Rating the Auto Club 400: 1 Star *

The first Sprint Cup Series race in California this year was less than thrilling, as a drive down the interstate would’ve been more exciting than Sunday’s race at Auto Club Speedway. It took just five races for Monday Morning Crew Chief to dish out the first 1 Star Rating of the season.

Congratulations to Tony Stewart, at least he had one of the best cars in the field Sunday. The green-flag racing also wasn’t a problem. NASCAR maintains integrity when it doesn’t throw debris cautions to bunch up the field, and letting a race go green decreases the chance of a fluke winner because of a restart.

Still, this race was two-and-a-half hours that most NASCAR fans will quickly forget. Nothing memorable happened, and then the race was shortened by rain with 71 laps remaining.

Those are the ingredients for a pretty boring race.

I actually had hopes for an exciting Sprint Cup Series race this weekend after watching the Nationwide Series race. Saturday’s race had the top five drivers all within a few car lengths of each other and the lead changed several times before Joey Logano crossed the finish line first.

That, however, certainly did not transfer over to Sunday’s race. Kyle Busch took the early lead, eventually Stewart ran him down to take over the top spot and then it rained. That was it.

Shoot, some fans might not have digested their Sunday fried chicken before the race was over.

The other issue that plagues races at Fontana is the fact that only drivers on big teams do well at the track. There are no surprises in the running order. The final results might as well have a dollar amount for how many resources the team can put toward a car’s performance.

I’m not saying NASCAR shouldn’t have tracks such as Fontana on the schedule. This track is a good test of a car’s performance. However, the teams that have the best handling cars are the teams with the most money and therefore run up front at large tracks where handling and aerodynamics matter a great deal. Thankfully, Martinsville is next week, and handling and aerodynamics hardly matter at all there.

The one lesson to take away from Fontana is that Stewart might have the best overall team right now. He has won seven of the last 15 races, including last year at several different types of tracks.

But, his two wins this year have been at Las Vegas and Fontana, the two intermediate tracks where the series has run so far. That could make for some Stewart domination this season because most of the schedule is made up of tracks similar to where he has already won.

In any case, feel free to quickly dispose of Sunday’s race and move on to next week at Martinsville. The paperclip racetrack has been the site of some of the best racing in the last few years and the sport sure could use a little bit of a pick-me-up as momentum has slowed since a wild Speedweeks in February.

It’s time to get folks excited again, and Martinsville might be just the place to get things fired up.