Early Rankings: Martinsville I, 2017

Kyle Busch photo

Kyle Busch tops my early Martinsville I driver rankings. (photo courtesy nascar)

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

Here are my early driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Cup race at Martinsville. 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;
  • the loop data for the past four races at Martinsville;
  • the loop data for the past eight races at the other tracks in the Flats track group (i.e., RichmondPhoenixIndyPocono and New Hampshire);
  • the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Martinsville; and
  • the practice and qualifying data for past eight races at the aforementioned Flats.

The results:

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

3 thoughts on “Early Rankings: Martinsville I, 2017

  1. JD

    Will you take starting position into account (more so than at 1.5 mile oval) when predicting projected draft kings point? For example on these short tracks drivers starting one or 2 have a significant advantage with regard to laps led and fatstes laps.

  2. Jed Henson Post author

    JD, my DK projection model does take starting position into account, but right now it’s only a small factor, and it’s generic across all tracks. I might look into tweaking it for different tracks. I’m guessing it’d hard to quantify.

  3. JD

    Definitely hard to quantify and would need to scrub for anomalies. But if you were to look at the last 6 races at martinsville you would see a strong correlation between starting spot and total points. Thanks again for your contribution

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