Rating the AAA 400: 2 Stars **

Brad Keselowski and the #2 team outsmarted the Sprint Cup Series field again Sunday at Dover International Speedway to win their second Chase race of the season, with seven more to go. Late strategy drama saved what was left of an otherwise boring race that deserves a 2 Star Rating.

Keselowski now leads the points standings and stands five points in front of second-place Jimmie Johnson. This has all the makings of a three-man championship battle among Keselowski, Johnson and Denny Hamlin, who sits 16 points behind in third, and Keselowski is leading the charge.

Those who thought Keselowski would be a factor once the Chase started might have thought he would play the role of Clint Bowyer in past years. Bowyer often had a great start to the Chase and would hang around through most of October before falling behind the real championship contenders.

Keselowski is better than that. He and crew chief Paul Wolfe can pull out top-five finishes on days they have a mediocre car that qualified in the mid-20s because they play the strategy game better than anyone in the sport.

That team looks at every part of the race as an opportunity to gain an advantage while most people focus on the final two runs. Keselowski is on top of the sport because he and his team have made calls early in races while other teams follow the leader and make the same call as everyone else. Granted, they have to have good cars to be able to pull off those moves, but good cars and good strategy are key ingredients in a championship run.

On the other side of the battle, Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin walked out of the Monster Mile disappointed even though they had top-10 runs. Busch dominated Sunday the way Hamlin had the week prior at New Hampshire, but fuel strategy got in the way and both drivers had to pit late in the race.

The loss means nothing but frustration for Busch because he isn’t in the Chase this year, but Hamlin gave up six points that could prove extremely costly late in the season. Johnson also had to back down on the final run to make sure he had enough gas to the finish.

While other drivers are leaking points, Keselowski is capitalizing. The rest of the Chase field better take the #2 team seriously or they will be saluting the team with a championship toast at the end of the year.

Overall, there wasn’t much on-track action. J.J. Yeley blew a tire during green-flag pit stops on lap 69 that knocked all but six drivers off the lead lap, but the race wouldn’t have been any more exciting if everyone was on the lead lap.

At this point in the season, the good cars are head and shoulders above the rest of the field so a race among the top six at tracks such as New Hampshire and Dover is about as exciting as it would be if 30 cars were on the lead lap.

That will all change next week, though, as the series heads to Talladega Superspeedway for the final restrictor-plate race of the season.

Those races are nearly impossible to predict, which is part of their intrigue. However, if Keselowski, Johnson and Hamlin finish in the top 10, the window of opportunity for the rest of the Chase drivers will virtually shut.

But for one week at least, the Chase will take a back seat to 500 miles of intense 200 mph drama at the biggest track of them all.

Have a great week, everybody.

Rating the AAA 400: 2 Stars **

Somebody other than Tony Stewart finally won a race that didn’t come down to fuel mileage, but that doesn’t mean the race at Dover was any more exciting. The third race in the Chase gets the third straight 2 Star Rating to start the playoffs.

Kurt Busch put his name in the ring as a possible championship contender as he held off Jimmie Johnson to score his second win of the season. He had a surprisingly consistent car most of the day and didn’t have to lose his mind in anger over the radio during the second half of the race.

Overall, this was typical of a relatively poor Dover race. The car that jumped out front on the restart simply could not be caught. There may have been 24 lead changes, but many of them came during green-flag pit stops. Otherwise, Carl Edwards, Johnson and Busch dominated their three chunks of the race.

Right now Dover might be a track that Goodyear needs to continue to test and tweak the tire compound. The style of racing Sunday was basically a mirror image of the race at New Hampshire. Nobody could run side-by-side even when the race came down to the finish.

There have been races at both New Hampshire and Dover that have been exciting throughout the years. At Dover, the three-way battle between the Roush-Fenway drivers in 2008 that Greg Biffle won and the race that following spring where Johnson beat Tony Stewart after a spirited battle.

That type of race has disappeared for the time being at Dover. For whatever reason, the tires are laying down an incredible amount of rubber in the turns and it has made for follow-the-leader racing.

Right now the racing styles at Dover and Bristol are flipped. The drivers can race all day long at Bristol side-by-side but they can’t run more than a lap or two that way at Dover.

Fans want to see the single-file racing at the half-mile Bristol track because that track is short enough that drivers can move each other out of the way to gain a spot. At the mile-long Dover track, side-by-side battles are far more exciting.

Anyway, the other part to Sunday’s race involved the championship standings. Right now we’ve got a tie between Kevin Harvick and Edwards, but the intrigue begins with Busch and Johnson in fifth and sixth.

Both drivers moved up five spots and have shut down the talks that both of them are already out of the championship battle. Ryan Newman and Denny Hamlin might be out of the championship picture, but not these two past champions.

Next week the series will head to Kansas for another go around on the ever-exciting Kansas Speedway. Don’t worry folks, only one more week before the Charlotte, Talladega, Martinsville stretch.

The championship might be decided in those three races. The next race at Kansas will just be another week teams have to be careful not to cause a problem that will put them behind when the interesting part of the Chase begins at Charlotte.

Rating the AAA 400: 3 Stars ***

All of the off-the-track drama to center stage early this weekend in Dover, but everybody settled down for what was another in a growing string of clean races. Overall, the race with a three-letter name gets a 3 Star Rating.

Once again, Jimmie Johnson dominated Dover. Sunday’s race was his sixth win at the track and Hendrick Motorsports’ seventh win at the Monster Mile in the last 10 years. But, this race kind of went backwards compared to most Johnson-dominated races, and that was because of A.J. Allmendinger.

The driver of the #43 has had several good runs lately, but Sunday he took it to another level. After starting second, I think most people expected him to steadily fall through the field and become a non-factor. Instead he passed the eventual winner, Johnson, on lap 14 and flat out drove away from the field for the first half of the race.

Unfortunately, he ran over a washer that got stuck in a tire and created a slow leak that eventually forced him to pit road and off pit sequence, something that really set him back when Matt Kenseth brought out a caution with his blown tire. He was able to make his way back to 10th by the end of the race, but this is just another case of something unusual happening to keep someone other that the usual suspects out of contention for a victory.

A similar situation happened at Homestead last year when Marcos Ambrose led early but had tire issues and spun out, turning a potential winning day into a very frustrating day. Why does this sort of thing happen to these guys? One could say they lack experience at the front of the field and don’t have cars that can maintain a winning pace for 400 miles, but these are freak problems that theoretically could happen to anyone.

There have been a few times this year where the surprise guy did hold on and finish off a great day with a win. David Reutimann did it at Chicagoland, but that is certainly the exception rather than the norm. Of the 28 races this season, Reutimann and Jamie McMurray could be considered the only surprise winners all season. Juan Pablo Montoya and Clint Bowyer, maybe, but both have been in the Chase before.

Speaking of Bowyer, his crazy week culminated with a frustrating 25th-place finish. My, how a season can change in one week. At this point last week people were debating whether or not Clint Bowyer could hang around and have a shot at winning the title. Now he will be an afterthought for the rest of the season other than news about his penalty. That whole situation certainly set off some interesting events this weekend.

Denny Hamlin stepped up to the microphone Friday and told the world his view on the situation.

“You can talk about how small the thing was off and you can really try to say that 60-thousandths didn't help him perform any better," Hamlin said. "That is a crock. (It wasn't like) he wasn't speeding on pit road by a half-a-mile per hour. He was speeding by 5.5 mph.”

Obviously, the Richard Childress Racing bunch wasn’t too happy, and Kevin Harvick took matters into his own hands when he bumped the #11 a few times at the start of practice Saturday. Then, the two teams push and yell at each other when the cars come back to their garage stalls, which were conveniently located right next to each other.

The whole thing stopped there, for now. The ruling on Childress’ appeal will happen Wednesday and that will probably be the end of it, but it was fun while it lasted.

Next week the series moves on to Kansas Speedway, the first of three consecutive tri-ovals. Don’t expect any surprise winners here. Six of the nine winners in the track’s history are in the Chase this season and, as expected, Johnson comes in on a roll.

Rating the AAA 400: 3 Stars ***

The Monster Mile chewed up and spit out a bunch of cars on Sunday, but Hendrick Motorsports was unaffected as they once again brought home a 1-2 finish. Once again, when Jimmie Johnson goes out and dominates it’s difficult to have a really exciting race, so the second race of the Chase gets a 3 Star Rating.

Just as we have seen many times over the last half decade, Jimmie Johnson jumped out to the mandatory two second lead on the first run. Thankfully, he got put back in the field a bit after the first pit stop and really didn’t make much headway back in traffic. But, once he did get back out front it was all over.

The way Johnson runs races these days reminds me of Jeff Gordon in his prime. There were races where Gordon would dominate all day and easily lead the most laps, but there were also days when he wouldn’t pop up until the very end and steal a victory. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, though; Johnson was mentored by Gordon and has maintained that same driving style.

For the most part, this was a pretty clean race. Every once in a while somebody would blow a tire, but other than Joey Logano’s wild ride, things were pretty serene. However, the wreck that Logano had was spectacular. People don’t come to Dover expecting cars to flip over seven times. That stuff is usually reserved for Daytona and Talladega.

“It just really scared the heck out of me,” Logano said. “It started rolling, and I was in there, thinking, 'Man, just make this thing stop.' It wouldn't. It just kept going and going.”

Overall this year has seen its fair share of wild crashes. From Carl Edwards at Talladega to Kyle Busch at Daytona to Sam Hornish Jr. at the Glen; there have been some hard licks and yet nobody has come away with much more than a few bruises. The safety of these cars is amazing, and that was NASCAR’s top priority in building the new car.

While the safety of the cars has been a bright spot, NASCAR continues to hurt their credibility when they throw the debris caution with 30 or so laps left in the race. Every time a race looks like it may go green to the end and the leader has a comfortable lead, here comes the debris caution, which just causes more cautions when they line the cars up double-file. I know NASCAR is excited about the double-file restarts, but please stop messing with the finish of these races.

The final northern swing of the season is finished and now it’s on to the heartland and Kansas Speedway. I happened to visit the track earlier this year so it will be cool for me, personally, to watch the race. Hopefully the racing is pretty good. This is another race where an unexpected winner can emerge and fuel mileage can sometimes come into play. That’s it for this week, and the great thing about this time of year is there are no more off weeks, just two straight months of racing.