Early Rankings: Fontana, 2014

Here are my early driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Fontana. 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 (excluding Daytona);
  • the loop data for the past four races at Fontana;
  • the loop data for the past eight races at the other tracks in the Large Ovals track group (i.e., Texas, Charlotte, Atlanta, Kansas, Chicago, Michigan and Kentucky);
  • the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Fontana; 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. Kevin Harvick
  5. Joey Logano
  6. Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
  7. Carl Edwards
  8. Brad Keselowski
  9. Jeff Gordon
  10. Kasey Kahne
  11. Clint Bowyer
  12. Denny Hamlin
  13. Martin Truex, Jr.
  14. Ryan Newman
  15. Greg Biffle
  16. Brian Vickers
  17. Kurt Busch
  18. Paul Menard
  19. Jamie McMurray
  20. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  21. Aric Almirola
  22. Tony Stewart
  23. Marcos Ambrose
  24. A.J. Allmendinger
  25. Austin Dillon
  26. Kyle Larson
  27. Casey Mears
  28. David Ragan
  29. David Reutimann
  30. Danica Patrick
  31. David Gilliland
  32. Michael Annett
  33. Brian Scott
  34. Cole Whitt
  35. Dave Blaney
  36. Travis Kvapil
  37. Justin Allgaier
  38. Landon Cassill
  39. Reed Sorenson
  40. Parker Kligerman
  41. Alex Bowman
  42. Josh Wise
  43. Ryan Truex
  44. Joe Nemechek