Here are my final driver rankings for today’s race at Kansas. I compiled them by crunching the qualifying data from Kansas on Saturday, and then melding it with the historical data (the practice data is screwy this weekend, so I discarded it):
Here are my mid-week driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Kansas. I compiled them by crunching:
The results:
Here are my final driver rankings for this weekend’s race at Dover. I compiled them by crunching the practice and qualifying data from Dover Friday and Saturday, and then melding it with the historical data:
Here are my mid-week driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Kansas. I compiled them by crunching the loop, practice and qualifying data for the 2011 races at Kansas, Kentucky, Chicagoland and Michigan:
Here are my final driver rankings for today’s race at Kansas. I compiled them by crunching the practice and qualifying data fromKansas Friday and Saturday, and then melding it with the loop, practice and qualifying data from the fall 2010 races at Fontana and Kansas, and this spring’s race at Fontana:
Here are my mid-week driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at the big-flat track at Kansas. I compiled them by crunching the loop, practice and qualifying data for the fall 2010 races at Fontana and Kansas, and this spring’s race at Fontana:
Jeff Gordon was fast Friday and Saturday in the prelims and is the favorite for today's race. (Photo Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)
As expected, the Kansas City area enjoyed excellent, consistent weather Friday and Saturday, so the NASCAR Sprint Cup teams got in all three practice sessions and qualifying. To handicap today’s race, I crunched the numbers from those sessions to produce initial rankings, and then I merged those rankings with the historical rankings I produced earlier this week (weighting the results heavily toward the initial rankings).
Finally, I tweaked the results by considering starting positions, 10-lap averages and the opinions of another online expert. I came up with this top five:
In my opinion, Gordon is the clear favorite to win. He was fast in qualifying trim Friday, and fast on both short and long runs in race trim Saturday. Plus, he has an excellent starting position (3rd), and he looks great in the historical data. My money says Gordon wins today and adds some excitement to the Chase. Continue reading
This week the series heads to Kansas City, Kan., for a run on Kansas Speedway. Kansas Speedway is a 1.5-mile, D-shaped track with only 15 degrees of banking in the turns, making it the shallowest of the cookie cutter tracks. These stats place it near the specs of Michigan, Fontana and Chicagoland. The series has already run at the aforementioned tracks this season (including twice at Michigan), so we have substantial historical data (i.e., practice, qualifying and race data) at our disposal this week, and that alone improves this race’s predictability quite a bit. Continue reading
