Early Rankings: Michigan I, 2016

Kevin Harvick tops my early Michigan I driver rankings. (photo courtesy nascar)

Update: I’ve posted my final Michigan I 2016 driver rankings, which improve upon these early rankings.

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

The results:

NASCARpredict.com