NASCAR Cup Series: Driver Power Rankings after 2018 Food City 500 at Bristol
By Asher Fair
With eight races in the books, the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season is really starting to heat up. Where do the 32 full-time drivers rank against one another?
Eight of the 36 races on the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season schedule are in the books, although a suspension halted the eighth race of the season as a result of rain to slightly delay this statement from being a factual one.
The eighth race of the 2018 season, the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee, took place on Monday and Kyle Busch drove to his second consecutive victory in it in his #18 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing.
Busch has now finished on the podium in each of the last six Cup Series races. Over the course of those six races, he has two wins, three 2nd place finishes and one 3rd place finish, with both of those wins coming in the last two races, as referenced above.
Busch is pulling away in the championship standings and has now tied Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick for the lead in the playoff points since the seven playoff points that Harvick earned by winning the first two stages and the race in Las Vegas were taken away as a result of a post-race penalty.
With all of this and more from the first eight races of the 2018 Cup Series season considered, how do each of the 32 full-time drivers stack up against one another?
Here is the eighth edition of the 2018 formulated NASCAR Cup Series Driver Power Rankings as well as the eighth edition of the 2018 non-formulated NASCAR Cup Series Driver Power Rankings following the action from the Food City 500 on the high banks of the four-turn, 0.533-mile Bristol Motor Speedway oval.
To see how the formulated rankings are calculated, click here.