Kevin Harvick tops my early Kansas II rankings. (photo courtesy nascar)

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

• The loop data for the past 15 Sprint Cup races (excluding Daytona, Watkins Glen and Sonoma);
• the loop data for the past four races;
• the loop data for the past four races at Kansas;
• 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 Chicagoland);
• the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Kansas; and
• the practice and qualifying data for past eight races at the aforementioned Large Ovals.

The results:

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