Keith Rocco Ends 2010 Season at Top of Stafford Speedway Online Power Ratings
Stafford Springs, CT — While drivers compete against the rest of their respective division for track championship glory, what would happen if drivers from different divisions were able to compete against one another? For an answer to this question, Stafford Motor Speedway has the SMS Online Power Ratings, which measures a driver’s success against drivers from their own division as well as drivers from other divisions. Based on Stafford’s Power Ratings formula, Keith Rocco was the best driver at Stafford this season out of the 181 drivers who scored a championship point.
The Power Ratings is derived from a very simple formula based on a driver’s top-10 finishes. For a victory, a driver earns 100 “power points”, and each subsequent position is 10 points less with the minimum total being 10 “power points” for a 10th place finish. A drivers total “power points” are then divided by the number of feature events that their division has raced, which gives the driver their Power Rating.
Four of the top-5 drivers in the final 2010 Power Ratings were track champions. 2010 Whelen All-American Series National Champion Keith Rocco led the way with his 10 wins, 16 top-5, and 19 top-10 finishes giving him a final Power Rating of 78.0. Woody Pitkat was the only other driver to break the 70-point barrier with his Late Model performance giving him a Power Rating of 71.5. Pitkat is also the only driver that appears twice in the top-25 of the Power Ratings with his SK Modified® season placing him in 19th with a Power Rating of 50.0. Late Model champion Ryan Posocco was third with a Power Rating of 66.5, DARE Stock champion Tony Membrino, Jr. was fourth with a Power Rating of 65.7, and Limited Late Model champion Dan Flannery was fifth with a Power Rating of 65.2. SK Light Champion Matt Galko was the only driver to not make the top-5, as he came in with a 13th place finish Power Rating of 55.7. Rounding out the top-10 behind the four track champions and Pitkat was Tommy Barrett, Jr., Dave Yardley, III, Kyle Casagrande, Dillon Moltz, and Jeff Jolly.
The Power Ratings rewards winning, but it also rewards consistency. Barrett was the big winner of the SK Light Modified division with 10 victories, but he only had 14 top-10 finishes, which landed him in 6th place while Tommy Membrino, Jr., who only won once, never finished outside the top-10 all year long and 16 of his 21 top-10’s were top-5 finishes, which was good enough to place him in fourth overall. The Power Ratings can also sometimes offer surprising results within a division.
In Stafford’s Late Model division, Ryan Posocco won the track championship by 2 points over Woody Pitkat, but in the Power Ratings, Pitkat had the advantage over Posocco, 71.5-66.5. Although Pitkat and Posocco had nearly identical top-5 and top-10 totals, Pitkat scored 8 wins to Posocco’s 4 wins, which gave him a final Power Rating 5 points higher. Stafford’s SK Light Modified division also had a similar occurrence between Tommy Barrett, Jr. and Matt Galko. Galko was the track champion by a 32-point margin over Barrett, but Barrett had the superior Power Rating over Galko, 63.8-55.7 due to his season high victory total of 10 wins compared to Galko’s total of 4 wins.
Jim Peterson was the only driver to appear in the top-25 of the Power Ratings who didn’t win at least one feature event during the 2010 season. Stafford’s Power Ratings can be found online at www.staffordspeedway.com by clicking on the STATISTICS button at the top of the homepage.
For more information, contact the Stafford Motor Speedway track office at 860-684-2783 or visit us on the web at www.staffordspeedway.com.
Sources: Scott Running/Stafford Motor Speedway PR