Update: I’ve posted my final Chicagoland driver rankings, which improve upon the below early rankings.
Here are my early driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Chicagoland. I compiled them by crunching:
- The loop data for the past 15 Sprint Cup races (excluding Daytona, Talladega, Sonoma and Watkins Glen);
- the loop data for the past four races;
- the loop data for the past four races at Chicagoland;
- the loop data for the past eight races at other tracks in the Large Ovals track group (i.e., Michigan, Kentucky, Fontana, Charlotte, Texas, Atlanta and Kansas);
- the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Chicagoland; and
- the practice and qualifying data for past eight races at the aforementioned Large Ovals.
The results:
- Martin Truex Jr.
- Kevin Harvick
- Brad Keselowski
- Jimmie Johnson
- Kyle Busch
- Joey Logano
- Denny Hamlin
- Carl Edwards
- Matt Kenseth
- Chase Elliott
- Kyle Larson
- Kurt Busch
- Kasey Kahne
- Ryan Blaney
- Austin Dillon
- Ryan Newman
- Jamie McMurray
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Greg Biffle
- Paul Menard
- Tony Stewart
- Alex Bowman
- Aric Almirola
- AJ Allmendinger
- Trevor Bayne
- Clint Bowyer
- Danica Patrick
- Brian Scott
- Chris Buescher
- Casey Mears
- Regan Smith
- David Ragan
- Landon Cassill
- Michael McDowell
- Michael Annett
- Cole Whitt
- Matt DiBenedetto
- Josh Wise
- Joey Gase
- Reed Sorenson