Rating the Pure Michigan 400: 4 Stars ****

For the second week in a row, the dominant Sprint Cup Series car at the end of the race had a problem that prevented it from driving into Victory Lane. But bad luck for one driver usually means a more exciting finish. The final race of the season at Michigan International Speedway gets a 4 Star Rating.

This week Kyle Busch gave Jimmie Johnson his bad luck as Johnson's engine blew up while leading with only five laps from the checkered flag. That left Greg Biffle and Brad Keselowski to battle for the win. Keselowski made the final couple of laps interesting, but he couldn’t catch Biffle, who got his second win of the season.

That finish comes after Keselowski spun Busch on the final lap last week at Watkins Glen.

Biffle is now back on top of the points standings and could be much more of a factor in the Chase than many people think. Unfortunately for him, Roush-Fenway Racing cars still haven’t shown enough consistency to challenge for a title.

Regardless, Biffle threw down a challenge in his Victory Lane interview.

“We’re going to make a run at the title,” he said. “I know they don’t talk about us a lot, but they will when we get to (Las) Vegas.”

Of course, the championship celebration is held in Las Vegas at the end of the season.

Along from Johnson’s problem, Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon also had engine problems. All three of those teams run Hendrick Motorsports engines.  

But besides those issues and Biffle’s win, the race had a lot of action on the track compared to a lot of Michigan races and a lot of races in 2012.

Mark Martin, Kurt Busch, Regan Smith and Joey Logano all spent time up against the wall. The pit road wall speared Martin’s car as he slid down pit road following a spin caused by Bobby Labonte and Juan Pablo Montoya in Turn 4. It was an ugly looking wreck, but Martin and everyone on pit road was OK.

Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon also had engine problems that ended their day early.

Sunday’s race also had a lot of good racing that didn’t involve wrecks or mechanical problems. The cars can’t yet go four- and five-wide throughout the race the way they did before the track was repaved for this season, but the tighter groove made for tighter racing.

The middle of the field went three-wide on almost every single restart and barely made it through turns 1 and 2.

The cars looked like they were almost on railroad tracks during the first race in June at Michigan, but that was much less of the case this time around. The cars were more unstable and drivers could race much closer to each other than in June.

Hopefully that continues in future years and Michigan could crank out more entertaining races than boring races. At this point it has potential, and that’s more than could be said for several big, wide tracks with relatively new pavement.

Next week the Sprint Cup Series visits the revamped Bristol Motor Speedway for what could be a return of the bullring that made the track so popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Track owner Bruton Smith ordered the top groove of the track to be shaved down after the spring race to create a tighter racing groove. Either way, it is going to be an intriguing weekend.

The potential for explosive tempers at short tracks usually receives a lot of hype that rarely plays out, but this could be a weekend where the postrace show is nearly as interesting as the race.

We’ll see. Have a great week, everybody.

Rating the Coca-Cola 600: 1 Star *

A long race that finished a long day of racing Sunday ended with Kasey Kahne in Victory Lane for the first time as a Hendrick Motorsports driver. Unfortunately, the longest race of the day was also the most boring, and the Coke 600 gets a 1Star Rating.

Besides a freak problem like the tire situation at the Brickyard a few years ago, Sunday night’s race had all of the elements of a snoozer. It was a long race dominated by just a few drivers, there wasn’t much side-by-side racing and debris cautions plagued the race throughout the night.

The Coca-Cola 600 is billed as an endurance event, and that is certainly how this year’s edition played out. The drivers struggled to merely get to the end of the race and didn’t have much time to wage a real battle near the front of the field.

Plus, one of the few intriguing battles of the night was cut short by a debris caution on lap 318 as Kahne, Greg Biffle and Denny Hamlin raced hard for the lead among lapped cars.

After that, Kahne dominated the remainder of a race that had no drama.

Now, before we overreact and say NASCAR is horrible, the cars are horrible, the drivers are horrible and everybody should be fired because it wasn’t an exciting race, we still need to realize that not every race is going to be exciting.

Sure, it would have been a real shot in the arm to have a tense, exciting race for the Memorial day weekend special in Charlotte, which is one of the most prestigious races on the schedule. But that wasn’t the case. Fans will get over it and more on. At some point this season there will be a thrilling 5 Star race and everyone will say NASCAR is the best thing going.

For the first time in a long, long time, the Indianapolis 500 was the better race Sunday. IndyCar had a record number of lead changes in a race that was as close as open-wheel racing gets to NASCAR’s restrictor-plate style racing.

Anyway, congratulations to Kahne and the #5 team. Kahne has run well all season, but he is finally starting to register the finishes to match the way he’s run during the race. Don’t look now, but he’s 15^th in the points standings with one win. That puts him just seven points behind Ryan Newman for the final wild-card spot in the Chase.

Speaking of overreactions, many people crossed Kahne of the list of Chase candidates early in the season when he was just a few spot away from falling out of the top 35 in points. My what a difference two months make.

We probably should have seen this coming. Brad Keselowski taught everyone last year that drivers can make comebacks with the new points system. Shoot, Keselowski was 24^th in the points standings at this time last year.

With that backdrop, Jeff Gordon still has a real chance to make the Chase. With a good couple of months, Gordon could be at least fighting for one of the wild-card spots by the time NASCAR visits the Brickyard in August.

Now it’s time for the first northern swing of the season. It’s starting to get hot across the country, so the sport will leave the South for the next month until it comes back to Kentucky Speedway for the last weekend in June.

The Monster Mile at Dover is next week. Although that track can tear up racecars as much as any on the circuit, the way this season has gone we could be in for another mundane race, especially if one team hits the setup perfectly and runs away from the field. They might not be caught until Pocono the following week.

For now, have a great Memorial Day and honor those who have served and are currently serving our country.

Rating the STP 400: 3 Stars ***

The Sprint Cup Series visited its second consecutive mile-and-a-half racetrack Sunday and delivered nearly the exact same race with few cautions and long green-flag runs. The finish was closer this time, however, and gets the race at Kansas a 3 Star Rating.

Greg Biffle passed Jimmie Johnson with 30 laps to go to win the Texas race a week ago, and this week Denny Hamlin passed Martin Truex Jr. with 31 laps remaining to win the race. The Kansas race also set records for fewest cautions (three) and race speed (144.122). The race at Texas last week set similar records for that track. For whatever reason, the drivers are running these races as if we’re in the summer stretch at Michigan and Pocono.

That is a topic that will likely draw increasing scrutiny this week, but it is unlikely to last in the upcoming weeks with Richmond, Talladega and Darlington on the horizon. I those races set records for fewest cautions, then we’ll know that something is up.

Still, other than the one debris caution Sunday, NASCAR has done a very good job of allowing the races to play out naturally and not messing with the finish by throwing a caution late in the race.

As for Sunday, Hamlin obviously deserves congratulations for running a steady race and pouncing when he had the chance to race for the win, but Truex Jr. also deserves a lot of credit for his race.

Truex Jr. led 173 laps and is now second in the points standings, just 15 points behind Biffle for the lead. That’s the highest Truex Jr. has ever been in the points standings and has shown that he can run well on several different types of tracks this year. Even though it’s early, something drastic would have to change for him not to make the Chase this year.

However, for all of the positives Truex Jr. and the #56 team can take from Kansas, the fact that they once again came up short has to be a nagging concern. When drivers such as Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson or Kyle Busch dominate a race the way Truex Jr. did Sunday, they finish the deal and win the race. For whatever reason, Truex Jr. is still not to that level and he won’t be a true championship contender until that happens.

Once it does happen, he will likely go on a tear and win a bunch of races. It happened to Brad Keselowski last year.

Although they both broke into the Cup series full-time in 2006, Hamlin has now won 19 races and has the experience to know how to close out a race and win. Truex Jr. still has just that one win at Dover in 2007 and cannot close the deal no matter how well he runs throughout the day.

That will come as the #56 team continues to run well. Usually drivers have to be in contention several times before breaking through with a win, but once that win happens they find that path to Victory Lane much easier and more often.

Now that we’re done with the intermediate tracks for a while, the short track of Richmond International Raceway comes up next followed by the ever-interesting Talladega Superspeedway.

Next week will be interesting because the teams and drivers have two short track races under their belt and it’s getting to the point in the season where several drivers who are used to winning will look up and realize, “Wow, it’s nearly May and I still don’t have a win this year.”

That, combined with the typically close racing at Richmond should make for a great Saturday night race.

Have a great week, everybody.

Rating the Samsung Mobile 500: 2 Stars **

The year of the long green-flag run continued Saturday night at Texas Motor Speedway in a 500-mile race that closed with a 351-mile green-flag run that included four green-flag pit stops. However, there wasn’t much action in those 500 miles so the first night race of the season gets a 2 Star Rating.

Greg Biffle and Jimmie Johnson were the stars of this show. Johnson led a race-high 156 laps but Biffle caught him with 30 laps to go to cruise to his first victory since October 2010.

Although Biffle went 49 races between wins, he has been in contention several times and has run extremely well so far this season. He leads the points, and it was just a matter of time before he reached Victory Lane.

The #16 team could really be on to something. The Biff has two wins at Kansas Speedway, the site of next week’s race, and the Roush-Fenway Racing Fords of Biffle, Matt Kenseth and to a lesser extent Carl Edwards have run well at each intermediate track on the schedule.

Right now Biffle and the #16 team have the look of a group that will seriously contend for the championship. Edwards and Kevin Harvick have started recent season in similar fashion to Biffle this year and each finished in the top three in the final standings. Don’t be surprised if Biffle is in that position this year.

As for Saturday’s race, the action wasn’t thrilling by any means, but at least it was a legitimate race. NASCAR officials didn’t get trigger happy throughout the race and throw cautions for debris to bunch up the field. Sure, that would’ve made for closer racing at times, but NASCAR should be a sport first and entertainment business second.

In the days before every lap of every race was televised, plenty of races finished with a margin of victory that was more than three seconds. The problem lately has been that people complain and complain and complain that the racing isn’t close enough, so then we end up watching reality television where the producers, or in this case race officials, influence the outcome of the event.

The other aspect of racing Saturday’s race the green-flag racing showcased was that there are still differences in the cars’ setups. Drivers complain nearly every week that they can’t pass because everybody is running the same speed. Well, some of that is because the cars all have the same basic body shape, but another reason is because there aren’t many extended green-flag runs in modern day NASCAR races.

At least the drivers had a hand in the outcome of the race at Texas. Biffle actually had to save his equipment so he could make a final push to get past Johnson for the win. That’s the type of strategy that won David Pearson so many races. That is an aspect of auto racing that shouldn’t be lost.

Sunday’s race at Rockingham also forced drivers to really drive their trucks rather than ride around at the same speed all day. The wonderfully abrasive surface at the Rock created solid, good racing.

NASCAR didn’t grow in popularity during the 1990s and 200s because of weekly photo finishes. It grew because people enjoyed watching drivers manhandle their cars through 500 miles at high speeds.

Sunday’s Rockingham race showed how fun racing can be without all of the heavy dependence of aerodynamics. It wasn’t a wreckfest and the finish wasn’t particularly close, but the trucks weren’t all running the same speeds because the tires wore outs so quickly.

While it’s nice to have the big, fancy palaces of speed such as Texas Motor Speedway, this weekend may have stirred memories of why we all fell in love with racing in the first place. The 200-mph race at Texas was fine, but the 130-mph race at Rockingham was just as fun, if not more.

Have a great week, everybody. Next up the trucks and Cup cars will be at another 1.5-mile giant in Kansas that will likely produce a race very similar to what we saw Saturday night in Texas.

MMCC Power Rankings: Week 3

What a race! I think the fearless leader at the site got it wrong; that was better than 3 Stars. Anytime you get two all-time greats battling for the win is awesome.

Though you won't find a single championship among the top five in this week's POWER RANKINGS.

1. Greg Biffle (Last Week 1) – Biffle flopped a set of threes on the poker table after yet another third-place effort at Las Vegas.

2. Kevin Harvick (3) –Rode around all day at or near the top 10, finished 11th. It may not be closer-like but hey, he's second in points ... can't argue with that.

3. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (7) – You would have thought the leader of the most laps got a Diet Dew at the end of the race by the way Junior jumped out to that lead.

4. Denny Hamlin (1) – Text from Stewart: "Anything you can do, I can do better".

5. Carl Edwards (11) – What a terrible run for the #99 team, but a heck of a finish. Keep that up and another title chase will be likely.

6. Tony Stewart (15) – Really wanted him to say, "Here, kitty kitty kitty" again after getting to second and going for the lead.

7. Jimmie Johnson (12) – Looks like old five-time is back to his old self, now to see how the appeal turns out.

8. Matt Kenseth (3) – Should have used a bit more Zest on the outside of that car to be able to make that pass work, from fourth to 22nd in a matter of laps.

9. Jeff Gordon (12) – Had a horrible car for most of the day, but actually made it better as the day went on. That's a lot more than the Gordon-Letarte team ever did.

10. Martin Truex Jr. (7) – Starting to believe Truex Jr. when he sings about idiotic announcers in the commercial. I can't count how many times the announcers screwed up Sunday.

11. Mark Martin (5) – There is only one driver in NASCAR that could make Martin look like the villain, and that's Dale Earnhardt Jr.

12. Paul Menard (20) – Another solid run for Menard, seems to be feast or famine for the third Richard Childress Racing driver.

13. Kyle Busch (6) – Never made much noise at his hometown track. His brother, however, smacked the inside wall so hard the brother's old dirt track could feel it.

14. Joey Logano (14) – It's tough not to pull for a guy like Logano, always smiling, unlike his teammates.

15. Jeff Burton (16) – The Mayor of NASCAR was the worst of the RCR bunch and still finished 16th, those Childress cars look tough.

16. Ryan Newman (NR) – Didn't hear much about Newman all day. Then you look at the finishing order and ol' rocket man ended up fourth.

17. Regan Smith (19) – If Smith can sneak another surprising win this season, this team could sneak into the Chase.

18. Brad Keselowski (9) – Tough day for both of the Penske Racing Dodges. The 2013 season can't come soon enough.

19. Clint Bowyer (NR) – New "drinking game." Have a 5-hour energy shot every time Bowyer's commercials run during a race broadcast. #wired

20. Trevor Bayne (NR) – GET THIS MAN A SPONSOR! The 2011 Daytona 500 champion won't be racing at Bristol in either series. What a shame.

DNF: NASCAR on FOX – FOX needs to realize that social media makes broadcasting delayed. Pit stops after they happened, along with everything else, under commercial look bush league.

Rating the Kobalt Tools 400: 3 Stars ***

Sprint Cup Series defending champion Tony Stewart capitalized on several late restarts to seal the deal in Las Vegas and assure everybody he will be a major factor in the championship again this year. Although he had a great battle with Jimmie Johnson at the end, the entire race wasn’t nearly exciting and gets a 3 Star Rating.

With so many quality teams in the sport, it is relatively rare to see two of the all-time greats get the chance to compete head-to-head on the track the way Stewart and Johnson did Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. With eight championships between them, the winner was going to know he beat the best competition on the track.

Other drivers tried to keep up throughout the race, but Stewart was solid as a rock and steadily moved to the front, while Johnson made his way to the front after starting 40th.

Johnson was actually involved in the two best battles on the track all day. He and Matt Kenseth had a terrific run in the first half of the race that usually isn’t seen at mile-and-a-half tracks until late in the race. Both battles were reminiscent of the Stewart and Carl Edwards battles at the end of last season.

For Stewart, Sunday’s win proves that he has certainly carried the momentum from winning the 2011 championship into 2012. With Steve Addington on top of the pit box this #14 team could have quite a run throughout the entire season, not just in the Chase.

The bulk of the race played out pretty much as expected. The big guns stayed at the front of the field throughout the day. However, most of the race was cleaner than expected. Minus two debris cautions and the two BK Racing engines overcooking their burgers, the Busch brothers had the only true incidents on the day. Kyle spun off of Turn 4 and Kurt wrecked coming out of Turn 2.

Other than the craziness at Daytona, the races at Phoenix and Las Vegas have been noticeably calmer than normal. Both races had large, multicar incidents last year as it seemed like drivers got acclimated to racing again for the new season. This year drivers have raced hard, but they’ve kept it clean. Nobody has even attempted a verbal throwdown in a post-race interview.

As far as the points standings are concerned, Greg Biffle took over the lead from Denny Hamlin, who had an awful day and finished 20th. This is the point in the season where the standings start to shake out and morph into how they will look for the majority of the season. Except for Mark Martin in 10th and Paul Menard in 11th, the Chase would be considered fairly normal with everybody who would receive a Chase berth.

Both Martin Truex Jr. and Joey Logano may be somewhat of a surprise sitting eighth and ninth, respectively, but these are two drivers who have run with a fully sponsored team in a large organization for several years now, and it is about time for them to consistently run near the front or go find another ride.

In any case, next week is Bristol and that is sure to stir everything up. Nothing cures a quiet start the season like a trip to Thunder Valley where a clean car at the end of the day probably means you didn’t drive it hard enough.

Have a great week, everybody.

MMCC Power Rankings: Week 2

Anybody awake yet? Boy was that a dull race, and not what NASCAR needed after all the Daytona 500 ratings. There were no explosions or fires. Heck, there were only one or two single-car wrecks too.

Let's wake up a bit and take a look at the Week 2 Power Rankings.

1. Greg Biffle (Last Week 2) – Who would have guessed Greg Biffle would be the best of the Roush-Fenway Racing trio two races in?.

2. Denny Hamlin (3) – Denny and Darian sitting in a tree W-I-N-N-I-N-G.

3. Kevin Harvick (7) – That's how you're supposed to race. Put it all on the line ... to hell with what happens. Maybe a championship is in his future yet.

4. Matt Kenseth (1) – Did anyone else see Kenseth on the Jay Leno show? It's sad when the guest is funnier than the host.

5. Mark Martin (9) – Mark may already be thinking about running the full schedule, sabotaging the Elliott Sadler announcement hours after it happened.

6. Kyle Busch (12) – How often is it that Rowdy is the classier of the two drivers in a "rivalry?" The younger Busch brother got booted out of the way by Harvick and didn't do anything about it Yet.

7. Martin Truex Jr. (10) – Ok I was wrong, the Napa Know How commercials are way more annoying than anything Clint Bowyer is in ... though not by much.

8. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (5) – Junior may have a few more Diet Dew offers if he keeps up the top-15 finishes.

9. Brad Keselowski (15) – If I hear one more thing about Keselowski's Twitter antics between now and Vegas, I'm going to put all my hard-earned blogging money on black.

10. Bobby Labonte (20) – I know it may be a bit early, but if the Chase started now Labonte would be in the championship hunt for the first time since guys such as Johnny Benson, Kenny Wallace and Ricky Craven were in the series.

11. Carl Edwards (3) – I hear the Subway driver promised media members Subway sandwiches for the Subway Fresh Fit 500; too bad the Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Sandwiches never made it to the track. Disclaimer: This ranking brought to you by Subway, eat fresh.

12. Jimmie Johnson (18) – You know it's not a good race when the fastest car can't even make a decent pass.

13. Jeff Gordon (17) – Four-time champion world problems: Running top 10 - "This car is junk."

14. Joey Logano (19) – May be about time to add some jam to Mr. Sliced Bread after two back-to-back top 10s.

15. Tony Stewart (8) – Tony did his best Marcos Ambrose impression, only he did it with more than 50 laps to go and was forced to ride around in 22nd.

16. Jeff Burton (6) – No better way to ruin a strong start to the season than by something out of your control, engines and UNC basketball .

17. Dave Blaney (13) – For the record, Dave Blaney has not joined Twitter, so any attempts to follow him will be futile. Unless you do it in real life, then you're just a creeper.

18. Juan Pablo Montoya (NR) – Track workers everywhere let out a huge sigh of relief when the #42 car finished the race without incident.

19. Regan Smith (NR) – Smith had the shortest drive to the track but one of the longest back to his hauler after a top-15 run was ruined by fuel mileage.

20. Paul Menard (11) – The official Paul Menard wrecks caused tally sits at: 1

DNF: Kasey Kahne – Sounds like someone is a little to antsy about getting to drive such good equipment. So much so, he turned right way before we ever got to Sonoma.

MMCC Power Rankings: Week 1

Well wasn't that an interesting race. Some people were worried it would be delayed before it ever started. Well it got delayed all right, but not by what everyone expected it to be.

FOX could have done a much better job this week. Way too many commercials during race-time, especially considering they went side-by-side during track repair. With as many cameras that are at a NASCAR race every week, it's also a shame no-one caught Juan Pablo Montoya's accident at a decent angle.

1. Matt Kenseth (Last Week 2) – Kenseth was in the top 5 for the final 62 laps of the race, including first for the final 35.

2. Greg Biffle (6) – Good Guy Greg: Has a shot to win the Daytona 500, makes sure teammate does instead.

3. Carl Edwards (3) – Edward's is a sponsor's dream. Red Flag: Order from Subway even though they don't deliver.

4. Denny Hamlin (9) – NASCAR must have used Denny's connections with FedEx to get that many boxes of Tide to the track so quick. Tide: The official laundry detergent of the Daytona 500.

5. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (10) – He may have been pleased with a second-place finish, but his fans sure weren't. The only way to please Junior Nation is to win, or to have a foot-race to the bathroom.

6. Jeff Burton (NR) – The best part of Jeff Burton leading the race was when Mike Joy mentioned Ward Burton. The Burton brothers are the best brother duo to drive for Catapiller ... Wait, I think they're the only brother duo to drive for CAT. Oh well.

7. Kevin Harvick (12) – The "closer" didn't do as much closing as I figured he would late in the race. I figured the three Richard Childress Racing cars would make a push to the front.

8. Tony Stewart (1) – Every Stewart-Haas Racing car spun around at least once, putting those championship winnings to good use already.

9. Mark Martin (NR) – Is Martin driving the #55 for Aaron's, or because that's his age?

10. Martin Truex Jr. (NR) – When asked what he was going to do with his extra money, Truex responded "New NAPA oil filters for the whole infield!"

11. Paul Menard (NR) – I'll start giving Menard more credit when Menard's stops sponsoring his vehicle.

12. Kyle Busch (4) – Wild Thing never got a real chance to strut his stuff, though he did stay patient and brought it home in one piece. That's more than his brother can say.

13. Dave Blaney (NR) – Who couldn't help but root for the track to be unfixable if only to give Mr. World of Outlaws a win in his 398th try? Welp, maybe start #432 will be the charm.

14.Clint Bowyer (NR) – Was anybody else as annoyed as I was by the shear number of commercials Clint Bowyer was in during the 500?

15. Brad Keselowski (13) – "I followed Brad Keselowski on Twitter before it was cool," said hipster NASCAR fans everywhere.

16. Kasey Kahne (5) – The highest ranking of the remaining Hendrick Motorsports drivers. Why? Because he finished the most laps.

17. Jeff Gordon (8) – One of the strongest cars all day, just a victim of a bad break.

18. Jimmie Johnson (7) – On the plus side, Jimmie got to watch the final laps of the Daytona 500 from the comfort of his own home.

19. Joey Logano (NR) – Finished where he ran for most of the day, at the tail end of the top 10. He will need a few more runs like that to keep the firing rumors on hold for a while.

20. Bobby Labonte (NR) – You know you're not in too bad of company when you are ahead of guys like Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon in the standings.

DNF: Juan Pablo Montoya – Considering JPM had wrecked just about every other driver in NASCAR, he wanted to make sure he was "perfect." He put a whole new meaning to the phrase "setting the track on fire."

NASCAR starting grid will look much different in 2012

After a year where hardly any sponsors stepped up to fund big-time rides for new drivers, there will still be a bunch of people on new teams come Speedweeks in February at Daytona.

Sure, there may be one decent ride available at this point after Kurt Busch left the #22 Dodge vacant, but whoever fills that spot will be the seventh driver among those who finished in the top 30 in points last season to either strap into a car for a different Sprint Cup Series team in 2012 or still be without a ride for next season.

In addition to the driver changes, at least 12 crew chiefs who worked for teams that finished in the top 30 in points last year will sit atop a different pit box during the Daytona 500 than the one they sat on at the beginning of the 2011 season.

That means nearly one-third of the teams in the field for the Daytona 500 will look different than they did at that race a year ago. That is amazing considering all of the talk of there being no opportunities to move in the sport and everybody better stick at their current job because there likely won’t be another option.

Of course, many of these moves weren’t made by the choice of the driver or the crew chief. The crew chiefs for drivers such as Greg Biffle and Juan Pablo Montoya were replaced mid-season and crew chiefs for Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin were let go from their respective teams once the season ended.

Team lineups have been relatively stable during the past several years, but 2011 will go down as the year where a bunch of crew chiefs lost their job, or at least changed teams. This sort of shuffle happens every few years, and the stability during Jimmie Johnson’s run of five championships is remarkable considering every other team lost for five years in a row.

Overall, the group of Sprint Cup Series drivers has also remained pretty stable in the last five or six years. Early in the last decade, NASCAR had a large influx of young drivers enter the sport, but once the group of drivers such as Kasey Kahne, Ryan Newman and Jamie McMurray reached the Cup level, the pipeline of young drivers quickly shut off.

Just look at the rookies of the year for the past five seasons. Montoya and Joey Logano both finished 20th in the points in their rookie seasons, but the other three have failed to crack the top 30.

This current group of drivers might not have changed much in the past several years, but this year an entire new group of crew chiefs will take their spots atop the pit box for new teams.

One might think all of the crew chief changes could shuffle the running order at many of the races next season. However, just two of those changes happened to teams that finished in the top 10 in points, and one of them just won the championship. The teams that finished outside the top 10 needed to make changes because the current setup obviously wasn’t working too well.

All of the personnel changes could make for a season similar to 2011 where multiple drivers won their first race and no team really pulled away from the pack. Or, it could make for a season where the same top 10 teams dominate as the other teams work to build their chemistry and performance on the track.

For the sake of many race fans, here’s hoping we get another season where different teams show up at the front of the field each race.

Rating the Bank of America 500: 3 Stars ***

The first half of the race was more of the same boring follow-the-leader racing of the first four weeks of the Chase, but then Jimmie Johnson wrecked and guys started to fight for positions. While it still wasn’t a good race, Charlotte does barely jump up to grab a 3 Star Rating.

Without everything that happened at the end of the race, Kyle Busch would have easily put this one to bed. After Greg Biffle had a pit-road miscue to remove him from contention, Busch stomped the field similar to how he won the race in July at Kentucky Speedway.

The first three-quarters of Saturday night’s race was awful. It felt like an extended version of the first three segments of the All-Star race where nobody challenges for a position.

But then the biggest moment of the night happened.

Jimmie Johnson was battling underneath Ryan Newman through turns 1 and 2 when he got loose, tried to save the car and turned up nearly straight into the wall.

The wreck obviously did some major damage to the #48 car and Johnson’s championship run as he is now eighth in the standings and 35 points out of the lead, but it could’ve done some serious damage to Johnson himself.

I think it’s safe to say that anybody who has been a NASCAR fan for at least 10 years held their breath when they saw the #48 car head toward the wall at that angle. On the surface, that wreck looked eerily similar to the one that killed Dale Earnhardt in 2001 at Daytona. The front end of the car caught the apron, pointed the car toward the wall and the driver was along for the ride.

Thankfully, and I know we say this every time there is a hard wreck, both the cars and the walls are incredibly safe.

Just when the quality of racing, or lack of it, starts to gnaw at a race fan’s mind, something like Johnson’s wreck happens and reminds us all that right now the cars have to be built this way. Johnson can now add his list to the half-dozen or so drivers who have had the cars and SAFER barriers save their life, or at least save them from serious injury. But, with Dan Wheldon’s fatal wreck Sunday, the work to improve safety will never end.

Now, the other factor of Johnson’s wreck is that it will take a wild charge from the #48 team to come back and win championship #6. Even with his average runs in the first two races of the Chase, Johnson still was well within striking distance to take the lead. That is now gone. Johnson is going to have to be nearly perfect even to be in the championship conversation come Homestead.

On a lighter note, Matt Kenseth won the race and made a great move to get around Busch after the final restart. He may have won the race by nearly one second, but he had to make the move early in the run or Busch might have been able to hold him off.

Hopefully the finish at Charlotte will spark a wild race at Talladega. The first half of the Chase has been tepid, at best. The rule changes to the cars at Talladega might change the style of racing a bit, but the sport needs a race that has people talking nonstop about the actual race for the following week instead of the championship situation.

Amid 14 different winners, Stewart, Biffle and Bowyer still looking for Victory Lane

The next three races might not be the three an average NASCAR fan would pick to attend if he or she didn’t live nearby Pocono, Watkins Glen or Michigan, but they are important weeks on the NASCAR schedule.

With the exception of Daytona, Pocono Raceway is the first track the Sprint Cup Series visits for a second time in the season. It always feels like the haulers just pulled out of the infield before they come rolling back in today.

Since Jeff Gordon won the first race at Pocono in June, five of the six races have been won by a driver who was winless on the season going into that race. Kyle Busch’s dominating performance at Kentucky was the only race where a driver picked up his second win of the season. Overall, there have been 14 different winners so far this season.

Will this trend of a different face in Victory Lane nearly every week continue? Probably not, but there are still several drivers who usually have wins at this point in the season yet are still winless in 2011.

Tony Stewart, Clint Bowyer and Greg Biffle all have cars capable of running up front more weeks than not, but so far the perfect scenario it takes to win a race has not come together for these drivers.

That’s not to say they are in dire trouble yet this season. Stewart has several tracks coming up where he has had success in the past, and his cars have been better lately as he’s made his way inside the top 10 in the points standings to head to Pocono in ninth.

Biffle also has reasons to be optimistic as the midway point of the Race to the Chase approaches. He won the second Pocono race a year ago, and the Ford cars continue to be strong at the larger tracks on the schedule. It’s just a matter of time before the end of a race plays out in Biffle’s favor.

That leaves Bowyer. He might be in the most trouble of these three drivers. The #33 car consistently comes to the front of the field at short tracks and flat tracks.

Unfortunately, Bristol is the only short track until the cutoff race at Richmond, and Pocono is also as flat as the tracks get until Richmond. Like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Bowyer will need good, consistent finishes the rest of the way if he wants to be a factor for the Chase come Richmond.

If these three drivers do win, that will push the total number of different winners to 17 before the Chase starts. That is remarkable, and it could go beyond that since the series will visit Chicagoland for the first and only time this year to start the Chase, and then Talladega looms later in the Chase. Anybody could win that one, and the way things have been going this year, somebody different likely will.

NASCAR heads to Kansas to begin important stretch of Cup season

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series heads to Kansas this week for another weekend that is different from where the series usually races at this point in the season.

In the past several years, the first weekend in June meant a trip to Pocono Raceway and the start of the TNT Summer Series. However, among the several changes made to the Cup schedule this season is this weekend in Kansas. The series has traditionally run at Kansas on the first weekend in October, but this year the race in June was added.

Kansas does fit at this point in the season, though. While June isn’t always the most exciting month of racing, with tracks including Pocono, Michigan and up until this year, New Hampshire, it is one of the most important as far as the championship battle is concerned.

In the years before the Chase, June was the month when the championship contenders began to separate themselves from the rest of the field. The tracks during this month were big, so they required strong cars and the variety among those tracks required teams to be consistent across several types of setups, from big flat tracks to big sweeping tracks with a road course thrown in for good measure.

With the Chase, June is the time for drivers to either get themselves in a comfortable position to make the Chase, or for drivers outside the cutoff to start putting together a charge to get back in contention. It’s tough to make up a bunch of ground in June, but a bad month makes it very difficult to be in a good position come Chase time in September.

The weather during the race weekend at Kansas in October has usually been on the cooler side, or at least it hasn't had the blistering heat that will be at the track this weekend. The forecast calls for temperatures in the low to mid 90s while the cars are on the track.

Hopefully the teams are prepared for the heat and have the cars setup for a long, hot day so the race doesn’t turn out like the one a few weeks ago at Dover where everybody seemed to be chasing their car around an unexpectedly hot and slick racetrack.

This will likely be another good track for the Ford cars. Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle have been good at this track in the past, and although it has much less banking than Charlotte and Dover, the track in Kansas is still 1.5 miles long and Fords have won two of the first three races on tracks of that length.

If somebody is going to jump up and contend with the #99 team in the points standings, they better start getting after it now because Edwards’ lead is up to 36 points. In the past that would’ve barely been any lead at all, but now it is almost a full race’s worth of points.

Now is the time for someone to work on breaking down that lead, or Edwards could end up being this year’s Kevin Harvick or Tony Stewart as he goes on to dominate the regular season. But, it takes more than consistency these days to win the championship.

Wins might not be as important toward the points standings as some people would like, but they are as important now as they have been at any other time in the sport’s history.

Rating the Price Chopper 400: 2 Stars **

After a couple of weeks on traditional one-mile ovals, NASCAR moved out to Kansas and added an additional half-mile. However, the added distance did not mean added excitement. Kansas gets a 2 Star Rating.

Congratulations to Greg Biffle, the #16 team and the entire Ford stable. The Roush-Fenway Racing cars have finally come to life, with three cars in the top 10, and the Richard Petty Motorsports cars swept the front row in qualifying.

Coming into the season, one of the most often asked questions were about whether or not the Roush and Richard Childress Racing organizations would improve on sub-par 2009 season. The Childress group jumped out front early and has debatably been the best overall organization this season. Roush, on the other hand, continued to struggle through much of the regular season. Several Roush drivers would put down consistent finishes, but they were never really a threat to win.

Then came Sunday. At one point Ford held the top four positions on the track. What is the difference? One obvious answer is the new engine program finally has the kinks worked out and is running full speed ahead. However, the cars are handling much better.

On a track that caused drivers such as Mark Martin and Jimmie Johnson to spin out in practice, Biffle’s car was on a rail for much of the day. Lots of cars can make horsepower, but the ones that carry speed through the corners will be at the front in the end.

The only real drama Sunday dealt with the points standings. While Johnson once again has the lead in the Chase, the overall standings are as close as ever. Eight drivers are still within 100 points of the leader, the most ever in the Chase era.

So far all of the folks hoping for a close Chase battle have been treated to exactly what they were looking for. Now, the possibility of having an elimination format has been thrown around so much it might as well already be in place. But why would NASCAR want to eliminate drivers early in the Chase? Right now 11 of the 12 drivers could mathematically leave California next week in the lead. Wasn’t one of the main reasons for the Chase to have more drivers compete for the title? Well, they’re competing — but Johnson is once again in the strongest position.

A positive from Sunday’s race was the lack of cautions. As I said earlier in the year, this group of drivers has, for the most part, been on the track together for a while now. The lack of developing Nationwide drivers has helped, but right now each and every week there are surprisingly, and refreshingly, long stretches of green-flag racing. NASCAR helped hand last year’s race at Kansas to Tony Stewart when it threw a debris caution late in the race and everyone came in to pit.

This time, however, Biffle had a Denny-Hamlin-at-Michigan-type lead and NASCAR allowed it to finish under green. Kudos, NASCAR. The integrity of the race is has remained intact of late. Now that Clint Bowyer penalty situation, that’s a story for another day.

Next week the series moves out to the final fall race at California with Johnson in the lead. The racing may not be the greatest, but the race will be important in terms of the championship situation. Hamlin and the rest of the Chase field have to put up a good finish to keep Johnson from running away for championship number five.

Even if Johnson wins, the championship isn’t over. The #48 team has struggled at more tracks than normal this season and the competition has remained in stride for much of the season. Be ready, Homestead might actually mean something this year.

Rating the Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500: 3 Stars ***

A long day in the occasionally damp Pocono Mountains turned out to be bliss for the Biff, as a Ford finally drove into victory lane in 2010. The second race at the triangle was similar to the first with a variety of storylines, some good and some bad. Overall, it adds up to a 3 Star Rating.

It was a rather busy week for NASCAR coming into the race. Jack Roush crashed his plane once again, Marcos Ambrose came out of nowhere and announced a move to leave the #47 team, and per usual, rain delayed the start of the race before cars finally set off on a 500-mile odyssey in Long Pond, Penn., that ended with Greg Biffle scoring an emotional win as he scored his 15th career Cup victory.

In what has almost become a requirement for the first half of a race, Jimmie Johnson dominated the field and jumped out to a commanding lead before Jeff Gordon caught him on lap 120, just before the first of two debris cautions flew.

After the field reset for the final stretches of the race, rain clouds started to build over Turn 3’s shoulder and the drivers cranked the intensity level up. As the field came off of Turn 1 and down the Long Pond Straightaway on lap 165, Jimmie Johnson bump drafted Kurt Busch, who then clipped the nose of Clint Bowyer’s #33 and pounded the outside wall before coming back across the track and sliding through the grass. That hit was hard, but nothing compared to the one Elliot Sadler took in the same incident.

Several cars behind the original incident, Sadler checked up when he saw smoke but was hit from behind by his teammate A.J. Allmendinger and slid through the wet grass before he slammed the inside barrier, which juts out for no particular reason, head-on and completely ripped off almost the entire front of the race car, including the entire engine. Remarkably, Sadler was OK, as safety workers came to his aid with the engine still smoking on the apron of the track. The safety measures in the car kept him from being seriously hurt or killed. That hit was so vicious I’m not sure he would have survived if he had been driving a Nationwide car.

Now, much has already been said and written about the poor safety conditions at Pocono. This was nothing new, people were aware of these issues before the race began. What is unfortunate, however, is that nothing was done to fix these issues in the past five years or so. I’m always amazed that NASCAR doesn’t mandate every safety feature at a track. There are just certain things a sporting arena must have before a professional sport goes there. Every hockey rink needs glass a certain height off of the ice, just as every baseball field needs a screen behind home plate. If NASCAR was going to have tracks install SAFER barriers, it should have gone all the way and mandated SAFER barriers be put wherever possible. Race cars can smell an unsafe part of a track, and they will find it.

This race was actually similar to a restrictor-plate event at Daytona or Talladega. Speeds were near 200 mph, cars were bump-drafting all day, and there was a major wreck that will have people talking until the green flag drops at Watkins Glen.

People will continue to say Pocono needs to be taken off the schedule because of safety concerns, but many of them were also the ones that said the corners at Talladega needed to be flattened. The fact is Pocono Raceway has provided as much intrigue this year as any track on the schedule, both good and bad, just as Talladega has done in the past.

The series now moves from a tricky racetrack to a twisted one in Watkins Glen. Will Marcos Ambrose grab some redemption after the heartbreaking loss in Sonoma? It would be a heck of a way to say goodbye to his #47 at the end of the year. Likely, the big guns will be out in force again this coming weekend. Late in the season, the best teams tend to rise toward the top of the scoring pylon with more regularity week in and week out.