Early Rankings: Pocono II, 2017

Kyle Busch tops my early Pocono II driver rankings. (photo courtesy nascar)

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

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

The loop data for the past 15 Sprint Cup races (excluding Daytona, Talladega and Sonoma);
the loop data for the past four races;
the loop data for the past four races at Pocono;
the loop data for the past seven races at the other tracks in the Flats track group (i.e., Martinsville, Phoenix, Indy, Richmond and New Hampshire);
the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Pocono; and
the practice and qualifying data for past seven races at the aforementioned Flats.

The results:

NASCARpredict.com