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 whole world -- know in the Conversation section at the bottom of the page. But remember, make your mama proud.

New this week
Marcos Ambrose.

Dropped out
Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Biggest movers
Denny Hamlin moves up four spots from ninth to fifth, Kasey Kahne from 17th to 13th.

Biggest losers
Jeff Burton falls five spots from 14th to 19th.

Also considered
Casey Mears, Elliott Sadler, Patrick Carpentier, Ernie Irvan, Dick Passwater.

2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Power Rankings - Week 18
	RK(LW)	DRIVER	TOP 10s	COMMENT
	1 (1)	Tony Stewart	12	Enough already with the "yeah, but he's in a Hendrick Motorsports car" talk. If that's the case then we should be even more impressed because he's whipping the Hendrick guys with their own stuff.
	2 (2)	Jeff Gordon	11	For example ... he keeps beating this guy.
	3 (3)	Jimmie Johnson	10	... And this one.
	4 (4)	Carl Edwards	8	On paper a 12th-place finish might not seem like a big deal to you. But in the up-and-down life of King Carl on road courses, he'll take his top-12 and get the heck to New Hampshire.
	5 (9)	Denny Hamlin	6	Amazing what two weeks of good pit work and no bad luck can do for a man. He's stone cold cash and rolled coin at Loudon with five top-10s and one win in six starts.
	6 (5)	Kurt Busch	8	The Blue Deuce damn near knocked down the wall at Infineon and still came back to finish 15th. Good thing the CoT is built to the same specs as the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
	7 (7)	Ryan Newman	8	After a super hot spring, life has cooled considerably for the Rocket Man. This would be a good time to get to a track where he's won twice and led 520 laps. Wait, you say he's done that at Loudon? Perfect.
	8 (10)	Matt Kenseth	6	Matty moves up only by default. He finished 18th at Infineon, but compared with the next two guys on our list he might as well have won the race.
	9 (8)	Greg Biffle	8	Want to know a surefire sign of a bad day if you're a driver? How about screaming at your crew chief before the race is a third of the way finished because you think his "strategy is complete crap."
	10 (6)	Mark Martin	8	The week after his first win of the season he finished 43rd. He won one week ago and this week finished 35th. Hey, I guess that's an improvement, right?
	11 (12)	Juan Pablo Montoya	7	Look who's in the Chase ... sure it's barely, but he's in. Imagine how high he'd be ranked if his cars were actually fast.
	12 (11)	Kyle Busch	5	You can start your discussion about "should Shrub stop racing in the lower levels and concentrate on Cup before he falls out of the Chase" in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
	13 (17)	Kasey Kahne	5	Blue Eyes wins! Blue Eyes wins! And tween-age girls and lonely housewives across America scream with glee!
	14 (15)	Clint Bowyer	6	The most famous man from Emporia, Kan., not named Dean Smith might be the best road course racer who no one realizes is actually a good road course racer. He also won at New Hampshire in 2007.
	15 (13)	David Reutimann	4	After such a great May and early June it took only two bad weeks to completely knock him out of the Chase. Bad news -- his average finish at New Hampshire is 24.5 in four starts.
	16 (16)	Jamie McMurray	3	Sitting 19th in points, Jamie's not going to make the Chase. But there's still plenty of time to make a decent season out of this yet. On top of that he's getting married in a few weeks. Awwww.
	17 (18)	Brian Vickers	6	Two poles in two weeks is good, but for BV to finally make the jump to the next level it's time to follow those up with a better finish than 12.5, which is what he's averaged after his five poles this year.
	18	Marcos Ambrose	4	Mr. Thunder from Down Under now has the same number of top-5s -- two -- as Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Bobby Labonte combined. And at Infineon he raced with a bumper wider than your Aunt Marva's.
	19 (14)	Jeff Burton	6	Look out below!
	20 (19)	Martin Truex Jr.	3	Was that Truex in that No. 1 Chevy at Infineon or was it Boo Berry?