When a 12th-place finish at Perris Auto Speedway aged out of the formula, Brian Brown rocketed to the top of the FloRacing Sprint Car Series Power Rankings, but don't expect him to stay there very long.

The Power Rankings formula looks at the past 60 days to ensure that recent momentum is rewarded. In order to have a meaningful average, drivers must have raced at least four times in World of Outlaws or American Sprint Car Series competition.

That is a long enough period of time to be meaningful but short enough that drivers cannot simply rest on their early-season laurels. Occasionally, it creates some scenarios that require some explanation. Brown has been splitting his time between the World of Outlaws and the American Sprint Car Series. The 410 sprints of the Outlaws can often be difficult to handle for 360 drivers, but Brown was at his best in the more powerful sprinters. 

Don't expect Brown to stay among the leaders long, however, because his Yuma Valley Showdown victory at Cocopah Speedway in Yuma, AZ, on April 7 and a third-place finish the next night at Arizona Speedway in Queens Creek will age out next week. 

That makes Donny Schatz the de facto leader. To climb into this position, he had to leapfrog over David Gravel, and Schatz accomplished that feat with a pair of top fives in the past week. He finished fourth in the Outlaw Showdown at the Dirt Track at Charlotte Motor Speedway in front of a packed grandstand of fans in town for the Coke 600. He followed that with a third at Lawrenceburg Speedway four nights later. At Lawrenceburg, he got to watch NASCAR driver Kyle Larson battle his employee Shane Stewart in one of the most thrilling Outlaw races this year. 

Brad Sweet also moved ahead of Gravel, and like Schatz, Sweet did so on the strength of back-to-back top fives in the last two Outlaws races. He finished second in Charlotte in a race that car owner Kasey Kahne was able to attend. It's always nice to impress the boss. Sweet is riding a current wave of 14 consecutive top 10s. 

Gravel dropped three positions this week from first to fourth. He struggled through preliminaries at Charlotte and Lawrenceburg to start 11th and 19th, respectively. He managed to improve in both races with an eighth-place finish at Charlotte and 10th at Lawrenceburg. If he manages to get good track position in the next couple of events, he should rebound quickly. 

Johnny Herrera rounds out the top five. The ASCS was set to run a two-night show in Colorado last weekend, but Mother Nature would not cooperate. That means this series has run only one race since April 15, and several of Herrera's best efforts are going to age out of the formula soon. In fact, with their next race not hitting the calendar until June 9, series regulars who do not also run some Outlaw events might not have the minimum four races required to give them a meaningful average. The good news is that once the ASCS gets racing again, it will run a seven-race show in Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri the series is dubbing the Sizzlin' Summer Speedweeks.

Sprint Car Power Rankings
1. Brian Brown, 87.25 percentage points
2. Donny Schatz, 86.24
3. Brad Sweet, 86.00
4. David Gravel, 85.06
5. Johnny Herrera, 82.50
6. Sam Hafertepe Jr., 81.00
7. Matt Covington, 80.25
8. Jason Johnson, 77.00
9. Rico Abreu, 76.50
10. Daryn Pittman, 74.53
View Full Sprint Car Rankings