Early Week Driver Rankings for Phoenix

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series will stay out west as they compete at ISM (Phoenix). For this article I am going to call the track Phoenix. The name to “Ingenuity Sun Media (I.S.M.) Raceway makes things too confusing. What is nice is the remolded and reconfigured track. It made the November race interesting and the race this week should be fun to watch. The TicketGuardian 500 is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET on Fox.

The MENCS will have a normal schedule this week. The first practice is scheduled for Friday at 1:30 p.m. ET (No TV). Qualifying is Friday evening at 6 p.m. ET (FS1). There will be two practices Saturday. The first is at 11:30 a.m. ET (FS1) and the final practice is at 2 p.m. ET (FS1). I will post my Garage Talk Notes after final practice.

My early week pick for the pole is Kevin Harvick. I expect the qualifying to be more calm then it was at Las Vegas. The draft will not be a facture at Phoenix so we will see single-car qualifying. Harvick won the pole for the first race on the reconfigured track and I think he will do it again Friday.

Each week I use different stats in my model to create the best rankings possible to give you an edge on the completion. This week I used the results from the flat tracks from last year, driver ranking at the flat tracks, average finishing position at Phoenix and driver ranking at Phoenix. I also used the average running position from the November race at Phoenix because the newly shaped track brought more drivers into play.

Here are the early week driver rankings for Phoenix…

* I will post my final driver rankings Saturday evening.

**Stats from Driveraverages.com and NASCAR Media. Career stats from Racing-Reference.Info…

*** Photos from NASCAR Media

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