The craziest first round of the Cup Series playoffs is complete. So how wild have the 2022 playoffs been? For the first time ever, no playoff driver won a race in the Round of 16. Last week at Bristol has even more chaos. 12 of the 16 playoff drivers had mechanical issues. There are only 30 full-time, one driver teams in the Cup Series and 19 of them have been to Victory Lane (two-thirds). The Round of 12 is usually the most unpredictable round with the Charlotte Roval and Talladega on the schedule. It all starts Saturday in “No Limits” Texas.
DRIVER RANKINGS FOR BRISTOL
“Everything is bigger in Texas.” That includes the length of the races. The Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 not only has one of the longest names of the season; it is also scheduled for 500 miles. There is no reason for one of the most boring tracks on the Cup Series schedule to be 500 laps, but NASCAR cares more about those TV Commercial dollars, than they do about the fans. The extra 67 laps mean there is more time for pit road mistakes and more time mechanical issues in the “no so reliable” Gen-7 car. It will likely be another crazy race in the Lone Star State.
The Cup Series competed at Texas in May at the All-Star Race. I used the data for that race for the driver rankings this week. I also used the data from the race at Kansas two weeks ago and the driver ratings on the intermediate tracks this year. I am not using too much of the track history at Texas for the rankings because that hasn’t mattered much in 2022 for the races in the Gen-7 car.
Here are the Driver Rankings for the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 …
| Driver |
| 1. Denny Hamlin |
| 2. Christopher Bell |
| 3. William Byron |
| 4. Kyle Larson |
| 5. Martin Truex Jr. |
| 6. Kyle Busch |
| 7. Ryan Blaney |
| 8. Chase Elliott |
| 9. Alex Bowman |
| 10. Bubba Wallace |
| 11. Ross Chastain |
| 12. Tyler Reddick |
| 13. Daniel Suarez |
| 14. Kevin Harvick |
| 15. Joey Logano |
| 16. Chris Buescher |
| 17. Austin Cindric |
| 18. Chase Briscoe |
| 19. Ty Gibbs |
| 20. Austin Dillon |
| 21. Brad Keselowski |
| 22. Noah Gragson |
| 23. Erik Jones |
| 24. Michael McDowell |
| 25. Aric Almirola |
| 26. Cole Custer |
| 27. Ty Dillon |
| 28. Justin Haley |
| 29. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. |
| 30. Todd Gilliland |
| 31. Corey LaJoie |
| 32. Harrison Burton |
| 33. Landon Cassill |
| 34. Cody Ware |
| 35. Garrett Smithley |
| 36. B.J. McLeod |
* These rankings will be updated Saturday after qualifying
Good Luck Sunday!
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