Early Rankings: Chicagoland, 2016

Martin Truex Jr photo

Martin Truex Jr. tops my early Chicagoland driver rankings. (photo courtesy nascar)

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:

  1. Martin Truex Jr.
  2. Kevin Harvick
  3. Brad Keselowski
  4. Jimmie Johnson
  5. Kyle Busch
  6. Joey Logano
  7. Denny Hamlin
  8. Carl Edwards
  9. Matt Kenseth
  10. Chase Elliott
  11. Kyle Larson
  12. Kurt Busch
  13. Kasey Kahne
  14. Ryan Blaney
  15. Austin Dillon
  16. Ryan Newman
  17. Jamie McMurray
  18. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  19. Greg Biffle
  20. Paul Menard
  21. Tony Stewart
  22. Alex Bowman
  23. Aric Almirola
  24. AJ Allmendinger
  25. Trevor Bayne
  26. Clint Bowyer
  27. Danica Patrick
  28. Brian Scott
  29. Chris Buescher
  30. Casey Mears
  31. Regan Smith
  32. David Ragan
  33. Landon Cassill
  34. Michael McDowell
  35. Michael Annett
  36. Cole Whitt
  37. Matt DiBenedetto
  38. Josh Wise
  39. Joey Gase
  40. Reed Sorenson