Once again, Kevin Harvick is the early favorite, this time at Charlotte. (photo courtesy nascar)

Here are my mid-week driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Charlotte. 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 Charlotte;
• the loop data for the past eight races at the other tracks in the Large Ovals track group (i.e., Fontana, Kansas, Atlanta, Texas, Chicago, Michigan and Kentucky);
• the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Charlotte; and
• the practice and qualifying data for past eight races at the aforementioned Large Ovals.

The results:

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