Greg Biffle tops my early Daytona 500 rankings.
Here are my early driver rankings for this week’s race at Daytona. I compiled them by crunching the loop data for the past four plate races, and taking a brief look at the qualifying data from last year’s Daytona 500 (because it was the last time Sprint Cup ran single-car qualifying on the plate tracks). I think these two metrics reflect speed, the ability to pass and the ability (and inclination) to run a lot of laps up front, all of which should give me the best chance to get in the ballpark with race-result predictions.
Finally, I took a look at the Sprint Unlimited race data and tweaked the rankings accordingly. My results:
- Greg Biffle
- Denny Hamlin
- Kurt Busch
- Joey Logano
- Jimmie Johnson
- Dale Earnhardt. Jr.
- Kasey Kahne
- Brad Keselowski
- Matt Kenseth
- Austin Dillon
- Casey Mears
- Paul Menard
- Kevin Harvick
- Kyle Busch
- Jeff Gordon
- Martin Truex. Jr.
- Carl Edwards
- Aric Almirola
- Landon Cassill
- Danica Patrick
- Tony Stewart
- Clint Bowyer
- Reed Sorenson
- Kyle Larson
- Ryan Newman
- Jamie McMurray
- Ryan Blaney
- Ricky Stenhouse. Jr.
- Michael Annett
- Sam Hornish Jr.
- Justin Allgaier
- Trevor Bayne
- David Gilliland
- Michael Waltrip
- Cole Whitt
- Brian Scott
- AJ Allmendinger
- Michael McDowell
- David Ragan
- Ty Dillon (i)
- J.J Yeley
- Jeb Burton
- Johnny Sauter (i)
- Ron Hornaday
- Justin Marks (i)
- Bobby Labonte
- Alex Bowman
- Josh Wise
- Mike Wallace