Super sub: David Ragan's 2015 consisted of three teams & two manufacturers
Ordinarily, finishing 27th in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings wouldn't necessarily be something that would be viewed as a positive accomplishment.
But there was absolutely nothing even remotely ordinary about veteran David Ragan's 2015 season, which probably was a good bit stronger than what the numbers indicate at first blush.
Ragan began his season with the small Front Row Motorsports team, finishing a respectable 17th in the Daytona 500. Then things got complicated.
After Kyle Busch broke his right leg and his left foot in a violent crash during the season-opening NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Daytona, Joe Gibbs Racing reached out to Ragan to be Busch's temporary replacement in the No. 18 JGR Toyota.
So for the next nine races, Ragan filled in for Busch, having to learn an all-new-to-him crew and a team he was unfamiliar with as well. Thrust into the situation on short notice, Ragan did the best he could, gamely going at it.
In the nine races with JGR, Ragan had an excellent fifth-place run at Martinsville Speedway and qualified in the top 20 eight times. All things considered, that's pretty good work.
For the spring race at Kansas Speedway, JGR replaced Ragan with young Erik Jones to get him some Cup experience. Instead of returning to Front Row, Ragan moved over to Michael Waltrip Racing to fill in for another ailing driver, in this case Brian Vickers, who was sidelined indefinitely with blood clots.
At the time, it seemed like an excellent opportunity for Ragan to latch on to an established team and upgrade his career. But by mid-summer, team co-owner Rob Kauffman announced that he was bailing out of MWR to become a minority partner in Chip Ganassi's outfit for 2016.
That, in turn, meant MWR was closing and Ragan, like the other 220 or so people employed by MWR, would be out of work by the end of the year. And with the team in its death throes, there was little hope of finding speed in his Toyota as the year went on.
Ragan was always classy when talking about the situation, but it was a hard place to be in week in and week out. So far, he has not announced plans for 2016. Certainly, 2015 didn't the way Ragan hoped it would, but he did all he could under the circumstances.
