2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Power Rankings - Week 7
RK(LW) DRIVER TOP 10s COMMENT
1 (6) Kevin Harvick 4 First driver this year to get two wins. second time he's won back-to-back. He's never won at Texas but has eight finishes of 11th or better in his past 10 tries. Any questions?
2 (3) Kyle Busch 5 Shrub is go or blow at Texas, with six finishes of 11th or better and six finishes that have resulted in an average finish of 27th. Last year he finished third and 32nd.
3 (2) Jimmie Johnson 3 Officer, I understand that your radar gun said I was going 35.53 mph in a 30-mph zone, but that's not actually speeding, is it? Oh, it is ...
4 (1) Carl Edwards 4 Every year Carl spends the week leading to Martinsville saying that it's his favorite track. I have no idea why.
5 (4) Ryan Newman 4 Finished 20th, two laps down. It honestly could have been a lot worse. And everyone cool it with the "he won't get out of the way" talk. That's not his job. Won at Texas in '03. Only two top-10s since.
6 (10) Dale Earnhardt Jr. 3 In a way, it would've been a shame if he'd won because the fans might've torn down all those nice new facilities Martinsville just added. He led 46 laps and finished eighth at Texas one year ago.
7 (9) Matt Kenseth 3 I think the Air Force is missing the boat not letting Kenseth fly stealth bombers. Dude comes out of nowhere better than anyone else in the western world.
8 (5) Kurt Busch 4 Two generic finishes in a row and yet he has still managed to hang onto fourth in points. Good chance for a rebound this weekend. His lone Texas win was a year and a half ago.
9 (12) Juan Pablo Montoya 4 I know I say this every year, but that this guy runs so well on short tracks is almost as crazy as the idea of Kimi Raikkonen racing in the Truck series.
10 (13) Jeff Gordon 2 Led 37 laps and finished fifth in what has been his only solid run other than the win at Phoenix. Over his past nine TMS races, he has led 449 laps and has a win.
11 (7) Tony Stewart 2 These are not happy times at the Stewart house. His media Q&A Friday lasted about the same amount of time it took you to read these two sentences.
12 (16) Mark Martin 2 I seriously wonder if pace car driver Brett Bodine was tempted to climb into Mark's green retro Quaker State ride and take off like it was the old No. 26 car.
13 (8) Kasey Kahne 3 During Final Four weekend, Kahne gets the award for best assist after being in the right place at the right time to slow poor Martin Truex Jr. down. Won at Texas in '06 but has only one top-10 since.
14 (14) AJ Allmendinger 1 Pretty cool to see the 43 up front at Martinsville. Then again, The King won there 15 times, and even John Andretti has a grandfather clock. AJ finished 13th and 14th at Texas in 2010.
15 (18) Clint Bowyer 2 Don't look now, but Bowyer is getting it together. That's back-to-back top-10s after starting the season with four finishes of 15th or worse. He has four top-10s in his past six TMS tries.
16 (11) Paul Menard 2 Fell out of the top 12 for the first time this season after his only bad finish of the year. The bad news? He has just one top-10 in nine Texas starts. The good news? It came the last time he ran there.
17 (17) Greg Biffle 1 He might not deserve to be this high, but for some reason I can't make myself drop him. Maybe it's the five straight Texas top-10s and the fact that he led 224 of 334 laps last fall.
18 (20) Denny Hamlin 1 There's a fine line between motivating your team by calling them out and tearing that team apart by doing the same thing. I'm afraid Denny is crossing the line into the latter.
19 (15) Martin Truex Jr. 1 After his brutal hit, Truex said if that same crash had happened 10 years ago he wouldn't have been standing there doing interviews. He's right.
20 David Ragan 1 He had been strong all year but had no finishes to show for it. Now he does. Don't let anyone tell you he's not fighting to keep his job. He is.
