The short track portion of the NASCAR schedule is complete and now it is time for the Cup Series to compete on another Superspeedway. The race Sunday at Talladega will be the third race in 2023 on a Superspeedway (Daytona and Atlanta were the other two). The teams will not have any time to practice for the GEICO 500 Sunday. The cars will line up for qualifying Saturday morning and then race Sunday afternoon.
We will not have any practice speeds to work with (not that it matters at Talladega), so we will have to use the data from the two Superspeedway races this year and the results at Talladega in the past. The Fords have been the best in the pack and then have been able to push harder that the Toyota’s and Chevy’s this year. I will have many of the Fords at the top of my Driver Rankings this week.
Here are my early week driver rankings for the GEICO 500 …
| Driver |
| 1. Joey Logano |
| 2. Brad Keselowski |
| 3. Denny Hamlin |
| 4. Ryan Blaney |
| 5. Chase Elliott |
| 6. Christopher Bell |
| 7. Erik Jones |
| 8. Alex Bowman |
| 9. Ross Chastain |
| 10. Chris Buescher |
| 11. Kevin Harvick |
| 12. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. |
| 13. Austin Cindric |
| 14. Martin Truex Jr. |
| 15. William Byron |
| 16. Aric Almirola |
| 17. Michael McDowell |
| 18. Kyle Busch |
| 19. Corey LaJoie |
| 20. Kyle Larson |
| 21. Bubba Wallace |
| 22. Ty Gibbs |
| 23. AJ Allmendinger |
| 24. Daniel Suarez |
| 25. Ryan Preece |
| 26. Justin Haley |
| 27. Austin Dillon |
| 28. Tyler Reddick |
| 29. Todd Gilliland |
| 30. Noah Gragson |
| 31. Zane Smith |
| 32. Austin Hill |
| 33. Chase Briscoe |
| 34. Riley Herbst |
| 35. Ty Dillon |
| 36. Harrison Burton |
| 37. J.J. Yeley |
| 38. B.J. McLeod |
The driver’s starting position really does not matter at Talladega. I doubt I will change the Driver Rankings before the race Sunday.
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