Power Rankings: Jimmie Johnson swipes another No. 1 position
Welcome to the 2016 season’s Power Rankings. As always, Power Rankings are far from a scientific formula. In fact, it’s the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. Direct all your complaints to us at [email protected] and we’ll try to have some fun.
1. Jimmie Johnson (LW: 3): Jimmie Johnson’s just out here sniping wins left and right. Johnson now has won 40 percent of the season’s Sprint Cup Series races. In those two wins — OK, 40 percent sounds a lot more significant, doesn’t it? — Johnson has led 77 laps total. He led 76 laps at Las Vegas alone. And after the race, his crew chief Chad Knaus said that “I don’t feel that we’re running as strong as what we need. I think we’re okay, for sure, obviously. But I think from my standpoint, we should be doing a little bit better.”
It’s a scary thought for the rest of the Cup Series, but it’s one that is based in truth. Johnson has gotten his two wins because of pit strategy. He pitted ahead of Kevin Harvick and pulled away at Atlanta and pitted a lap earlier to stay on the lead lap on Sunday and then got a great final pit stop to be in position for the win.
Of course, Johnson got wins like this last year and Knaus was saying similar things as the team ended up being flukily eliminated from the Chase in the first round. But we have a sneaking feeling that the No. 48 team isn’t going to have a deja vu moment in 2016.
2. Kevin Harvick (LW: 2): It’s got to be frustrating for Kevin Harvick to dominate yet another intermediate track race and come up second to Johnson. But on the other hand, Harvick is in position to get beaten. While it’s maddening to lead nearly 75 percent of a race and finish second, there are a lot of people who would trade positions with you. We should probably appreciate the No. 4 team’s excellence and consistency more than we should.
3. Denny Hamlin (LW: 4): A second-straight third-place finish puts Hamlin back into the top three. Hamlin led just two laps all weekend, but a great final pit stop had him within sniffing distance of the lead. Before the final caution, Hamlin was heading for a top 10. The tire issue for Kyle Busch simply gave him a chance to upgrade.
4. Kyle Busch (LW: 1): Two races at Auto Club Speedway, two late-race tire issues for Kyle Busch. After he blew a tire while leading on Saturday in the Xfinity race, Busch lost a tire while running in the top five on Sunday. If he doesn’t rip up a tire, Harvick wins the race. But alas, he did and Joe Gibbs Racing had to settle for two cars in the top 10 instead of three. What a horrible day.
5. Joey Logano (LW: 9): Logano finished fourth, though if you’re on Twitter, the most memorable part of his day was the smackdown tweet Martin Truex Jr.’s crew chief Cole Pearn sent. Pearn apologized for the tweet (it had to do with Logano’s eyes) and has since deleted it. Ideally, we’re not living in a world where crew chiefs aren’t suspended for post-race tweets critical of other drivers and teams (no matter how stupid those tweets are), but this is NASCAR, who knows.
Anyway, back to Logano. He heads into the off week with three top 10s in five races and, yes, he did admit to taking fault with the contact between himself and Truex.
6. Brad Keselowski (LW: 5): Keselowski had another pit road penalty on Sunday and ended up battling back to finish ninth. He said after the race that he felt the team had a 5th-10th place car, so perhaps ninth is about right when you take the penalty into account.
7. Carl Edwards (LW: 7): Edwards was second as the laps wound down on Sunday and then his car started sliding further and further away from Harvick. He ended up seventh, which is probably a bit harsh given how much time Edwards spent at the front of the field throughout the day.
8. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (LW: 10): Junior finished just outside the top 10 in 11th after struggling with an ill-handling car. We’ll never know just how well Junior could have climbed through the field with a healthy car after he got some early-race damage from a run-in with Kurt Busch. The team was able to patch up the dent in the left-front of his car, but you can rarely get a car back to full strength with tape.
9. Kurt Busch (LW: 6): Why was Busch so aggressive early in the race on Sunday? The contact with Junior came when Busch tried to get in front of him off turn four. Busch ended up slowing in front of Junior and the No. 88 simply had nowhere to go and drove into the right rear of Busch’s car. At that point in the race, Busch could have easily conceded the position to Junior. If it was lap 195, we get jumping into Junior’s line. Busch ended up 30th.
10. Austin Dillon (LW: 8): The optimism that Dillon garnered with his pole run Friday didn’t materialize on Sunday. He didn’t even lead a lap. Harvick got credit for leading the first lap and Dillon quickly settled in the back half of the top 10. He ended up finishing 24th.
11. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (LW: NR): Congratulations on your annual top-five finish, Stenhouse. The driver of the No. 17 finished fifth on Sunday. He’s now finished in the top five once in each of his four full Sprint Cup seasons. This season could be a bit different, however. Different as in we think Stenhouse could have an additional top five or two. He’s the Roush driver that’s best adapted to the lower-downforce tweaks and his average finish of 17.2 through the first five races of the season is the best average finish of his career.
12. Chase Elliott (LW: NR): If Elliott isn’t crashing, he’s finishing in the top 10. Elliott was sixth on Sunday, his third top 10 of the season. In the other two races, he’s crashed out off turn four (Daytona) and run into the back of Matt Kenseth (Las Vegas). As far as we’re concerned, it’s better to have speed and some crashes as a rookie than it is to run 25th every week.
Lucky Dog: AJ Allmendinger got his first top-10 finish since Pocono in August. He hasn’t finished in the top five since his Watkins Glen win in 2014.
The DNF: Kyle Larson and Danica Patrick each crashed so hard that the tires of their cars were vaulted off the ground. Thankfully neither driver was injured.
Dropped Out: Martin Truex Jr., Matt Kenseth
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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!
