Early Rankings: Pocono II, 2015

Kevin Harvick photo

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

Update: I’ve now completed my final Pocono II rankings (click here to see them).

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

  • The loop data for the past 15 Sprint Cup races (excluding Daytona, Talladega and Sonoma);
  • the loop data for the past four races (excluding Daytona);
  • the loop data for the past four races at Pocono;
  • the loop data for the past seven races at the other tracks in the Flats track group (i.e., Martinsville, Phoenix, Indy, Richmond and New Hampshire);
  • the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Pocono; and
  • the practice and qualifying data for past seven races at the aforementioned Flats.

The results:

  1. Kevin Harvick
  2. Brad Keselowski
  3. Kurt Busch
  4. Joey Logano
  5. Kyle Busch
  6. Carl Edwards
  7. Martin Truex Jr.
  8. Jeff Gordon
  9. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
  10. Denny Hamlin
  11. Kyle Larson
  12. Matt Kenseth
  13. Jimmie Johnson
  14. Kasey Kahne
  15. Jamie McMurray
  16. Ryan Newman
  17. Clint Bowyer
  18. Tony Stewart
  19. Paul Menard
  20. Austin Dillon
  21. Greg Biffle
  22. AJ Allmendinger
  23. Aric Almirola
  24. Danica Patrick
  25. Casey Mears
  26. David Ragan
  27. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  28. Justin Allgaier
  29. Landon Cassill
  30. David Gilliland
  31. Michael Annett
  32. Sam Hornish Jr.
  33. Trevor Bayne
  34. Cole Whitt
  35. Alex Bowman
  36. Brett Moffitt
  37. Travis Kvapil
  38. #98 car, TBA
  39. #62 car TBA
  40. J.J Yeley
  41. Matt DiBenedetto
  42. Jeb Burton
  43. Alex Kennedy