Early Week Driver Rankings for Richmond

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series will travel to Richmond Raceway for a Saturday night short track race. This is the way racing should be. Richmond is .75-mile D-shaped flat track that provides some exciting racing. It should be fun to watch under the lights. The Toyota Owners 400 is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET Saturday on Fox.

It will be a compressed schedule for the MENCS this week. The first practice will be Friday at 11 a.m. ET. Final practice is Friday at 1 p.m. ET. No TV coverage for any practice this week. Qualifying will be Friday at 5:30 p.m. ET (FS1). There will be no DraftKings Xfinity Series picks this week because of the compressed schedule.

My early week pick for the pole is Denny Hamlin. There have been 8 races this season and we have had 8 different pole winners. That streak should come to an end Friday. Joe Gibbs Racing has been very good at Richmond and Hamlin has been on a hot streak this season. Hamlin has 3 poles at his home track. I think he will add another one this week.

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 driver rankings from Richmond, average finishing position at Richmond, average running position at Phoenix and driver rating and Richmond and Phoenix combined.

Here are the early week driver rankings for Richmond…

* I will post my final driver rankings Saturday morning.

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

*** Photos from NASCAR Media

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