Week 22 Unified Power Rankings

With all the major series taking last week off from points' paying races, this week's Unified Power Rankings were reorganized by two factors. First, the Camping World Truck Series raced under the lights at Lowe's, which allowed their top contenders to make up a little ground in the standings, and the All-Star race was run the following night.

Secondly, since the Unified Power Rankings looks at only the last three months, the Daytona Speedweek races are aging off this list. Drivers who peaked in the first race of the season are falling by the wayside.

Tony Stewart earned his first victory as an owner/driver and that allowed him to make up some ground on the Formula 1 giants at the top of the standings. However, their advantage is too great, so Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello continue to dominate the first two spots. Each of these drivers should be anchoring your fantasy roster in their respective games.

Kurt Busch's solid third-place—combined with Jeff Gordon's accident in the All-Star race—caused those two drivers to swap positions four and five. Since Busch is a lesser value in most fantasy games, however, his worth on fantasy owners' rosters takes an even greater leap.

Truck driver James Buescher earned his fifth consecutive top-15 in that series to make him a solid mid-range pick while he climbs onto this list for the first time in 2009. Meanwhile, Cup regular Martin Truex Jr. failed to advance from the Sprint Showdown and now hovers on the cusp of falling outside the top 50.

Unified Power Rankings

Rank	Driver	Points	Last week	+/-
1	Jenson Button	107.80	1	0
2	Rubens Barrichello	96.00	2	0
3	Tony Stewart	91.50	3	0
4	Kurt Busch	88.73	5	1
5	Jeff Gordon	87.82	4	-1
6	Jason Leffler	87.44	7	1
7	Denny Hamlin	84.50	6	-1
8	Jimmie Johnson	83.36	8	0
9	Ryan Newman	82.93	10	1
10	Ron Hornaday Jr	82.60	11	1
11	Timo Glock	81.60	9	-2
12	Kyle Busch	80.04	13	1
13	Jeff Burton	78.82	12	-1
14	Mark Webber	78.40	14	0
15	Carl Edwards	77.55	15	0
16	Sebastian Vettel	77.20	17	1
17	Brad Keselowski	76.79	23	6
18	Greg Biffle	74.86	16	-2
19	Matt Kenseth	74.75	18	-1
20	Matt Crafton	74.00	27	7
21	Fernando Alonso	73.80	21	0
22	Mark Martin	73.75	20	-2
23	Joey Logano	72.79	31	8
24	Dale Earnhardt Jr	71.71	26	2
25	Kasey Kahne	71.00	29	4
26	Juan Montoya	69.73	19	-7
27	Scott Lagasse Jr	69.22	42	15
28	Steve Wallace	68.89	43	15
29	Kevin Harvick	68.83	25	-4
30	Mike Skinner	68.80	32	2
31	Brian Vickers	68.67	24	-7
32	Clint Bowyer	68.38	22	-10
33	Jason Keller	68.00	30	-3
34	David Reutimann	67.86	28	-6
35	Johnny Benson Jr	67.60	34	-1
36	Justin Allgaier	67.33	45	9
37	Lewis Hamilton	65.20	36	-1
38	Nico Rosberg	65.20	37	-1
39	Jamie McMurray	65.09	46	7
40	Jarno Trulli	64.00	39	-1
41	Chad McCumbee	62.60	47	6
42	Rick Crawford	62.60	56	14
43	David Ragan	62.56	33	-10
44	Marcos Ambrose	62.45	35	-9
45	James Buescher	61.80	62	17
46	Stacy Compton	61.60	53	7
47	Nick Heidfeld	60.80	50	3
48	Martin Truex Jr	60.55	38	-10
49	David Stremme	59.82	54	5
50	Brendan Gaughan	59.78	48	-2

The Unified Power Rankings are based on "percentage points." Starting with a 100 score for the winner of a Nationwide race, each subsequent position is decremented by a percentage that relates to the number of drivers in the field. In a 50-car field of potential qualifiers, the second-place driver receives 98 points, third-place gets 96 points, the 43rd-place driver gets 16 points (because he beat eight other driver to even get into the field) and so on until the last non-qualifier in 50th-place gets two points.

Only races run in the last three months count in this formula.

The Cup, IRL and Formula 1 series start at 110 points for a victory (since its so difficult to win one of these races) and then decrements 1/50th of 110 points for each subsequent position. It’s an unscientific way to determine who is the best in their series, while simultaneously trying to compare apples to oranges.

Previous Unified Power Rankings:

Week 21
Week 20