Rating the GEICO 400: 2 Stars **

Brad Keselowski stole the Jimmie Johnson show Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway to win the first race in the 2012 Chase and take the lead in the points standings. Keselowski and Johnson both had impressive performances, but the race still gets a 2 Star Rating.

Johnson made Chicagoland Speedway his playground for the first half of the race and left the entire rest of the field in his dust. If races didn’t have cautions or pit stops, Johnson would’ve lapped the field. Unfortunately for him, races do require pits stops, and that’s when Keselowski and the #2 team pounced.

Johnson made his final pit stop on lap 229, and Keselowski, who was more than one second behind, followed a lap later. Incredibly, the #2 team pulled off a feat similar to the June race at Michigan and Keselowski passed Johnson for the lead after the round of stops.

Johnson could never catch Keselowski, and the Blue Deuce sailed to victory in the Windy City.

This win will instantly make people talk about him being a favorite to win the championship even though he was considered a darkhorse pick at best up until Sunday afternoon.

Either way, it’s too early to know with any certainty what’s going to happen in the next nine races. Clint Bowyer has performed well at the beginning of the Chase in past years but never made it to Homestead with a real chance at the trophy, and Johnson has finished as bad as 39^th in the first race and still come back to win.

That’s the route Jeff Gordon will have to take to win this year’s championship. Just a week after he shockingly snuck his way into the Chase through the second wild-card spot, his throttle stuck going into Turn 1 on lap 188 and destroyed his car. He got back out to make laps but finished 35^th and is already 47 points, basically a full race, out of the lead.

The non-Johnson favorite heading into Sunday was Denny Hamlin. He was running inside the top 10 but ran out of fuel on the final lap and finished 16^th. That drops him to fourth in the points standings, but he is only 15 points out of the lead. He just can’t have another similar mistake. Chicago turned into his mulligan race.

Other than Chase implications, Sunday’s race didn’t offer much. We had a couple of always-dramatic debris cautions and Casey Mears blew a tire. Otherwise, Keselowski and Johnson dominated the day, combining to lead 248 of the 267 laps.

So, next week the Sprint Cup Series takes the Chase to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for 300 miles of “rolling the center.” This race, and Dover and Talladega to follow, will be a chance for the drivers who don’t dominate on 1.5-mile tracks to try and stash enough points to remain in the hunt down the stretch.

Tony Stewart ran well at Chicago, and he has been really good of late at New Hampshire, with three top-fives in his last five races at the track.

New Hampshire is also provides a chance for closer racing than we saw at Chicago. It is incredibly difficult to pass, which opens the opportunity for good battles for position.

In any case, have a great week, everybody.

Rating the Federated Auto Parts 400: 4 Stars ****

The Sprint Cup Series regular season came to a close in dramatic fashion Saturday night and early Sunday morning at Richmond International Raceway. Jeff Gordon snuck through the raindrops to grab the final spot in the Chase in a race that constantly changed complexion. Overall, this race gets a 4 Star Rating.

To accentuate the changing nature of the race, Clint Bowyer won his second race of the season even though he spun down the frontstretch in the second half of the event. He and Juan Pablo Montoya made contact on lap 235. That cut down Bowyer’s left-rear tire and caused his spin.

But that turned out to be a big-time blessing in disguise. The resulting pit stop strategies put Bowyer back near the front of the field for the final 117 laps and he passed Ryan Newman for the lead with 88 laps to go. He didn’t look back, although he did have to manage his fuel mileage to reach the finish line.

While Bowyer led the final run, Gordon made a comeback that deserved to be rewarded with a Chase spot. Gordon’s #24 car was junk in the first half of the race even though he started in second. By the time the red flag came out for rain on lap 152, Gordon was a lap down to then-leader Denny Hamlin and looked to be out of contention for anything. It turns out he was in contention for both a Chase spot and the race win.

Gordon charged through the field in the second half of the race and reached second when the checkered flag flew. Kyle Busch faded to 16^th, which meant Gordon had snagged the second wild-card spot by a mere three points.

No matter what type of points system NASCAR uses, the fall race at Richmond almost always produces a wild night of racing both on the track and in the points standings. Those type of races don’t come around very often, but they are sure fun when they do.

Also, pretty much any important race in the last year has had to deal with rain delays. Both Homestead last year and this season’s Daytona 500 were affected by rain, but the racing was great when the weather let them get out on the track. Hopefully that’s just a coincidence and this year’s Homestead race will be fun but without rain.

But before the series gets to Homestead, the 12 Chase drivers will start their battle next week at Chicagoland Speedway. Expectations for a fun and exciting Chase are always extremely high the week leading up to the first race, but this year there are a myriad of contenders.

All of the top drivers have won multiple races. Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski and Tony Stewart are going to be primed for a good next 10 races. Even drivers such as Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick, who are winless this season, are running well right now and it wouldn’t be shocking to see them bust through with victories in the Chase.

In any case, this should be the best part of what has been a mediocre season in terms of action. There won’t be time for Chase drivers to ride around because they could quickly lose touch with the leaders in the points standings. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the memorable part of the 2012 season.

Have a great week, everybody.

Stewart's championship chances still small

Tony Stewart made a statement in a lot of minds Monday that he is not only a championship contender, but could be a favorite to win the championship this season.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Stewart looked strong at Chicago and would’ve had a good finish even if the race hadn’t come down to fuel mileage, and the future looks promising as the Sprint Cup Series heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway, where teammate Ryan Newman won and Stewart finished second.

Those are all positives for Stewart’s championship hopes, but there’s still that lingering factor: The Chase has eight more races after New Hampshire.

Stewart has won at every track in the Chase at some point in his career and 17 of his 40 career wins have come at current Chase tracks.

However, the measure of a driver’s performance is usually more accurate based on how they have performed throughout the season more than throughout their career. Shoot, Jeff Burton has won at New Hampshire four times, but he finished 16th in the July race and has just one top 10 all season.

Just three weeks ago, Stewart was having trouble hanging onto the final spot in the Chase and had just come off of a stretch where he finished outside the top 10 in three of four races, including a dreadful 28th-place performance at Bristol.

We’ve seen other drivers, particularly Clint Bowyer, barely squeak into the Chase and then reel off a win or two at the start that throws them up into the top five in the points standings. But, those teams typically don’t sustain their success enough to truly contend for the championship.

Even 2007, the first year Bowyer made the Chase, he won the first race at New Hampshire and finished second twice more in the first five races of the Chase, but he still finished third, 346 points behind champion Jimmie Johnson.

Stewart could very well have turned a corner Monday and will contend for the championship all the way to Homestead, but 10th-place teams don’t usually turn into championship teams in 10 races.

The first 26 races of the season are typically a good barometer for how strong a team is in a given year. Plus, it’s much easier to drop from first to 10th, as Kyle Busch did in 2008, than it is to climb from 10th to first.

With its win at Chicago, the #14 team might have hit on a setup that will keep them near the top of the standings for the remainder of the Chase, but a fuel-mileage win in the first-place shouldn’t make that team the favorite to win it all.

Rating the GEICO 400: 2 Stars **

Tony Stewart won his first race of the season at Chicago for the third time in his career Monday, but this time it started a possible championship run in the Chase. The first race at Chicago to start the Chase gets a 2 Star Rating.

This race was a combination of the entire season wrapped up in one race. There was another different winner, the 16th different winner of the season, it was a fuel-mileage race, it was run at least a day later than scheduled and Kevin Harvick nearly came out of nowhere for the win.

While nobody dominated the race, it still didn’t feel like a lot of drivers had a chance to win the race. Even when fuel mileage could have caused a surprise winner to roll into Victory Lane, it still felt like only a few drivers had a chance to win.

Maybe that was because nearly the entire top 10 was filled with Chase drivers for much of the race. Eight Chase drivers finished in the top 10, and that was with several drivers coasting to the finish line with empty gas tanks.

That, of course, is why those drivers and teams are in the Chase. They are the best in the sport, and they showed up ready to race at Chicago.

These teams weren’t huge factors in the races leading up to the Chase, particularly teams that had already clinched a Chase berth. But, they waited until the Chase started and put together strong, consistent races where they could challenge for the win.

Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon and Denny Hamlin all finished outside of the top 20, but the only team that should be really concerned after Monday’s race is the #11 team of Hamlin.

The other three drivers fell victim to fuel mileage, and while those lost points might hurt them later in the Chase, the overall performance of the #11 team was troubling.

Hamlin got into trouble early in the race with a vibration and then hit the wall late in the race to finish off his day. The #11 team simply is not competing at the same level it did not only a year ago, but for the past few years.

Hamlin has finished in the top 10 in points the past three years, and would’ve won the championship last year if he would’ve run a clean final race at Homestead.

Instead, he spun out early in that race and hasn’t recovered since. One would think this team would be capable of turning the switch once the Chase started, but this team has sputtered all season. It has a few good races but then comes back with two terrible races.

Hamlin has some major work to do if he is going to be relevant in this Chase. His chance to contend for the championship could already be over.

So, next week it’s on to New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Hopefully the weather returns to the beautiful racedays we had in the first half of the season.

With as competitive as the Chase teams were Monday in Chicago, racing luck could be what separates the field this year even before Talladega comes along to stir the pot one final time.

Rating the LifeLock.com 400: 3 Stars ***

After a wreckfest at Daytona, the drivers settled down at Chicagoland with only four cautions and a very clean race. Also, the final 79 laps were run uninterrupted with a surprise winner at the finish. The first race of the second half of the season gets a 3 Star Rating.

David Reutimann kind of came out of nowhere for this victory. Yes, he had qualified in the top 10 and had run well the past several weeks, but guys like him usually have something go wrong during the race before they can close the deal. The way races tend to go, the likely scenario would have been a caution with 20 or so laps left and either Carl Edwards or Jeff Gordon would have won the race. However, Reutimann’s car was so strong late in the race he may have still been able to hold on for the win.

Overall, the racing at Chicagoland wasn’t too bad. There were several stretches of green-flag racing, which is always better than the alternative. But, things may have been better if NASCAR had allowed a practice session after qualifying. It wouldn’t have made sense to have a practice the day of the race, but maybe the schedule could have been adjusted for the weekend to give the teams a chance to dial in a race setup. Both practices were run during the heat of the day and it showed early in the race Jimmie Johnson and a few drivers at the front dominated the first half of the race.

However, as day turned to night a few different cars came to the front of the field. Johnson spun out and then had several different issues that took him out of the picture for this race. As the race came to a close, including Reutimann, eight of the top-10 finishers have not won a race in 2010. It was kind of ironic that there was a top 10 with such diversity after a few big names dominated early.

While there were certainly big-name teams up front early, there was also several Chase contenders way back in the pack. Kevin Harvick and both Buschs never did find what they were looking for. The #2 team even changed both front shocks at one point. That looked like something Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s team tried a few times last year when he was running so terrible.

Well, the Summer Series has come to a close, and with a week off the series gets set for the final run to the Chase. There are still several drivers on the outside of the cutoff at this point that still have a very real chance of being in the Chase once the checkered flag falls at Richmond in September. The last few years have had one or two drivers with a realistic shot of racing their way into the Chase on that final night of the regular season, but this year the point standings have been so fluid I would expect several drivers to have a chance to race into the Chase in that final race.

It's now time to step back and take a week off here in the middle of the summer. With another month before the final week off, everyone can get set for the Brickyard. The Ganassi cars of Jamie McMurray and Juan Pablo Montoya will probably be strong, as will the Hendrick cars. It was great to see Reutimann win at Chicagoland, but the big boys will likely be back in full force at Indy. Have a great break everybody.

Rating the LifeLock.com 400: 3 Stars ***

A picture perfect evening in the heartland brought along with it a nearly perfect race for Mark Martin as he won his fourth race of the year, putting him in position to possibly enter the Chase with the lead. However, all but about 30 laps or so of this race were like it was being run a California. Add to the mix the fact that NASCAR controlled that portion of the race with three debris cautions and it all adds up to a high 3 Star Rating. Thankfully that last segment was crazy.

Glad to see Martin hold on for the win here because he totally deserved to be in Victory Lane. That car was bad fast. There has not been a driver dominate a race like that since Jimmie Johnson did so last year in the fall race at California. Also, there were not many changes to the top of the field all night. The guys that were good at the start of the race were still the ones that were good once the sun went down as well.

Speaking of the sun; what a beautiful sunset Saturday night. That is possibly one of the best things that changing the race to night has done to the weekend. Having no buildings or trees next to the speedway allowed for a great view of an awesome sunset. Plus, the weather was just about perfect for this time of year. Then, after the sun went down, the action on the track heated up.

Now remember, all of these wrecks and hard racing at the end were set up by the three debris cautions earlier in the race. However, once they lined up double file, the fight was on. Hamlin and Vickers, Busch and Johnson, the battles went on and on. Also, coming through the frontstretch they were three and four wide on several of the final laps. The other thing that Chicago did was keep the points standings interesting. Now drivers 10th through 13th are separated by just 13 points with Greg Biffle sitting on the outside looking in.

After the race several drivers were complaining about the double file restarts. Larry Mac was not happy to hear that and said that it "Galls my butt" that the drivers are complaining. Monday Morning Crew Chief has to agree with him here. I thought the new restart rule was something that came out of that town hall meeting with drivers and owners a few weeks back. Now if that's the case, it would seem that the drivers thought it was a good idea to add this rule. Now, however, they are all complaining because it is ruining some of their nights. There seems to be a double standard here. But, drivers will always complain about something when it doesn't go their way. That's just drivers being drivers.

Overall it was not a bad night of racing to finish up the 2009 Summer Series. Now we've got a week off to gear up and head back to the Brickyard which should be much improved over what took place last year. Goodyear has worked their tails off getting ready for this race and hopefully it pays off for them.

Thanks to all who have been able to follow the Monday Morning Crew Chief ratings as they have found a new home for the rest of the 2009 season.