Power Rankings: Once again, the top 2 finished 1-2
Our Power Rankings are far from a scientific formula. In fact, it’s the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. And you think we dislike your favorite driver, so it makes sense, right? Direct all your complaints to us at [email protected].
1. Jimmie Johnson (LW: 2): Hey, look who’s back at the top spot? How fun would it have been if Johnson got the lead on pit road in the late laps given the team’s appeal of the pit stall choice penalty it got for its sideskirt manipulation warnings? Instead, Johnson won the race because crew chief Chad Knaus kept him out on track. While the No. 48 bunch may think they’re behind the No. 4 in terms of pure speed, they’re proving to be the best at playing the clean air game.
2. Kevin Harvick (LW: 1): Harvick had a broken track bar adjuster preventing him from giving Johnson more of a challenge at the end of the race? Could Harvick had given Johnson a run for the win with a working adjuster? It’s up for debate. Harvick’s car was much better on the longer runs throughout the race. As the race went green with 17 laps to go following the crash between Brian Scott and Kyle Busch, Harvick was taking an 800-meter car and asking it to race in the 100-meter dash.
3. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 3): Truex had a run on the final restart and had a chance to dive inside Kasey Kahne entering turn one. Kahne blocked and Truex said that the felt he had to let off the gas or wreck the entire field. He chose the former. The handling on his car wasn’t great back in traffic and he never got a chance to challenge for the top three again. He finished sixth, though he ran much higher than that for most of the day. Truex is going to win a race soon. It may happen at Michigan. Or Sonoma, where he won two years ago.
4. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (LW: 4): It was a day of survival. Junior started the race at the end of the grid because his team changed a rear gear. He started moving his way to the front and got inside the top 10. However, he sped on pit road and the penalty came under green. He dropped two laps down thanks to the penalty and was once again playing from behind. Thanks to the late-race incidents, he finished 14th. More importantly, Junior was a member of a group of drivers who met with NASCAR before Sunday’s race. Hopefully those drivers are advocating for big changes to the cars too.
5. Joey Logano (LW: 8): Here comes the messiness. Logano leaps three spots by finishing 11th. You want to argue with that? Go for it. Because you’re not going to make a much more convincing case for anyone else below him to occupy this spot. After playing the fuel strategy game with his teammate, Logano ended up as the last car on the lead lap. Yes, that means Sunday’s race had the fewest number of cars on the lead lap so far in 2015.
6. Kurt Busch (LW: 5): Busch was heading for a top-10 finish until he couldn’t avoid the spinning car of Denny Hamlin. After Hamlin got turned on the backstretch, he clipped the front of Busch’s car and Busch ended up in the wall. While we understand Busch’s team’s desire to get him back out on the track as soon as possible, as he pulled back on the track he was spewing debris down the backstretch. He ended up nine laps down in 31st.
7. Brad Keselowski (LW: 10): Keselowski didn’t have one of the race’s fastest cars so he played the strategy game at the end, hoping for a yellow flag as he stayed out. Keselowski tried to run his tank dry while leading after everyone else had pitted. It didn’t work, and he was forced to pit under green. He finished a spot behind Logano and the first car one lap down.
8. Kasey Kahne (LW: 11): A two-tire pit stop got Kahne some track position and put him within spitting distance of the lead. On the next-to-last restart he was able to at least briefly stay with Jimmie Johnson, though his protective move against Truex on the final restart ended his hopes for a win. Kahne is eighth in the points standings (almost three whole races behind Harvick) and it was just his second top-five finish of the season.
9. Matt Kenseth (LW: 6): Kenseth ended up 39th after a front suspension failure ended his day. The team pitted him for fresh tires before he retired, hoping it’d fix the issue. Nope. So Kenseth was forced to give up the ghost. Like Busch, his finish doesn’t reflect the quality of his run. Kenseth wasn’t a factor for the win, but was near the front of the field for most of the day.
10. Carl Edwards (LW: 7): A week after sneaking a win thanks to fuel mileage, Edwards was, well, pretty average. Average in the sense that he finished 19th, right in the middle of the pack. And average in the sense that his average finish this year is 18.8. What would be an average-sized sub at Subway? 9 inches? Is the six-inch sub more popular than the footlong, so it is shorter than that? What is the average order? Why are we asking all of these questions about, well, average-tasting sandwiches?
11. Jamie McMurray (LW: 12): McMurray finished seventh, a year after he was bitten by the Dover concrete. We won’t call it Miles because we’d be insinuating that Miles falls apart. And we don’t think Miles falls apart. This year, the concrete-splitting monster hit Tony Stewart’s pit, as it looked like an earthquake fault. Hey, Dover, are you going to repave the track soon? It may not be a bad idea.
12. Ryan Newman (LW: 8): Newman’s 18th-place finish is his lowest without crew chief Luke Lambert. And as ESPN’s Bob Pockrass notes, the more Newman runs well, the more we wonder just how much the tire manipulation the team was penalized for had to do with his success. Like Bob said in the audio linked above (56:30 mark), NASCAR needs to let everyone know what Newman’s team was exactly penalized for. Sure, we have a decent idea of what bleeding tires does, but fans need to know the specifics of what happened.
Lucky Dog: Kyle Larson. Larson ended up third, his highest finish of the season.
The DNF: Kyle Busch. Busch is 40th in the points standings through two races after his crash.
Dropped Out: N/A
– – – – – – –
Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
