One sweet ride: Larry Mac looks at the first 16 races of 2015
Sunday's race at Sonoma Raceway marked our final FOX NASCAR broadcast of the 2015 season. As I mentioned as we were going off the air, the competition is so tight in our sport right now that in these first 16 races this year, and we've already had 11 different winners. That's pretty remarkable.
I think Sunday's win was really special for a number of reasons. One of those that sticks out to be is Kyle has now joined his brother in Victory Lane in 2015 and it wasn't that long ago that a lot of folks probably didn't think it would happen for either this year. Kurt missed the first three races of 2015 because of off-track legal issues, and now here he is already a two-time winner in 2015.
His younger brother Kyle's story is even more remarkable, if that is possible. Think about it for a second. Four months ago Kyle was in a vicious crash at Daytona, literally the day before the NASCAR Sprint Cup season officially began. He had to have surgery on one ankle and surgery on his other leg. Now Kyle has won a race in the XFINITY Series and the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Those two storylines alone are pretty unbelievable.
Think about Kyle's car owner, Joe Gibbs. Last year the organization only won two races the entire year. Now they have four wins and three of their four drivers are already locked in the 2015 Chase, with Busch one step closer to being included. That's a pretty gigantic turnaround in a year's time.
Probably the best story of the year continues to be Martin Truex Jr. in the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing car. Now sure, he didn't have a very good day Sunday at Sonoma, but that is was just a small bump in the road to where that bunch was last year at this time. Remember, they only had five top-10 finishes in all of 2014, but already this year they are second in the points, have 14 top-10 finishes in only 16 races so far and even bigger than that, they have been to Victory Lane.
To me the season has flown by. It just seemed like yesterday that we were packing up to head to Daytona for Speedweeks, but here we are with 16 races in the books and handing the baton over to the other next work to finish off the 2015 season.
Furniture Row Racing
