Early Rankings: Fontana, 2017

Kevin Harvick photo

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

Update: I’ve posted my final Fontana driver rankings, which improve upon the below early rankings.

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

  • The loop data for the past 15 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. Chase Elliott
  3. Joey Logano
  4. Brad Keselowski
  5. Kyle Busch
  6. Martin Truex Jr.
  7. Jimmie Johnson
  8. Matt Kenseth
  9. Denny Hamlin
  10. Kyle Larson
  11. Ryan Newman
  12. Kurt Busch
  13. Erik Jones
  14. Jamie McMurray
  15. Kasey Kahne
  16. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
  17. Austin Dillon
  18. Ryan Blaney
  19. AJ Allmendinger
  20. Paul Menard
  21. Clint Bowyer
  22. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  23. Trevor Bayne
  24. Aric Almirola
  25. Ty Dillon
  26. Danica Patrick
  27. Daniel Suarez
  28. Chris Buescher
  29. Michael McDowell
  30. David Ragan
  31. Landon Cassill
  32. Cole Whitt
  33. Matt DiBenedetto
  34. Reed Sorenson
  35. Gray Gaulding
  36. Jeffrey Earnhardt
  37. Corey LaJoie
  38. Timmy Hill
  39. Derrike Cope