Jeff Gordon tops my early Texas II rankings. (photo courtesy nascar)

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

The results:

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