Early Rankings: Darlington, 2017

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

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

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

The loop data for the past 15 Cup races (excluding Daytona Talladega, Sonoma and Watkins Glen;
the loop data for the past four races (excluding Daytona);
the loop data for the past four races at Darlington;
the loop data for the past seven races at the other tracks in the Steeps track group (i.e., Bristol, Dover, Homestead and Las Vegas);
the practice and qualifying data for the past four races at Darlington; and
the practice and qualifying data for past seven races at the aforementioned Steeps.

The results:

NASCARpredict.com