NASCAR Cup Series: Driver Power Rankings after 2018 Coke Zero Sugar 400
By Asher Fair
Following the 18th race of the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season, where do the sport’s 31 full-time drivers rank? Who jumped and who dropped?
A total of 18 of the 36 races on the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season are in the books, meaning the season is officially halfway over. Joe Gibbs Racing’s Erik Jones earned his first career Cup Series victory in the season’s 18th race, which was the Coke Zero Sugar 400, at Daytona International Speedway.
By winning the race at the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida in his #20 Toyota, Jones became the seventh different driver to win at least one of the 18 races that have been held so far this season.
Of the other six drivers who have won at least one race so far this season, four have won multiple races. Those four drivers are Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch and Furniture Row Racing’s Martin Truex Jr., the defending Cup Series champion.
With his win in the Coke Zero Sugar 400, Jones joined Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Dillon and Team Penske’s Joey Logano as one of the drivers who has earned exactly one win so far this season. Both of those drivers also won restrictor plate races, as Dillon won the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway in mid-February and Logano won the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in late April .
How did the nonstop action from the wreck-filled Coke Zero Sugar 400 affect the NASCAR Cup Series Driver Power Rankings? Here are the formulated NASCAR Cup Series Driver Power Rankings and the non-formulated NASCAR Cup Series Driver Power Rankings following the 18th race of the 2018 season.
NOTE: While Gray Gaulding did not compete in the Coke Zero Sugar 400, he is still in these rankings as a result of the fact that the driver situation of the #23 BK Racing Toyota for the rest of the 2018 season has not yet been confirmed and he is still technically considered a full-time driver.
To see how the formulated NASCAR Cup Series Driver Power Rankings are calculated, click here.