Rating the Air Guard 400: 4 Stars ****

The regular season came to a close Saturday night at Richmond with one of the cleanest short-track races ever. A race with few interruptions comes out with a 4 Star Rating.

Similar to the thought that every race won’t end in a photo finish, not every Race to the Chase will come down to a close battle between several drivers. Actually, it’s been remarkable so many of them have throughout the years. Two crashes and some rain were the only things that could slow the guys down this week.

However, this was not a 400-mile parade. The guys did race hard throughout the field, it just turned out they did a good job of keeping their cars under them. Kyle Busch said he could have dumped Denny Hamlin late in the race but chose to race him clean. Maybe Busch learned a thing or to from what happened at the All-Star Race. Overall, green-flag racing is better than watching cars ride under yellow anytime.

On to some specifics, even after qualifying 14th, Hamlin said he had a good car in race trim, and he was right. Usually the cars that start up front at Richmond stay there because passing on a short track is far from easy. That was not the case Saturday night, though. Joey Logano was the only driver to finish in the top five that started in the top 10.

Clint Bowyer put together a very solid weekend and kept the questions about the pressure of sitting 12th in the points standings to a minimum. Unfortunately, the Race to the Chase turned out to be a dud this year, but I’d rather the regular season finish quietly than the actual end of the Chase.

People continue to say this may be one of the closest Chases ever. I don’t want to be an excitement killer, but many of those same people said the same thing last year, and then Jimmie Johnson nearly wrapped everything up before the final race of the season.

It’s highly unlikely the championship will come down to just a few points as it did when Kurt Busch won in 2004, but there are reasons to believe this year’s Chase will be a bit more exciting than the past several years.

First, both the Gibbs and Roush cars are running better at this point in the season than either group has in a while, and both organizations traditionally run well at several of the upcoming tracks. Drivers from both camps no longer seem to be intimidated by the fact that the #48 could go out and post top fives in most of the next 10 races.

Second, this year’s regular season was better than years past. In nearly every race, there has at least been a contender that has a good chance to take over the lead late in the race. There haven’t been many Johnson shows at places such as Phoenix and California this year, but we’re saying this now before the Chase begins. It could well be a completely different story in two months.

So now it begins, the 2010 Chase for the Sprint Cup will commence Sunday at New Hampshire, a track with some similar characteristics to Richmond. We’ve gone a few weeks now without a major blow up between two drivers. Maybe everyone just settled into their Chase spots and waited to get things going this weekend. Every year one or two Chasers has a bad New Hampshire race, and except for the invincible Johnson, nobody has been able to come back and win it.