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:

1. Jimmie Johnson
2. Matt Kenseth
3. Kyle Busch
4. Kasey Kahne
5. Greg Biffle
6. Brad Keselowski
7. Clint Bowyer
8. Carl Edwards
9. Martin Truex Jr.
10. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
11. Mark Martin
12. Jeff Gordon
13. Kevin Harvick
14. Joey Logano
15. Tony Stewart
16. Paul Menard
17. Brian Vickers
18. Ryan Newman
19. Marcos Ambrose
20. Kurt Busch
21. Aric Almirola
22. Jamie McMurray
23. Trevor Bayne
24. Juan Pablo Montoya
25. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
26. Jeff Burton
27. David Ragan
28. Casey Mears
29. Austin Dillon
30. Bobby Labonte
31. Landon Cassill
32. Danica Patrick
33. Travis Kvapil
34. David Gilliland
35. David Reutimann
36. David Stremme
37. Timmy Hill
38. Dave Blaney
39. Michael McDowell
40. Scott Speed
41. J.J. Yeley
42. Joe Nemechek
43. Josh Wise
44. Mike Bliss
45. Scott Riggs