Rating the Sylvania 300: 1 Star *

Denny Hamlin won the Sylvania 300 Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Nothing else happened, so this race gets a 1 Star Rating.

Hamlin dominated the race by leading 193 laps, all of them after lap 93, but he started in 28^th position. He had what might have been the most dominating car of the season, if not several seasons. Jimmie Johnson has won some races when he could race for three days and no one would pass him, but that hasn’t really been the case this year.

The win also gives Hamlin his fifth of the season and vaults him back to third in the points standings, just seven behind perennial leader Johnson.

So far two of the three championship contenders have proven they belong in the title hunt with victories, and Johnson has back-to-back second-place finishes to lead the points standings. Brad Keselowski won at Chicago. He, Hamlin and Johnson could easily be the three drivers fighting for the championship at Homestead.

All of the Chase drivers finished inside the top 20 at New Hampshire, but that did nothing to spice up an afternoon of lackluster racing. NASCAR threw a competition caution at lap 40 and then threw three more throughout the rest of the race, including a late-race caution for “debris” in a vain attempt to keep Hamlin from pulling into Victory Lane before anyone else even crossed the finish line.

Thankfully, Hamlin still won the race so we don’t have to worry about NASCAR officials destroying the presumed integrity of the sport this week. Had Hamlin lost the race and gone on to lose the championship by a few points, he would have a good argument that NASCAR’s quest for exciting racing kept him from winning the championship.

There wasn’t a real caution all day. Every car that didn’t start and park finished the race with nothing more than a dent in a fender.

So, after a week that did nothing to change the outlook of the Chase, next week the Sprint Cup Series heads to another one-mile oval to race at Dover International Speedway.

Dover is another track where a driver, most likely Johnson, can dominate an entire day. However, there should be a little more close racing this week because of Dover’s high-banked corners that allow drivers to race instead of scoot around trying to roll the middle of the turn.

It’s also a track that has bitten Chase drivers in the past, and it would be surprising if all 12 Chase drivers finished in the top 20 again. Either way, Talladega will eliminate any boring racing the following week.

Have a great week, everybody.

Rating the Sylvania 300: 2 Stars **

Another Chase race, and another fuel-mileage win for Tony Stewart. The first two Chase tracks might look different, but their races were nearly the same. New Hampshire draws the second consecutive 2 Star Rating to start the Chase.

Stewart and the #14 sure have the fuel-mileage game figured out right now. Both at Chicago and New Hampshire he had not only a good car, but he and his team put themselves in position to take advantage of the situation. Last week he had to hold off the field, this week he had to wait for Clint Bowyer to run out of gas to take the lead.

This race was nearly a mirror image of last week’s race at Chicago, except the sky was finally blue with hardly any clouds.

As for the action on the track, both races were extremely clean. Chicago had twice as many as New Hampshire’s three cautions, but only one actually came from a wreck. Everything else was a myriad of reasons that didn’t involve cars being damaged.

Also, nobody made a pass Sunday. We saw this in the July race at New Hampshire, as well. Once the field settled down after a restart, everybody pretty much remained in their same spot.

That’s not to say the drivers simply took it easy all day. Sure, that may be part of the problem the past two weeks, but right now the setup of the cars does not make for good racing at New Hampshire.

Even last year, the drivers beat and banged their way through the race, and that has been fairly common in the past several years. That’s not the case this year. The New Hampshire races this year weren’t far from the restrictor-plate race at the track in 2000 when Jeff Burton led the entire race.

Along with the cars not matching up with the track very well, the fact that the Chase has started also plays a part in why these races have been so tame.

It’s not that this group of drivers can’t mix it up. They could barely get through 30 laps at Richmond without taking each other out. The Chase drivers have to play it safe right now, especially with the new points system. Denny Hamlin is 66 points out, and out of the championship picture.

Jimmie Johnson finished 18th Sunday and is 29 points out of the lead in 10th. That margin, however, is not insurmountable. Johnson has climbed out of similar holes to go on and win the championship, and he isn’t a full race out of the lead yet. That’s when things start to get scary, and Hamlin is already a race and a half behind points leader Stewart.

Still, these two races cannot be used to truly measure the Chase drivers’ success and predict how the rest of the Chase will play out. Although right now it seems possible, not every race is going to come down to fuel mileage. It would be shocking if it came into play next week at Dover. It could well be the fifth race at Charlotte Motor Speedway before we start to see who is going to be a factor for the championship at Homestead.

So far this year’s Chase has only taught us one thing: Save fuel; it’s a killer to run out.

Rating the Sylvania 300: You Rate the Race!!

In another relatively clean race, the Chase started with none other than a classic fuel-mileage finish. Some Chasers soared while others faltered. The big question is, was it a great race, terrible race or somewhere in between? This week it’s your turn to put a rating on the race, so take a look at the Rating System and voice your opinion.

Clint Bowyer and Tony Stewart both took the big gamble on the final run. Bowyer had enough fuel to make the finish while Stewart came up two laps short; so much for these guys playing it safe in the Chase. However, NASCAR should also be commended for putting the yellow flag in its pocket the last couple of weeks.

So, is this the start of something big for Clint Bowyer or will he begin to struggle as the turns become more and more banked in the coming weeks? The stat about the championship winner not finishing worse than sixth in all but one year at New Hampshire has been thrown out there plenty this weekend, but does it really matter? In some cases it has, but Johnson still won the championship in 2006 when he finished 39th in this race.

The long final run Sunday was kind of surprising, as New Hampshire certainly isn’t known for that type of a finish. In general, fuel-mileage races don’t happen in the Chase for one reason or another. The only other one that comes to mind was Greg Biffle’s victory at Kansas in 2007.

Along with the Chase picture, several non-Chasers had good runs this week, which doesn’t always happen at this point in the season. Had Jamie McMurray been more consistent during the regular season, he would be in a similar position to Bowyer right now.

And how could we forget Dale Earnhardt Jr.? His fourth-place finish was his best outing since he finished fourth at Daytona in July, and his only top five-finish at a track other than Daytona this season. Plus, this run kind of came out of nowhere. The Hendrick Motorsports cars ran better overall this weekend, and New Hampshire has been a pretty good track for Earnhardt Jr. throughout the years. In any case, his run Sunday surely has Jr. Nation excited that brighter days lay ahead.

Next week is on to the other one-mile oval in the Chase: Dover. The Monster Mile will be tough as always, but I expect the Fords to have a better showing this week. Other than Carl Edwards lately, the Fords have struggled for a while now on flat racetracks. The larger tracks should help, and Miles the Monster might just hold a Roush-Fenway Racing car in Victory Lane at the end of the day.

Rating the Sylvania 300: 3 Stars ***

The first checkered flag of the 2009 Chase has flown, and Mark Martin remains on top. After a couple of crazy weeks with teams fighting just to get into the Chase, everybody kind of held their own at New Hampshire. Other than Kasey Kahne blowing an engine and Dale Jr. being a tad upset with David Reutimann, things pretty much held true to form with a 3 Star Rating.

New Hampshire is a tough track to handle, especially with the COT. Personally, I am not a huge fan of tracks that put a premium on rolling through the corner. If a couple of cars do not get hooked up in a battle, passing becomes so hard that the entire field pretty much falls in line throughout the run.

As for the action on the track, the Chase contenders showed why they belong in the postseason as ten of the top 15 finishers Sunday were in the top 12 in points. Every year it seems that one driver has a really bad first race, but in the end there has been mixed results at the end of the season for that driver. This year Kasey Kahne was the one Chase contender that suffered such a problem. Thankfully for him, nobody had a huge lead coming into the Chase so the damage is not as bad as it could have been. In 2006, Jimmie Johnson finished 39th in this race, yet still came back to win the championship. However, the #9 team has used their mulligan and will have to really be on top of their game the rest of the way.

With only 24 laps to go, NASCAR again threw the debris caution flag and bunched up the field for a final sprint to the finish. Luckily, Mark Martin was still able to hold on for the victory, because NASCAR could have been the reason for an alternative ending. Also, the caution brought David Reutimann and Dale Jr. close together and Reutimann turned Jr. up into the wall. Afterward, Jr. was not happy, saying, “My car is tore up and he ain’t got enough talent to run in the top five, I guess. He ran into the side of me and spun me out late in the race.” Sounds like a guy who has gone through a season with an average finish of 21.9.

Next up is the Monster Mile in Dover. The track is roughly the same length as New Hampshire, but it races completely different. High banks where drivers can float the car down into the corner and make a move without having to root someone up out of the groove. Last year Ford stole the show with three Roush-Fenway drivers fighting for the win. It will be tough to duplicate that success this time around. Ford is noticeably going through a rough stretch; one that may not level out until next season with a new engine package.