Power Rankings: Brad Keselowski stays at No. 1
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.
1. Brad Keselowski (LW: 1): Yeah, like there was any chance Keselowski was going to drop a spot after his second-straight win and fourth of the season. Maybe we should just skip this graph and move on to the rest of the rankings. Or maybe we should note that the No. 2 team’s “uncoventional” strategies during races, including the way the team raced and saved fuel, may be a whole hell of a lot more reasoned than many realize.
2. Kurt Busch (LW: 3): Busch has his 15th top-10 finish and is now 16 points back of Kevin Harvick heading into New Hampshire. Busch was one of the drivers who didn’t pit at the end of Saturday night’s race and ended up stretching his fuel to finish fourth.
3. Kevin Harvick (LW: 6): After pitting late for fuel and finishing 9th, Harvick is now just four points ahead of Keselowski. Given how well both drivers have performed at New Hampshire recently, that points margin is going to be pretty similar after Sunday’s race. That is, of course, if the race doesn’t turn into a fuel-mileage gamble and one of the two runs out of gas before the checkered flag.
4. Martin Truex Jr. (LW: 7): Hey, it was a race at a 1.5-mile track and Truex had a fast car. Stunning. His drive to get to the front of the field before pitting after his pit road penalty was impressive as hell. That pit road penalty might have also been a case of simply exploiting NASCAR’s rules too well.
We went back and looked at over a dozen sets of green flag pit stops throughout the first half of the season and couldn’t find another instance where a driver accelerated ahead of the leader on the inside like Truex did on Sunday night. However, we want to make it clear that our bit of research doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before. Fox’s race broadcasts have a tendency to zoom in on the first lead car to pit, leaving the rest of the field on pit road unseen to the viewer until it’s spread out across pit road.
5. Kyle Busch (LW: 5): Busch finished 12th and was fourth in the “pitted before the end of the race” class. After a run of four finishes of 30th or worse, Busch has now finished in the top 12 three races in a row. In a random statistic, Busch’s 12th-place finish is his first finish outside of the top 10 that was not 25th or worse. Feast or famine.
6. Joey Logano (LW: 2): Logano falls four spots after he smacked the wall with the right rear of the car and then lost a tire and smashed into the wall again, obliterating the car. The handling on the No. 22 wasn’t great at the start of the race; he lost a bunch of positions right off the start. He might have had a car that would have been better at night like his teammate, but the crash prevented us from finding that out.
7. Kyle Larson (LW: 4): Because the starting lineup was set by points, Larson started 20th. Could he make his way to the front of the field? Well, by one position. He finished 19th. He’s also 19th in the points standings, 27 points behind his teammate Jamie McMurray for the final spot in the Chase via points.
8. Carl Edwards (LW: 10): Anyone else think Keselowski was going to cede the win to Edwards over the final two laps? As Keselowski conserved fuel and his car burped, Edwards chopped an eight-second lead to a matter of a few car lengths. But Keselowski had enough gas to run at full-speed for the final two laps and keep Edwards at bay.
9. Tony Stewart (LW: 12): Since he was outside the top 10 when the final green-flag run began, Stewart was in a position to conserve fuel and try to steal a good finish. He did just that. By staying out, Stewart ended up finishing fifth and increasing his lead on 31st place by a significant margin.
10. Ryan Newman (LW: NR): Before finishing third – because, yes, he stayed out and didn’t pit – Newman didn’t have a top-five finish all season. The third-place finish was also just his sixth top-10 finish in 18 races. Newman is 12th in the points standings and likely to make the Chase via points as long as he keeps racking up the top 20s.
11. Chase Elliott (LW: 8): Top 20s weren’t in the cards for Chase Elliott after he got crashed when Ryan Blaney spun. It’s the second-straight accident-marred finish for Elliott, who is only where he is in the standings because of crashes. But hey, rookies sometimes crash. And besides, only one of those crashes has been Elliott’s fault.
12. Denny Hamlin (LW: 9): Hamlin finished 15th on Saturday, his second-best finish on a 1.5-mile track all season. Yeah, yeah, not all 1.5-mile tracks are the same. We don’t have to explain that to ourselves. But it’s pretty obvious that Hamlin can’t post finishes outside the top 15 at 1.5-mile tracks in the Chase and expect to advance multiple rounds.
Lucky Dog: Greg Biffle finished 6th.
The DNF: Chris Buescher, who slammed into Brian Scott’s spinning car.
Dropped out: Jimmie Johnson
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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!
