Power Ranking the Drivers After the Fourth Month of 2016 NASCAR Season
Nine races to go and a shade over two months remaining in the regular season before we go to Chicagoland for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400* (!) to start the Chase, and the Sprint Cup Series is taking shape.
But before we get to Chicagoland, we’re power ranking the heck out of these drivers. There are some serious movers on this list from the 3.0 version a month ago. And that’s how this season works.
Last month Kyle Busch looked invincible, like maybe he had ingested some HazMat green ooze that turned him into a mutant ninja**. Then he suddenly wasn’t invincible.
There’s an MVP for every month of the NASCAR season, so who stands tallest right now.
You’ll have to read on to find out who.
*: As some—hopefully THOUSANDS—of you know, I do the "world famous" preview and predictions for every NASCAR race. I can’t put into words how excited I am to do that one. There will be far too many references to nine-year-old Brendan to count. You’ve been warned.
**: Sorry.
No. 10: Tony Stewart
1 of 10
Previous Ranking: N/A
Key 2016 Moment: It wasn’t winning the Toyota-Save Mart 350 (though that’s the obvious moment), it was the pit call that came late in that race that put him ahead of the field when the inevitable caution surfaced, thus allowing Smoke prime track position.
Now he heads to Kentucky where he has never won.
“I haven’t won in anything at Kentucky because of the short history we’ve had there. That makes it one of the main races on my schedule this year,” Stewart said to Jim Utter of Motorsport.com. “That’s really important to me.”
What’s Next: Is Stewart really a title contender? No. Does he even belong on this list? Not really. Chase Elliott has a better chance at the Sprint Cup than Smoke.
The only way Stewart advances in the Chase is by Ryan Newman-ing the heck out of it and letting the other leaves fall off the tree.
Stewart still needs to maintain his stance in the top 30, but that shouldn’t be a problem unless he has bad luck on a Kyle Busch-ian scale.
No. 9: Denny Hamlin
2 of 10
Previous Ranking: Eighth
Key 2016 Moment: It’s letting Stewart win losing at Sonoma. We’re beyond the Daytona 500 buzz at this point.
Hamlin qualifies like a beast. Only three times all season has the No. 11 car started outside the top 10.
Thanks to speeding penalties—the great irony in motorsports—he needlessly shuffles his car to the back of the field. The result is an average finish of 15.5.
What’s Next: Four career wins at Pocono and two at New Hampshire suggest a rebound of sorts.
If Hamlin ever plans on winning a Sprint Cup—and he’s come real close—he needs to clean up his game. He needs to figure out how to be a closer the way Harvick, Busch and Jimmie Johnson are.
Sprint Cups are for closers!
No. 8: Jimmie Johnson
3 of 10
Previous Ranking: Second
Key 2016 Moment: It has to be this cold spell, right? This is downright frigid.
Johnson hasn’t won since he donned the Superman cape at Fontana, and he hasn’t looked good since.
That’s not entirely fair. He does have three top fives since he won the fifth race of the season, but if you exclude those results (two thirds and a fourth), his average finish is 21.67.
Maybe what we’re seeing now is the long fall of Hendrick Motorsports and specifically the descent of the six-time champion.
What’s Next: Shoot, who knows?
He has zero career wins at Kentucky, which, to be fair, he’s only run at five times. But he does have 10 career wins over the three following tracks at Indy, Pocono and New Hampshire.
A win at any of these tracks, especially Loudon since it helps fill a Chase notebook, will reinvigorate this No. 48 team.
It needs the jolt.
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No. 7: Martin Truex Jr.
4 of 10
Previous Ranking: Sixth
Key 2016 Moment: That win at Charlotte in the Coca-Cola 600 would have gone down as the Moment of the Year if it wasn’t for Stewart “winning” at Sonoma*.
So Truex has Eliminator Round written all over him. Does he have Championship Four written somewhere on the back of a fortune cookie like he did in 2015?
Let’s look.
Is he better than Harvick, Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano over the long haul? Is Truex even better than Kyle Busch or Carl Edwards? On paper, the answer is unequivocally no.
What’s Next: Once we reach the Chase, and maybe I’m getting too far ahead of myself here since it’s only July, anarchy reigns. The Chase becomes its own season where luck gets the No. 1 seed.
Truex has driven brilliantly this year with seven top 10s, a runner up in the Daytona 500 and that laughably dominant win at Charlotte. He’ll be there, and he and crew chief Cole Pearn will keep turning the screw on this No. 78 car.
*: No, I will never get over this. I don’t care what Hamlin says; he let Stewart win.
No. 6: Carl Edwards
5 of 10
Previous Ranking: Fourth
Key 2016 Moment: Those back-to-back wins at Bristol and Richmond back in April feel like a long time ago.
It took Edwards another five races to finish inside the top 10 after that.
The thing with Edwards is that he qualifies strong but has trouble finishing. That average start of 7.8 is elite, but finishing 11.0 (solid by most accounts) is a letdown after starting so well.
What’s Next: Edwards is undoubtedly a title contender, and with races coming up at Indianapolis, Pocono, Kentucky and Loudon, Edwards may not jump off the screen (two wins, both at Pocono), but he’ll merely bide his time for the final kick to the start-finish line.
No. 5: Joey Logano
6 of 10
Previous Ranking: 10th
Key 2016 Moment: Oh, Joey.
Joey, Joey, Joey.
First, let’s make a suggestion: Logano reserves his post-tax $1 million winnings from the All-Star Race and puts it in escrow. That way he can cut checks to charities of drivers he routinely ticks off.
The latest in a long line of enemies is Kurt Busch. Logano, running in fifth in the Coke Zero 400 heading into Turn 4 on the final lap, dropped down hard on Busch’s rear fender and spun Busch out of the top five and into the Realm of Danica Patrick (the 20s).
"I hate that I got into Kurt there at the end racing to the line," Logano said to Bob Pockrass of ESPN. "I had a run to turn up underneath him, and when you do that, the cars get free and then I was there and he tried to catch it and I was there again. It is a product of this racing, but I hate that it happened."
Get out the checkbook (do people still use checks?*) and say, “How do you spell your name? K-U-R-T…?
What’s Next: Logano earned a dominant win at Michigan and along with Keselowski has vaulted Team Penske into title contention when it was once thought that Joe Gibbs had the title wrapped up.
Expect tempers to get real hot courtesy of the No. 22 car as we head deep into the summer.
*: I still do, especially when I’m cutting Uncle Sam my quarterly tax payment. Call me old fashioned.
No. 4: Kyle Busch
7 of 10
Previous Ranking: First
Key 2016 Moment: Forget the three wins, the key 2016 moment(s) were his four straight races of 30th or worse.
Busch finished in the top five in nine of the first 11 races of the season, and it looked like he had successfully parlayed 2015’s epic run into a 2016 victory lap.
Then came the cold streak, like the second coming of the Cryogenian Ice Age. If it weren’t for two strong top 10s at Sonoma and Daytona as evidence of a major thaw in his game, Busch would have plummeted to subterranean depth on this list.
What’s Next: A year ago we were in the midst of the Kyle Busch Summer Dominance Tour. He steamrolled to three wins in a row and four out of five. He would show signs of slowing, but would ramp up his game in the Chase.
Expect the same as we enter the homestretch to the Chase, as he becomes the standard bearer for Joe Gibbs Racing.
No. 3: Kevin Harvick
8 of 10
Previous Ranking: Third
Key 2016 Moments: The Phoenix winner (yawn), like No. 2 and No. 1 on this power ranking, has been excellent from the first green flag of the season until the latest checkered-flag—both, coincidentally, at Daytona.
Let’s throw this in here too: Harvick will be the Triple-A Home Run Derby captain. This reeks of irony, but it’s a thing.
What’s Next: Expect Harvick, who is and has been No. 1 in points for several weeks, to keep racking up top fives, top 10s and making it rain Bloomin’ Onions across this fine land.
He has lacked that finisher’s punch to close out these races, but there’s a strong likelihood that he and crew chief Rodney Childers are merely biding their time knowing that their immediate future is secure.
No. 2: Kurt Busch
9 of 10
Previous Ranking: Seventh
Key 2016 Moments: Certainly winning at Pocono was his season highlight to officially punch his ticket to the Chase.
He hasn’t had moments with a capital M, but, like Harvick and who will be No. 1, Kurt has been the steady hand on the circuit.
Kurt has 14 top 10s this year. Put another way, he has finished outside the top 10 only three times and he would have finished second at the last one at Daytona were it not for Logano’s misplaced fender, which Kurt did not appreciate, according to Bob Pockrass of ESPN:
"I don't know where Logano wanted to go. He was going to go from fifth to first? There's not a chance that he had to win it. We positioned ourselves to be the car to get a run off the bottom. And it just didn't work out with him trying to drive straight through us.
"
What’s Next: Kurt hasn’t made headlines, but when you look at the overall performance from 17 races, no driver—not Harvick, not Keselowski—has driven with greater excellence all year.
Sure Kez has more wins, but if it wasn’t for the late wreck at Daytona, Kurt would be No. 1 in the lost art of points, the true measure of regular-season excellence.
No. 1: Brad Keselowski
10 of 10
Previous Ranking: Fifth
Key 2016 Moments: Keselowski has three wins on the season, tied for first with Kyle Busch.
What makes Bad Brad the most powerful driver in the Sprint Cup at the moment is his consistency. He hasn’t gone on a “hot streak” like so many other drivers have. He, like Harvick and Kurt Busch, have been steadily good all year.
Keselowski said his approach will be different at Daytona, according to Bob Pockrass of ESPN.
"We've been really strong at Talladega, and we've used a lot of that approach coming here—and it's been awful. This is quite honestly the first time as a team that we've come to Daytona with a completely different approach than what we've had at Talladega, and it paid off with immediate results.
"
With wins in the third race (Vega), the 10th race (Talladega) and the 17th race (Daytona Part Duex), the No. 2 car has seen little valleys and mainly peaks over the course of this season.
What’s Next: Nine races to go in the Chase and Kez will likely cement himself as the favorite going forward.
But didn’t we say that for any of the Joe Gibbs cars a month ago? Two months ago? And weren’t we strumming a similar riff when Johnson peppered off two early wins?
Anything can change, but because Kez has remained so steady, he gets top honors this month.
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