Brad Keselowski is my early favorite at Dover this week. (photo courtesy nascar)

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

• The loop data for the past 15 Sprint Cup races (excluding Daytona, Sonoma, Watkins Glen and Talladega);
• the loop data for the past four races;
• the loop data for the past four races at Dover;
• the loop data for the past six races at the other tracks in the Steeps track group (i.e., Bristol, Darlington, Las Vegas and Homestead);
• the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Dover; and
• the practice and qualifying data for past six races at the aforementioned Steeps.

The results:

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