Power Rankings: Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson stay at the top
Welcome to 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.
Before we get going, we feel obligated to embed the greatest pre-race prayer in NASCAR history. Happy thoughts!
Let’s get to the rankings.
1. Kyle Busch (LW: 1): Busch needed a caution and some pit strategy to go his way Saturday night and he got it. When restarting fourth with fresh tires, he likely wasn’t going to make up all the ground he needed to on Martin Truex Jr. to take the lead if the race was to go green the rest of the way. But Austin Dillon crashed as he fell through the pack and that put Busch on the front row of what ended up being the final restart. Combine that position with fresher tires than Truex, who didn’t pit, and you know how the race ended.
2. Jimmie Johnson (LW: 2): Johnson’s race got off to an inauspicious start during the competition caution when he ran into the back of Busch’s car on pit road. The contact left a giant dent in the front of the No. 48 that got taped over in subsequent pit stops. Did the dent hurt Johnson’s chances at a win? Well, we can safely say they probably didn’t help. He still finished fourth.
3. Joey Logano (LW: 5): Logano’s car wasn’t terrible throughout the race but it certainly wasn’t in the stratosphere that the Joe Gibbs Racing cars were in. The No. 22 team worked on it all night and he was the fastest he’d been at the end of the race. Logano finished third.
4. Kevin Harvick (LW: 3): Harvick was a bit frustrated with the handling of his car throughout the entirety of the race. The No. 4 team couldn’t get the car to Harvick’s liking so he could challenge for a top three position. Instead, he spend a majority of the race comfortably in the back part of the top 10. Of course, it’s a great problem to have when you have a bad car and are still in the top 10, but these are the standards Harvick and crew chief Rodney Childers have set.
5. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (LW: 9): Hey there, Junior. He took home the win in the non-JGR class by finishing second to Busch. He also had this to say about the final run of the race: “Obviously our car was good … we had a lot of passing, which with the ’14 or ’15 package, I’d have never got by Joey,” Junior said. “So it was fun to have an opportunity to sort of set somebody up and get it by him there at the end, and that’s due to the direction we went this year with the low downforce.”
Pretty good endorsement.
6. Brad Keselowski (LW: 4): While Logano and his team kept their car in the ballpark the entire night, the same can’t be said for his teammate. Keselowski had a pit road penalty and a car that simply wasn’t very fast as the race progressed. He ended up finishing 18th, two laps down in a Richard Childress Racing sandwich between Ryan Newman and Austin Dillon.
7. Carl Edwards (LW: 7): If you’re looking at the entirety of the race, it’s feasible to believe Edwards had the second-best car to Martin Truex Jr. And it’s feasible to wonder if it would have been Edwards in victory lane instead of Busch had he not had to come down pit road for a loose wheel after a restart. Edwards bounced back to finish seventh, and we’ll take the Junior line of thinking with his finish too. It’s dubious to think he’d have climbed back in to the top 10 last year.
8. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: NR): Truex fell back to sixth by the end of the race because of the tire strategy the team was on. Had Truex had fresh(er) tires at the end of the race, he probably would have won. But would he have won had he pitted on that final restart? We’re not sure. He would have needed to climb through a few really good cars. Once the strategy bed was made, he had to drive in it.
9. Denny Hamlin (LW: 6): Hamlin finished 12th, the worst of the four JGR cars (plus Truex). But good enough to keep him in a tie for eighth in the points standings. Without quotes from Hamlin following the race and a notable in-race moment, we’re kind of at a loss for words to describe his day.
10. Chase Elliott (LW: NR): Elliott is quietly 14th in the points standings through seven races. That’s an even bigger accomplishment than you think when you take into consideration his crashes at Daytona and Las Vegas. He could have 50 more points without those crashes, and if he did, he’d be sixth in the standings. He finished fifth at Texas.
11. Austin Dillon (LW: 8): Dillon restarted second late in the race on older tires and slid back through the field. Then he crashed. He ended up 19th, two laps down. The finish was his second-worst of the first seven races … and two positions higher than his average finish in 2015. That’s when you know you’ve made a huge improvement.
12. Kasey Kahne (LW: NR): For the second time in three races, a driver went into the wall after contact with Kahne. This time it was Greg Biffle. Kahne’s car didn’t have any damage and he ended up finishing eighth. The top 10s could keep coming assuming Kahne doesn’t make an enemy of half the field by the time the summer hits.
Lucky Dog: Hey, Matt Kenseth finished 11th. Though he had a top-five car.
The DNF: It was a struggle for Brian Vickers.
Dropped Out: AJ Allmendinger, Kyle Larson
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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!
