Today’s post goes up in honor of my sister Mandy Henson, who died yesterday. She was a enthusiastic, dyed-in-the-wool Dale Jr. fan from the time he began running in the Sprint Cup. Here’s hoping the 88 can recapture a little Texas magic this weekend.
Here are my early driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Texas. I compiled them by crunching:
- The loop data for the past 15 Sprint Cup races (excluding Daytona and Talladega);
- the loop data for the past four races;
- the loop data for the past four races at Texas;
- the loop data for the past eight races at the other tracks in the Large Ovals track group (i.e., Fontana, Charlotte, Atlanta, Kansas, Chicago, Michigan and Kentucky);
- the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Texas; and
- the practice and qualifying data for past eight races at the aforementioned Large Ovals.
The results:
- Jimmie Johnson
- Matt Kenseth
- Kyle Busch
- Kasey Kahne
- Greg Biffle
- Brad Keselowski
- Clint Bowyer
- Carl Edwards
- Martin Truex Jr.
- Dale Earnhardt Jr.
- Mark Martin
- Jeff Gordon
- Kevin Harvick
- Joey Logano
- Tony Stewart
- Paul Menard
- Brian Vickers
- Ryan Newman
- Marcos Ambrose
- Kurt Busch
- Aric Almirola
- Jamie McMurray
- Trevor Bayne
- Juan Pablo Montoya
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Jeff Burton
- David Ragan
- Casey Mears
- Austin Dillon
- Bobby Labonte
- Landon Cassill
- Danica Patrick
- Travis Kvapil
- David Gilliland
- David Reutimann
- David Stremme
- Timmy Hill
- Dave Blaney
- Michael McDowell
- Scott Speed
- J.J. Yeley
- Joe Nemechek
- Josh Wise
- Mike Bliss
- Scott Riggs
Sorry to hear about your loss.
Tx Bynum!
I updated these early rankings to reflect the fact A.J. Allmendinger is out and Austin Dillon is in.