Mid-Week Rankings: Darlington, 2014

Here are my early driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Darlington. 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 Darlington;
  • the loop data for the past seven races at the other tracks in the Steeps track group (i.e., Bristol, Dover, Homestead and Las Vegas);
  • the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Darlington; and
  • the practice and qualifying data for past seven races at the aforementioned Steeps.

The results:

  1. Kyle Busch
  2. Jimmie Johnson
  3. Matt Kenseth
  4. Jeff Gordon
  5. Denny Hamlin
  6. Kasey Kahne
  7. Brad Keselowski
  8. Joey Logano
  9. Kevin Harvick
  10. Carl Edwards
  11. Kurt Busch
  12. Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
  13. Brian Vickers
  14. Ryan Newman
  15. Clint Bowyer
  16. Martin Truex, Jr.
  17. Jamie McMurray
  18. Greg Biffle
  19. Paul Menard
  20. Tony Stewart
  21. Aric Almirola
  22. Kyle Larson
  23. Marcos Ambrose
  24. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  25. A.J. Allmendinger
  26. Austin Dillon
  27. Casey Mears
  28. David Gilliland
  29. David Ragan
  30. Danica Patrick
  31. Michael Annett
  32. Justin Allgaier
  33. David Reutimann
  34. Travis Kvapil
  35. Cole Whitt
  36. Parker Kligerman
  37. Landon Cassill
  38. Alex Bowman
  39. Dave Blaney
  40. Ryan Truex
  41. Josh Wise
  42. J.J. Yeley
  43. Reed Sorenson
  44. Joe Nemechek
  45. David Stremme