The Cup Series travels to Texas Motor Speedway this week for the second race in the Round of Eight. Joey Logano secured his spot in the championship race at Phoenix. It will be fun to see if another playoff driver can find Victory Lane and secure a spot in the Championship Four. I just wish this race wasn’t 500 miles. There is no need for this race to be 334 laps long. The Texas 500 can be seen Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN.
The Cup Series competed at Texas in mid July. Ryan Blaney dominated the race (he led 150 laps), but Austin Dillon won the race. I used the stats from that race, stats from the three races at Texas using the 550 HP aero package, and stats from the last five 1.5-mile track races (Kansas, Las Vegas, Kansas, Texas and Kentucky) for my rankings this week.
Here are the driver rankings for the Texas 500 …
| Driver |
| 1. Kevin Harvick |
| 2. Ryan Blaney |
| 3. Denny Hamlin |
| 4. Joey Logano |
| 5. Kyle Busch |
| 6. Martin Truex Jr. |
| 7. Kurt Busch |
| 8. Alex Bowman |
| 9. Brad Keselowski |
| 10. Chase Elliott |
| 11. Erik Jones |
| 12. Aric Almirola |
| 13. Austin Dillon |
| 14. Matt DiBenedetto |
| 15. Cole Custer |
| 16. Clint Bowyer |
| 17. William Byron |
| 18. Tyler Reddick |
| 19. Chris Buescher |
| 20. Christopher Bell |
| 21. Jimmie Johnson |
| 22. Ryan Newman |
| 23. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. |
| 24. Bubba Wallace Jr. |
| 25. Michael McDowell |
| 26. Matt Kenseth |
| 27. John H. Nemechek |
| 28. Ty Dillon |
| 29. Ryan Preece |
| 30. Corey Lajoie |
| 31. Daniel Suarez |
| 32. Brennan Poole |
| 33. J.J. Yeley |
| 34. Quin Houff |
| 35. Reed Sorenson |
| 36. Garrett Smithley |
| 37. Josh Bilciki |
| 38. Timmy Hill |
| 39. Joey Gase |
| 40. Chad Finchum |
*Stats from Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet Pro
** Photos from NASCAR Media
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