Rating the Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips 400: 2 Stars **

Another week, another win for Joe Gibbs Racing and another set of teammates battle it out on the track. All in all, it was not a spectacular weekend. The first 2010 race at Michigan gets a 2 Star Rating.

Denny Hamlin continues to dominate after the return of the spoiler. So much for all those who said it wouldn’t make much of a difference. The power shift we have seen with the spoiler change is more than we saw with the initial change to the COT. Yes, Hendrick Motorsports dominated 2007, but that group was already on top before the change, and managed to stay there afterward.

Overall, the change to the spoiler has been a good one. After a while the leader would gain a sizeable advantage on the second-place car on a long run, but cars were able to hang with the leader for a longer period of time than what we saw with the wing.

Other good news that came from this weekend was talk that more changes will likely be made to the COT in coming years. After the COT came on board in 2007, many people complained of the generic nature of the cars. Well, now NASCAR says it is working on restoring some brand identity to the cars. Imagine that subject coming up at Michigan. Anyway, NASCAR took the first step back to better racing earlier this season with the spoiler change. Now the next step is to give each manufacturer a unique nose. That was mainly the only difference on the old-style cars anyhow.

Once again, teammates got together on the track and were unhappy with each other afterward. Casey Mears got into Scott Speed this time, which is unfortunate because Brian Vickers had a good thing going with that #83 team and now they kind of have to take a few steps back for the rest of the season.

OK, on to Sunday’s race. All week everyone was preparing for a fuel-mileage race. Well, it didn’t happen. The way the cautions flew ended up leaving only half a fuel run at the end. But hey, some races just end normally, and that is totally fine. They aren’t all going to be like Daytona and Talladega. That’s what makes those races special. Every race is not like that, and every track is not designed to always provide close finishes. Live with it.

I really don’t want to get into the whole debris caution issue again. That horse has been beaten plenty on this blog. However, allow me one quick thought. Some say the phantom debris caution has been around forever. Well, I haven’t been around forever so I can’t say one way or the other. But, many people seem to be content with NASCAR continuing to cheat the race, the drivers, the crews and the fans. Are fans really that fickle?

I also don’t like comparing NASCAR to other sports because in most cases auto racing is just different. But, do fans go to baseball games expecting a no-hitter and then get fed up with the sport when it doesn’t happen? Hardly. The fact that an exciting game only happens once in a while makes those moments special. Same is true for NASCAR. Please, once and for all, let the races happen naturally. If a race ends in a photo finish, great. If not, well maybe next time, but a normal race is still better than pretty much anything else that happens during a given weekend.

So, next up is Sonoma. The technical zig-zag track in California is a nice break in the middle of the season, please just leave it there. Hopefully one of the road-course ringers has a good run, but lately that has not been an exception to the rule, as Cup drivers get better and better on these types of tracks. In any case, a different face up front will be a nice change from the latest stretch of races to feature only four different winners in the last eight races. Take a nice sip of wine and enjoy the weekend everybody.