It’s two weeks after the midway mark of the 2006 Nextel Cup season, but with this being the final open slot on the sport’s calendar, it’s the perfect time to evaluate the performance of this year’s crop of Cup drivers.

A: Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth: They’ve broken clear of the pack in the points standings. Johnson has 16 top 10s to easily lead all drivers, and he won the Daytona 500 as well as two other races. He needs to avoid the late-summer swoon that has choked off his Chase for the Nextel Cup momentum the past two years. Kenseth, despite having only one top-10 finish in the past six races, leads the circuit with 10 top-five finishes, and he might have had three wins, too, if Jeff Gordon hadn’t turned him at Chicagoland.

A-: Kasey Kahne and Denny Hamlin: Kahne’s four victories lead the circuit at this point, but he sputtered a bit after his most recent win at Michigan with finishes of 31st, 25th, 23rd and 31st in four of the past five races. Hamlin has been a breakout star as a rookie with a season’s sweep at Pocono – in the same car he’ll race in next week at Indianapolis. He hasn’t finished lower than 17th since Talladega.

B+: Jeff Burton, Greg Biffle, Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick: Each of these drivers has a win, except for Burton, who has 13 top-10 finishes and 14 straight finishes of 15th or better. Biffle has 10 top-10 finishes after having only two in the first nine races to get back into the Chase hunt. Richard Childress Racing hasn’t had a team in the Chase in the first two years of that format, so if Harvick and Burton both get there this year, it’d be a nice story.

B: Tony Stewart, Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and Kurt Busch: Stewart drops into this grouping with his struggles since he banged up his shoulder at Charlotte. He won at Daytona in July and was third at Pocono in June, but in six races surrounding those two runs he was 25th or worse. Martin only has three top-five finishes, but he’s been consistent enough to stay in the Chase picture. Gordon said his team would improve as the season went on, and that may turn out to be true. Earnhardt Jr. was third in the points two weeks ago, but he finished last at New Hampshire (blown engine) and at Pocono (wreck) to knock him out of the top 10 for now, at least. Kurt Busch is on the edge of Chase contention, but his win at Bristol slides him into this group.

B-: Carl Edwards, Brian Vickers and Ryan Newman: Vickers has done what he’s done for the past couple of years, shown flashes of being ready to win without converting. Edwards needs six great runs starting at Indy to have any Chase shot. Newman’s team just simply hasn’t been as good as it seems like it should be.

C+: Casey Mears and Clint Bowyer: Mears got off to a really nice start, and Bowyer seems to be picking up steam as the season goes along. They’ve sort of met in the middle here.

C: Reed Sorenson, Martin Truex Jr., J.J. Yeley, Bobby Labonte, Scott Riggs and Jamie McMurray: Much more was expected out of McMurray when he moved to Roush Racing, and that team needs to pick it up. Riggs has battled back nicely from missing the Daytona 500 field, and Labonte has done what could reasonably have been expected in the No. 43 Dodges, helping Petty Enterprises move back toward being consistently competitive. Sorenson, Truex and Yeley have performed capably if unspectacularly as rookies.

C-: Elliott Sadler, Tony Raines, Jeff Green, Dave Blaney and Joe Nemechek: Sadler has decided that Robert Yates Racing is going to need a lot of work to get back to top-tier status over the next couple of years and decided not to hang around to be part of it. Raines, after taking over for Terry Labonte in the No. 96 Chevrolets, has kept the Hall of Fame Racing team safely inside the top 35, which is about all a first-year, single-car team can reasonably expect. Green, Blaney and Nemechek have run reasonably close to expectation.

D: Ken Schrader, Dale Jarrett, Sterling Marlin, Jeremy Mayfield, Kyle Petty and Robby Gordon: These teams get barely passing grades because, despite their struggles, they’ve managed to remain in the top 35 in car owner points. That might not seem like much of a standard, but it will get dramatically more important as the season goes forward.

F: Michael Waltrip, Travis Kvapil, David Stremme, Scott Wimmer: Once you get in the hole of being outside the top 35 in car owner points, it’s difficult to climb out.