The formula grew some new teeth this week. We added bonuses for winning at multiple tracks and for leading a series, and that reshaped the whole board in favor of drivers with a deep, full-season resume. Aiden Purdue rode it right back into the top ten without turning a lap, Kris Carroll hung onto the final spot through a dry spell, and Connor Gross is left knocking on the door. Stack the weekend's winners cashing hot hand bonuses on top of all that, and you get a Monday where the guys who stayed home still moved and the guys who won got paid.
Jett Nunley - 1 (Last Week: 1)
Still the king, and he keeps adding to the pile. Win number 22 came at KAM Raceway with the National 600 series, which drops the hot hand bonus right back in his lap. Most wins in the country, the points lead, an 89 percent feature rate, and nobody within shouting distance. This is a formality every Monday until somebody beats him on the racetrack instead of on paper.
Brant Woods - 2 (Last Week: 2)
Flat ranking, loud week. Woods went out and grabbed a pair of wins over the weekend and cashed the hot hand bonus for his trouble. Still the only driver on the board carrying two crown jewels, still one of the most complete cards top to bottom. Nobody is prying this spot loose without hardware of their own, and Woods just added more of it.
Cullen Hutchison - 3 (Last Week: 3)
Didn't turn a lap this weekend and didn't need to. Eleven wins and the double-digit win bonus are the anchor holding him at three while everybody around him shuffles. Quiet week, same spot, same result.
Kyle Spence - 4 (Last Week: 4)
Holds at four without racing. The two crown jewels are still sitting in his pocket doing the heavy lifting, and even parked for the weekend he had enough banked to keep the spot warm. He didn't gain ground, but he didn't give any back either.
Jett Yantis - 5 (Last Week: 6)
Up one, and he earned every inch of it. Yantis went to Plaza on Friday night and won two races, which means the hot hand bonus is now riding shotgun on top of the most efficient card on the whole board. A 92 percent feature rate and a 46 percent win rate were already elite. Add a two-win night and five is not going to hold him much longer.
Frank Flud - 6 (Last Week: 5)
Slides one, and it is not on anything he did wrong. He simply sat the weekend out while the guy right below him won twice and climbed over the top of him. Thirteen wins, an elite 31 percent win rate, and the double-digit win bonus keep the floor high. The crown jewel column is still empty, but the number holds him firmly inside the six.
Jared Peterson - 7 (Last Week: 7)
Same spot, and he made sure of it by cashing the hot hand bonus with a win over the weekend. Still the shortest schedule in the entire top ten, still a 100 percent feature rate, still both crown jewels sitting on the card. Small sample, heavy hardware, and the formula does not care that the schedule is light when the trophies are this big.
Alex Ruppert - 8 (Last Week: 8)
Sat the weekend out and holds at eight on the strength of the card he already built. Five wins, a 75 percent feature rate, and a top five card that plays at this level. No laps this week, no movement, no problem.
Aiden Purdue - 9 (Last Week: Honorable Mention)
Here is the wild one. Purdue climbs all the way back into the top ten and he never turned a lap this weekend. This is the new bonus math talking. Forty-one races of full-season grind is exactly the kind of deep resume the new multi-track and series rewards were built for, and it carried him right over the guys who sat idle without the same body of work behind them. The casualty of last week's shuffle just flipped the table with math.
Kris Carroll - 10 (Last Week: 10)
Holds the final spot even in the middle of a dry spell, and that tells you how much respect the full-season card still commands. The Mattix Salmon money is still sitting in his pocket, and the numbers hold up across the board with an 89 percent feature rate and a 60 percent top five rate. The wins will come back around. Until they do, the resume is enough to keep him parked right here at ten.
Honorable Mention
Jeffrey Newell (Last Week: 9) drops to the mentions after sitting the weekend out. One of the smallest samples in the whole group at 16 races, and with no fresh win to add there was nothing to hold off the drivers climbing up underneath him. He needs laps to climb back.
Connor Gross (Last Week: Honorable Mention) sits right on the doorstep this week. The new multi-track and series bonuses gave his full-season resume a real push, just not quite enough to crack the ten with Purdue and Carroll holding down the back end. One more result and he kicks the door right in.
Colby Sokol stays parked on the watch list, fast as ever, still needing a feature final to actually put points on the board.
Cale Cannon is sitting on one of the stronger top five rates outside the ten, quietly one of the more efficient resumes on the whole page. Cash a big one and this fixes itself overnight.
Cash Lacombe keeps grinding out the heavy schedule with the top fives to prove it, just waiting on the win column to catch up to everything else.
Caleb Shietze rounds out the returners with a feature rate near 90 and a top five card that would play inside the ten the second the win total gets there with it.
And the watch list got loud this weekend. Ryker Morrow, Caleb Scarborough, and Cody Barnes all cashed the hot hand bonus with wins over the weekend, and Barnes and Scarborough are already sitting on strong percentage cards. Chase Hyland stays in the mix too. Keep both eyes on that corner of the board, because a couple of these names are one big weekend from forcing their way in.
And do not get too attached to this board, because the schedule is about to test all of it. The Scotty Cook Classic at Sweet Springs and this weekend's action at Miami County are both big enough to shake these rankings around in a hurry. A couple of the right results at either one and half these spots are up for grabs.
Drop your top ten in the comments and tell us who we've got wrong. This board does not sit still for anybody, and next week it is getting torn up all over again.
