Early Week Driver Rankings for Chicago

The leadership at NASCAR stayed pretty close to their roots for 70 years, but the new leadership proved that they are not afraid to try racing at some tracks that would blow the minds of the NASCAR fans from the 1980’s and 1990’s. First, they put dirt on Bristol, then they raced in the Los Angeles Coliseum, and now the Cup Series will race on the streets in Chicago. So, what do you think of these novelty tracks? I hate the dirt on Bristol, I am OK with the Clash at the Coliseum, and I am trying to keep an open mind about the street course.

So, how do we handicap this race? We could just give Joey Logano the trophy since he always wins the first race at a track (Logano won the first dirt track race at Bristol and the inaugural race at the L.A. Coliseum). We could give the trophy to Martin Truex Jr. since he just smoked the field at Sonoma, or we could simply place Tyler Reddick in Victory Lane since he has won three of the last six road course races. I think this race is wide open, so more drivers will be in play this week.

I used the stats from the technical road course tracks to help handicap the Grant Park 220. I used the data from the races at COTA and Sonoma this year and combined it with the data from the races at Watkins Glen, Road America, Sonoma and COTA last year. This will give us a large sample size of road course races on the more difficult tracks.

Here are my early week driver rankings for the Grant Park 220…

Be sure to check back Sunday Morning for the updated Driver Rankings for the race Sunday.

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