Kyle Larson tops my early Charlotte I driver rankings (photo courtesy nascar)

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

Here are my early driver rankings for this week’s NASCAR Cup race at Charlotte. 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 Charlotte;
• the loop data for the past eight races at the other tracks in the Large Ovals track group (i.e., Fontana, Kansas, Atlanta, Texas, Chicagoland, Michigan and Kentuck);
• the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Charlotte; and
• the practice and qualifying data for past eight races at the aforementioned Large Ovals.

Plus, I tweaked the results obtained with the above with data pulled from the All Star and Open prelims and races. The results:

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