Each week of the Sprint Cup season, ESPN The Magazine's Ryan McGee ranks the top 20 drivers in the series. Don't agree with McGee's list? Let him -- and the rest of the world -- know in the comments section at the bottom of the page. But remember, make your mama proud.
Biggest mover
Dale Earnhardt Jr. jumps five spots from 12th to seventh.
Biggest loser
Carl Edwards falls seven spots from fifth to 12th.
New this week
Paul Menard
Dropped out
Aric Almirola
Also considered
Denny Hamlin, Mark Martin, Jody Ridley
| 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Power Rankings - Week 30 | ||||
| RANK | DRIVER | TRENDING | TOP 10s | COMMENT |
| 1 |  MattKenseth | -- Last Week: 1 | 16 | Not that finishing seventh is exactly what you'd call a horrible day, but look for Kenseth to rebound this weekend at Kansas, where he's won the past two and finished fourth in the two before that. |
| 2 |  JimmieJohnson | 1 Last Week: 3 | 18 | Say hello to your new all-time Dover winner. I don't know what it is, but if you can overtake Richard Petty and Bobby Allison in any statistic, that's stout. Might he one day also pass The King in Cups? |
| 3 |  KyleBusch | 1 Last Week: 2 | 18 | How tough is this Chase? After three races, Shrub's average finish is third, yet he's still stuck in third in the point standings. Before this year, he'd never had more than two top-5s in a single Chase. |
| 4 |  GregBiffle | -- Last Week: 4 | 12 | The Biff was great on last week's "Marty & McGee" podcast, during which he admitted that he needed a couple of home runs to get back into the title hunt. He has six top-3 finishes in 14 Kansas starts. |
| 5 |  KevinHarvick | 1 Last Week: 6 | 15 | A sixth-place run was a nice bounce-back after a misstep at Loudon. He slides into one of the "barely hanging on at just inside a race's worth of points" slot vacated by Carl Edwards. |
| 6 |  JeffGordon | 2 Last Week: 8 | 14 | Joining Happy at 39 points back is Four-Time, who sounds, well, happy. "Kansas will be the test. If we run well there and then hit Charlotte, Martinsville, places like that. Who knows?" |
| 7 |  DaleEarnhardt Jr. | 5 Last Week: 12 | 16 | Literally within seconds of Junior finishing second, my Twitter timeline was filled with the same tired old "He doesn't care enough and needs to get up on the wheel." Really? Did you hear his postrace comments? |
| 8 |  RyanNewman | 1 Last Week: 9 | 14 | When I run road races, I blow past these quiet, steady-paced people at the start. Then they always march right by my worn-out butt at the end. That's Newman. Trotting his way to a fifth- to eighth-place points finish. |
| 9 |  ClintBowyer | 1 Last Week: 10 | 15 | Bowyer's 10th-place finish meant Chase drivers swept all top 10 spots in a Chase race for the first time in Chase history. That's a bar bet I would have lost. |
| 10 |  KurtBusch | 3 Last Week: 7 | 14 | It's not officially time to start focusing on that new 2014 Stewart-Haas ride, but I wouldn't be shocked if he was thumbing through the company catalog and picking out clothes. |
| 11 |  JoeyLogano | 3 Last Week: 14 | 15 | After Happy Hour, the 22 crew changed three springs, both bars and all the shocks. When my mechanic does that, he's just trying to overcharge me. Logano's mechanics got him a third-place finish. |
| 12 |  CarlEdwards | 7 Last Week: 5 | 14 | Looked like he had a nice strategy setup for the end, but was undone by a broken left rear. Now he's in the "Really need the top three guys to have a bad race and also wreck at Talladega while I don't" club. |
| 13 |  JamieMcMurray | 3 Last Week: 16 | 7 | Jamie Mac might wrap up the "Best Guy Not In The Chase" award before we even get to Charlotte, his favorite track that still holds Cup races. (He really, really misses Rockingham.) |
| 14 |  MartinTruex Jr. | 1 Last Week: 13 | 12 | The Clam Prince of New Jersey Heritage Tour ended with disappointing finishes of 10th at New Hampshire and 15th at Dover, but he's finished second, second and fourth in his past three Kansas starts. |
| 15 |  BradKeselowski | 4 Last Week: 11 | 12 | There's a "Breaking Brad" joke in here somewhere. |
| 16 |  KaseyKahne | 1 Last Week: 15 | 11 | You think your kids are missing summer? Since Labor Day weekend, Ol' Blue Eyes has zero top-10 finishes and an average finish of 22.4. |
| 17 |  JeffBurton | 2 Last Week: 19 | 6 | The Mayor has gutted out some decent finishes over the past few weeks but it'll take a Rocky-in-the-Russian-barn effort to do the same at Kansas, where he's finished 18th or worse in seven straight. |
| 18 |  BrianVickers | 2 Last Week: 20 | 6 | The Sheriff barely missed the top 10 at Dover. Still, his six top-10s in only 15 starts is more than eight drivers who have started all 29 races ... |
| 19 |  RickyStenhouse Jr. | 1 Last Week: 18 | 2 | ... including this guy. |
| 20 |  PaulMenard | 1 Last Week: NR | 7 | Started 21st, led no laps, finished 18th, and maintained his points position of 17th. That pretty much sums up his entire season. |
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