roof hatch at Talladega. Hamlin was put laps down because of the problem and ended up finishing 37th after getting caught up in a crash. Oh, he also tore his ACL with less than two weeks to go before the Chase.
Kenseth … yeah, yeah, yeah. After spinning off Joey Logano’s bumper at Kansas, Kenseth ultimately missed out on advancing past the second round. And then he went and got revenge on Logano at Martinsville, an act that led to a two-race suspension. But much like Busch’s injuries, you knew that already. We don’t need to go over this again.
Overview: An eventful year, eh?
JGR led the Cup Series in wins with 14. Kenseth broke a winless streak when he went to victory lane at Bristol. Busch had the season of his life after it looked like his title chances had disappeared before they even began. Hamlin remained one of the series’ best drivers and Edwards merged seamlessly into the team. There was no performance dropoff with the expansion to four full-time teams.
The team won in all three rules packages too. Busch and Kenseth won the races where NASCAR tried the high-drag package to no avail and Busch and Edwards won the series’ two low-downforce races.
Given that the low-downforce rules are in effect for 2016, it’s hard to forecast a dropoff for JGR. Edwards should have more speed and it’s easy to see how all four drivers get to victory lane and subsequently the Chase.
Hell, the team may only get stronger. You can almost call it a five-car team now that it has a technical alliance with Furniture Row Racing and Martin Truex Jr. Remember, Truex was in the final round of the Chase in 2015.
Here’s where it gets a little dicey. After you win the title and have all four of your teams make the Chase, the expectations are sky high for the next season. Anything less than a title and four Chase berths can be considered a disappointment. Will JGR repeat? The team’s chances are probably better than anyone else’s. But as we all know, the season can quickly and quirkily change. The team’s title defense should be a fun one.
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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!
