Early Rankings: Fontana, 2015

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

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

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

  • The loop data for the past 15 Sprint Cup races (excluding Daytona and Talladega);
  • the loop data for the past four races (excluding Daytona);
  • the loop data for the past four races at Fontana;
  • the loop data for the past eight races at the other tracks in the Large Ovals track group (i.e., Texas, Charlotte, Atlanta, Kansas, Chicago, Michigan and Kentucky);
  • the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Fontana; and
  • the practice and qualifying data for past eight races at the aforementioned Large Ovals.

The results:

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