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 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.

Kurt Busch has been the most interesting driver of 2012, but for all the wrong reasons

Although Jimmie Johnson has won three of the last four weekends and Mark Martin leads the Sprint Cup Series with three poles at 54 years of age, Kurt Busch has drawn the most attention this season.

Unfortunately, he has drawn exclusively negative attention of late, and that will continue for at least another week.

NASCAR suspended Busch until June 13 for remarks he made to a media member following the Nationwide race Saturday at Dover International Speedway.

Busch was already on probation from an incident on pit road with Ryan Newman’s #39 team after the Southern 500 a few weeks ago at Darlington so his antics last weekend sent him to the bench for this week’s race at Pocono Raceway.

Obviously, this isn’t anything new for Busch. Well, the suspension is something new, but he has filled his career with regrettable moments that keep him from being lauded for his driving ability as a NASCAR champion.

He lost his first Cup ride a year after his 2004 championship run in the #97 car for Jack Roush after he was cited for reckless driving.

Busch quickly found a ride with Penske Racing and had several incidents that eventually led up to a profanity-laced rant at ESPN reporter Dr. Jerry Punch during the final race of the season at Homestead.

That rant cost him his seat in the #22 car, so this year he had to make do with the mostly unsponsored #51 car furnished by the singe-car operation of Phoenix Racing.

Busch could have used the setback to collect himself and make a second career out of returning to the top of the sport, but this suspension likely rules out the possibility of that happening any time soon.

People will long debate whether Busch’s penalty was too harsh or too lenient. Either way, Busch’s previous incidents clearly factored into the severity of his penalty, the same way they did when his younger brother, Kyle Busch, was parked for the Texas Nationwide and Cup races after he drove Ron Hornaday Jr. into the wall during the truck race.

In this sport, drivers can act foolishly and get away with it to a certain extent. Carl Edwards intentionally wrecked Brad Keselowski twice in 2010, but NASCAR placed Edwards on probation only after the second wreck.

Fans might also remember that he faked throwing a punch at teammate Matt Kenseth following the fall 2007 race at Martinsville.

Since those incidents, Edwards has not had any problems and nearly won the 2011 Sprint Cup Series championship. He is also one of the most outgoing and polite drivers in the sport.

Perhaps Edwards learned his lessons and matured beyond the extracurricular games that tend to crop up during a long season.

That’s part of what makes Busch’s most recent actions even more surprising than the fact that NASCAR suspended him.

Busch is a Sprint Cup Series champion. That type of success carries a lot of weight in NASCAR. Champions rise above other drivers in the sport both on a competitive level and a respect level. Busch’s repeated mishaps simply aren’t fitting of a champion in this, or any, sport. had absolutely nothing to gain by arguing with reporters after the Nationwide race and a heck of a lot to lose.

What makes difficult to understand are instances such as the Nationwide race three weeks ago at Iowa Speedway. He acted like a gentleman after the race even after he was punted on the final lap while running third. He ended up finishing fifth and had to make a remarkable save to do so.

So one week Busch is polite and the next he is threatening to beat up reporters.

Even Busch haters might be a little confused at this point. Sure, it’s fun to root against drivers you don’t like and in some ways it is rewarding to see them struggle, but this has gotten out of hand.

At some point people will dismiss Busch as a lunatic and stop rooting for or against him. They will simply stop caring.

He will miss this week’s race at Pocono, but he could also be on the verge of irrelevance to the point that people will only tune in to see what he does off the track rather than on it.  

That could eventually take away his spotlight, which might be the worst consequence of all.

Rating the FedEx 400: 2 Stars **

The Dominator dominated Dover on Sunday to simply reinforce the fact that Jimmie Johnson and the #48 team are hands down the best there is in this era of NASCAR racing. However, dominating performances rarely make for exciting races, and Sunday was no different. The first Dover race of the season gets a 2 Star Rating.

Johnson did have one challenger at Dover: his teammate in the #24 car. Jeff Gordon led 60 laps throughout the first half of the race, but then his team remembered this is 2012 and didn’t get all of the lugnuts tight on the left rear tire during a pit stop on lap 251.

That forced Gordon to try and play a different strategy to recover and still challenge for the win, but he was only able to get back to 13^th by the time the checkered flag flew.

Gordon did move up one spot to 21^st in the points standings and is one point behind Juan Pablo Montoya for a spot in the top 20. But, that is certainly not where the driver with the most laps led should be in the points standings after 13 races.

This could have been a race that jumpstarted Gordon’s climb back into Chase contention, but now the pressure to be perfect the rest of the regular season continues to mount. It’s going to take quite an effort from Gordon and the #24 team to make the Chase this year.

As for Johnson, Sunday’s win added another stat to prove he is one of the all-time great NASCAR drivers. He has now won at Dover, which many drivers consider one of the toughest on the schedule, seven times. That ties him with Richard Petty and Bobby Allison for the most wins at the Monster Mile.

This was Johnson’s 57^th career win and his second of the season (third if you include the All-Star Race). Maybe it’s coincidence, but ever since Johnson won the Southern 500 at Darlington to get the 200^th victory for Hendrick Motorsports, the entire organization has taken its performance to another level.

Perhaps there was pressure to win #200. That type of pressure obviously affects athletes in other sports when they approach a major milestone, but it is a little more surprising for it to affect an entire racing organization.

Either way, Hendrick Motorsports is once again on quite a roll. That could make for a long summer for the rest of the garage. Right now Roush-Fenway Racing has the top two spots in the points standings and is most likely the biggest threat to stop another Hendrick championship this season, but they have a lot of work ahead of them.

Oh, by the way, there was a wreck in Sunday’s race and it still didn’t get more than a 2 Star Rating. Sure, it was the biggest wreck of the season, but most of the cars involved were start-and-parkers. The wreck just parked them all at the same time.

Besides that wreck on lap 9, the remainder of the race was as clean as the rest of the season. The racing will get better at some point, but it is unlikely to get significantly better anytime soon. The upcoming tracks don’t usually produce thrilling racing, and there is little reason to think it will be any different this summer.

That said, these races are still a vital part of the schedule. June has always been a crucial month in the NASCAR season. The tracks, including Dover, challenge equipment more than most, and it is a time for teams to sharpen their setups as the Race to the Chase approaches.

Now it’s on to the first 400-mile race in the history of Pocono Raceway. I don’t see how shortening this race by 100 miles will make it any more exciting, but we’ll see. The only difference might be that fewer cars drop out because of mechanical issues.

Have a great week, everybody, and brace yourselves for what might be another summer dominated by Hendrick Motorsports. It sure is shaping up that way.

Sorry folks, Jimmie Johnson will be a factor in this year's Chase

After two weeks of people thinking, hoping and even begging themselves to believe that Jimmie Johnson might be too far out of the points lead to come back and win yet another championship, he dashed all of those dreams in one week.

Johnson finished second last week at Dover and now sits fifth in the points standings just 13 points behind co-leaders Kevin Harvick and Carl Edwards.

Of course all of the talk about the #48 team’s demise was incredibly premature. That would be like saying the New England Patriots won’t be a factor in the NFL playoffs. These teams are too good to suddenly fall apart.

However, I don’t think anybody expected Johnson to be so close after just one good run, and it is a little scary to think what he could do to the Chase standings if he puts together a string of top-five finishes.

When Johnson started the Chase with a 39th-place finish at New Hampshire in 2006, it took him until the eighth race of the Chase to make it back to the top.

This year Johnson cut his point deficit from 29 to 13 after finishing well outside the top 10 in the first two races and if everything fall right he could be back on top by Sunday at Kansas, but more likely it could be the sixth race of the Chase at Talladega or the following week at Martinsville.

While people may have thought, or at least wanted to believe, the new points system would make it more difficult for Johnson to dominate the Chase, it might actually make it easier for Johnson to run away with the trophy.

We saw earlier this season how much easier it is to gain ground in the points standings under this new system when Brad Keselowski jumped from 23rd to 12th in just six races.

That’s not to say that all 12 drivers, or even half of the Chase field will have a realistic chance at the championship as the season comes to a close, but the new system has made the standings more fluid.

When the new points system was announced before the season, a lot was made about how a bad finish hurt a driver more than in the past. But, the flip side of that argument is that a good finish helps in the standings more than ever.

It was never likely that the #48 to be out of the championship picture as the series heads to Homestead for the final race of the year, but the new points system may have made that even more of a pipe dream.

Yet, while the points system might make it easier for a driver to recover in the standings, it also makes it harder to keep the lead. No driver has dominated the standings during the regular season this year the way Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick did the past two years.

Right now the standings are tied, and the way the season has gone so far it would be shocking if the leader had more than a 10-point lead heading into the final race at Homestead.

Many fans will hope that leader is not Johnson, but last week at Dover showed it is going to take a substantial amount of bad luck to keep him from being a factor for the championship.

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.

More NASCAR Sprint Cup teams need to gamble to win

For the past two weeks, staying out on old tires or just taking two tires have been winning moves for both Regan Smith and Matt Kenseth. The calls came out golden for those two, but maybe more teams need to take late-race gambles even if it doesn’t end up in a victory.

Races can be won several different ways. Having a fast car is a good start, but a fair amount of luck is needed throughout the course of the event, whether it comes down to fuel mileage, tires, or just keeping the car off the wall and out of trouble.

Smith took an opportunity to jump to the front when everybody else hit the pits at Darlington. The same sort of thing worked out Sunday at Dover for Kenseth, although he took two tires and had a lot more distance between him and the four-tire crowd.

This type of strategy won’t turn into a win, or even a top-five finish, every time, but that doesn’t mean teams having a mediocre race should always follow the leader and accept their fate.

I’m always shocked more drivers who are on the back half of the lead-lap cars don’t stay out. Yes, Smith and Brad Keselowski stayed out at Darlington when they were sitting between 10th and 20th, but that means eight other drivers came in for four tires when the only thing they really had to lose was just a couple of spots. Especially with less than 10 laps to go, as was the case in the Southern 500, most of those drivers would’ve finished well ahead of where they did even if they lost several positions on the restart.

Darlington is often considered the track that is the toughest on tires, but it has to be awful inviting to see all of the leaders come in for a stop and have nothing but the pace car ahead. One of the few benefits of being so far behind is the team gets to see what all of the teams ahead of them will do. If all of the leaders are coming in, why not take a shot at winning the race. Even if every single car on the lead lap passed them back, they still would end up close to where they were before the caution.

Sunday’s race was a little different, however, and it was surprising to see Kenseth and Mark Martin, who stayed out and didn’t take any tires, maintain their positions and drive away from the field. But, both had pretty good cars throughout the race, as Smith did at Darlington.

Let's face it, only a handful of teams show up to a race track with a legitimate chance to out-run the field and win a given race. Sure, there are exceptions based on the type of track, but there's usually a lot more teams that could benefit from making a risky call from pit road than could benefit from playing it safe and banking points.

Maybe in future races more teams will be willing to take a gamble on tires late in a race. It would sure keep the season interesting, especially with the new wild-card Chase implications. It could not only get a driver a rare win, but it might just put them in contention for the championship. That would have fans howling, but that’s a topic for another day.

Rating the FedEx 400 benefiting Autism Speaks: 2 Stars **

For the second straight week, a gamble on a late-race caution brought an unexpected winner to Victory Lane. This week’s winner, Matt Kenseth, wasn’t as unexpected as Darlington-winner Regan Smith, but similar strategy won him the race. Unfortunately, that was the most interesting part of a race that gets a 2 Star Rating.

Kenseth made a bold call on the final caution and it looked like there would be a heck of a battle to the finish, but the race’s three dominators, Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards and Clint Bowyer, couldn’t come back through the field and Kenseth quickly got around Mark Martin and drove off into the sunset for a relatively uncontested victory.

Sunday’s race was actually pretty typical of Dover. The few cars that really hit the setup were able to jump to the lead and stay there as the three dominators led a combined 353 of the 400 laps. Johnson, Edwards, Jeff Gordon and others have done the same thing in the past. Sometimes that’s just the way it is at Dover for whatever reason.

Not every race is going to be thrilling the way several have been already this season, and the long green-flag runs and the opportunity for different strategies to come into play late in the race made things interesting, but I think the fans would’ve gotten more of a kick out of a three-way battle among Johnson, Edwards and Bowyer for the win rather than Kenseth driving away from everybody.

The unexpected weather also affected the racing. When a cloudy day was forecast, and much worse weather actually was called for, many cars likely had a setup under the car that did not anticipate sunshine and warm weather. With that type of weather, the track was much more slick than expected and many drivers really had to fight their cars throughout the day, and that often limits the amount of hard racing that can be done.

In the big picture, Kenseth and the #17 team are all of a sudden basically locked into the Chase, barring a major meltdown, and that certainly seems unlikely with the way the Fords have been running this season. The win bumped Kenseth up four spots in the standings and gave him two wins on the year, so even if he falls out of the top 10 in points, he still has a very good shot at getting one of the two wild card spots.

For the first time in several weeks, everybody remained relatively calm and a pair of drivers didn’t have to meet with NASCAR after the race. That’s good, because the chances of that happening next weekend are as high as there will be for a race this season.

The All-Star race is next up on the schedule and a bunch of things will be on the line in a race that doesn’t even count in the season standings. The drivers will be battling for a big check in Victory Lane, and some might end up battling each other to either attempt to settle an old score, or settle a new one.

Either way, the All-Star race is shaping up to potentially be one of the best ever. That’s saying something with the way some of those races go. Enjoy a week where points don’t matter. It’s the last time that will happen this season.

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 Autism Speaks 400: 3 Stars ***

After a couple weeks under the lights, the Sprint Cup Series returned to Sunday afternoon for a battle at the “Monster Mile.” Miles actually didn’t tear up too many cars as this was a pretty clean race. However, similar to last week at Darlington, a late mistake cost the race an exciting finish. The Dover spring race gets a 3 Star Rating.

This had the feel of a classic race in a couple different ways. Five cautions was the lowest number of yellows in a race since the fall race at Phoenix last year. As I said last week, this group of drivers is slowly but surely maturing and not wrecking as much, which will lead to fewer cautions overall. Now, take Sam Hornish Jr. out of the mix and the number of cautions would drop in half. Also, to have a five caution race at Dover was rather unexpected. Dover is one of those tracks that is known for collecting more cars than normal in a given wreck because of the banking around the track. However, there wasn’t one wreck Sunday that involved more than a single car.

One thing that may have lowered the number of cautions, however, was the large number of start and parks Sunday. No less than seven cars parked without any real damage early in the race. Plus, only 13 cars finished on the lead lap. For once NASCAR didn’t throw a caution to bunch the field up, especially after Johnson’s pit miscue that allowed Busch to check out from the rest of the field. Thank you, NASCAR. The integrity of the race is appreciated.

Had Jimmie Johnson not sped coming out of the pits on his final stop, there would have been one heck of a battle to the finish between Johnson and Kyle Busch. Those two were by far the two best cars in the second half of the race and after Johnson was penalized, Busch destroyed the rest of the field. Once again, many conspiracy theorists (race fans) thought NASCAR was holding the #48 team’s hand throughout each race and wouldn’t let anything bad happen to it. Well, that theory can be thrown out the window because that penalty directly cost Johnson a shot at the win.

Also, there have finally been a couple of races that didn’t have a caution in the final 10 laps. Those things seem to go in cycles. Last year there was a stretch where every race came down to fuel mileage. We have yet to have one of those yet, but we are coming up on several tracks where fuel mileage often comes into play.

Now everything moves back to Charlotte for All-Star week. Lots of things will be going on in the Charlotte area with the pit crew challenge Wednesday, the Rev’d Up concert Thursday, racing Friday and Saturday and the Hall of Fame inductions Sunday. No, this is not an off week for the Cup series. If anything, even though no points will be handed out, the teams will be busier this week than on a normal weekend.

This is always an exciting weekend and is made even better this year with the inaugural Hall of Fame inductions. Congratulations to Bill France, Bill France Jr., Junior Johnson, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and their families. The sport cannot hand out any bigger honor than being elected to the first NASCAR Hall of Fame class. Enjoy the week because there will be plenty to keep a NASCAR fan busy.

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.