Early Rankings: Chicagoland, 2014

Jeff Gordon tops my early Chicagoland driver rankings. (photo courtesy nascar)

Jeff Gordon tops my early Chicagoland driver rankings. (photo courtesy nascar)

Here are my early driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Chicagoland. I compiled them by crunching:

  • The loop data for the past 15 Sprint Cup races (excluding Daytona, Talladega, Sonoma and Watkins Glen);
  • the loop data for the past four races;
  • the loop data for the past four races at Chicagoland;
  • the loop data for the past eight races at other tracks in the Large Ovals track group (i.e., Michigan, Kentucky, Fontana, Charlotte, Texas, Atlanta and Kansas);
  • the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Chicagoland; and
  • the practice and qualifying data for past eight races at the aforementioned Large Ovals.

The results:

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