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Nascar

Sprint Cup mid-term report cards: Who is making the grade?

By Tom Jensen FoxSports
Published | Updated
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CHARLOTTE, NC - MAY 29: Martin Truex Jr., driver of the #78 Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Toyota, and Joey Logano, driver of the #22 Shell Pennzoil Ford, lead a pack of cars during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on May 29, 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Jerry Markland/NASCAR via Getty Images)

We've reached the halfway point in the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series regular season, with 13 races in the books and 13 more to go before the playoffs start.

And that means it's time for out mid-term report cards on all of the teams in the top 25 in Sprint Cup driver points.

In other words, if a team has at least one of its drivers in the top 25, then it makes the list. If it doesn't, then it's not included here. And that's not a good thing.

So we'll start with the lowest grades and work our way up.

GRADE: D -- HScott Motorsports. When it was announced that Clint Bowyer would join this team for a year before moving to Stewart-Haas Racing in 2017, the conventional wisdom was that it would get better. It really hasn't.

GRADE: D+ -- Roush Fenway Racing. Of all the grades, this is probably the toughest one to give, because there is absolutely no question that this team is better than it was a year ago. And yet it's top driver in points is Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who is just 18th. Not good enough for a team that once won 15 races in a single season.

GRADE: C -- JTG Daugherty Racing. AJ Allmendinger is just about exactly where you would expect him to be right now, hovering on the edge of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup but not quite there yet. Still, an OK season so far.

GRADE: C -- Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates. Veteran Jamie McMurray is a solid 14th in points, which is pretty good and seven spots ahead ok Kyle Larson, a/k/a Young Money. Larson nearly won Dover and has been running much better lately, but he has six finishes of 29th or worse.

GRADE: C -- Richard Childress Racing. Third-year Austin Dillon is coming into his own and is an excellent 12th in points. Veteran Ryan Newman said recently that he didn't know if he'd be back with the team next year, and Paul Menard's season has been largely forgettable so far.

GRADE: B -- Wood Brothers Racing. Back racing full-time for the first time since 2008, the Wood Brothers have enjoyed success so far with impressive rookie Ryan Blaney, who is 15th in points and showing the maturity of a far more seasoned driver.

GRADE: B -- Hendrick Motorsports. The first of the four-car teams, 2016 has been a mixed bag for the Hendrick squad so far. The good: Jimmie Johnson already has won twice and is third in points, while rookie Chase Elliott (8th in points) has been as talented as advertised. The bad: Kasey Kahne is having another dismal year. The good and bad: Dale Earnhardt Jr. has three second-place finishes already but is just 13th in points.

GRADE: B -- Stewart-Haas Racing. This is team bipolar. Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch are first and second, respectively, in points, largely on the basis of extreme consistency. Harvick hasn't finished worse than 17th all year and Busch has finished in the top 10 in each of the last seven races. The bad news is that Danica Patrick is 24th in points, the same place she ended last year. And Tony Stewart's broken back has limited him to just five starts so far this year.

GRADE: A -- Furniture Row Racing. The switch to Toyota for 2016 proved to be brilliant for Furniture Row. Martin Truex Jr. already has his historic Coca-Cola 600 victory and has led 22.45 percent of the miles run in NASCAR so far this season. That's tops in the series. This team's speed on 1.5-mile tracks makes them a definite championship threat.

GRADE: A -- Team Penske. Brad Keselowski, the 2012 Sprint Cup champion, has won twice already, while Joey Logano won the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race. The Team Penske Fords are just a tick off, speed-wise to the Toyotas, but they are generally pretty good week in and week out.

GRADE: A+ -- Joe Gibbs Racing. Without question, JGR has been the best team in the Cup Series all year long, starting with Denny Hamlin's Daytona 500 victory. JGR has won seven of 13 points races run so far, with Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth all Chase eligible. It's still early in the season, but right now, the road to the championship goes through JGR.