Rating the Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips 400: 3 Stars ***

Matt Kenseth gave it everything he had in the final laps Sunday at Michigan, but he couldn’t quite catch Denny Hamlin, who finally won his first race of the season. Overall, the first race of the year at Michigan gets a 3 Star Rating.

Except for a rare spin by Jimmie Johnson early in the race, everything went as planned throughout the first half of the race. Several Roush-Fenway Racing drivers traded the lead, Robby Gordon hit the wall and the race stretched out to make for a couple of green-flag pit stops.

By the halfway point Kyle Busch appeared at the front, and as is typical on days when he has a good car, Busch jumped out to a comfortable lead. Had the race stayed green, Busch and Kenseth would have battled for the win, barring their respective fuel-mileage situations.

However, Juan Pablo Montoya’s spin on lap 158 came right at the beginning of a green-flag pit stop sequence, and Kenseth again became the big winner as he came out of the pits with the lead. Busch dropped several spots and never could make his way all the way back and finished third.

Finally, Dale Earnhardt Jr. hit the wall with eight laps to go and eliminated the fuel-mileage game because everybody hit the pits and Hamlin came out with a lead he would never relinquish, even though it got close at the end.

This race was nothing out of the ordinary for Michigan International Speedway. These races usually go one of three ways: The race comes down to fuel mileage, a late caution makes for a decent battle to the end or neither happens and the margin of victory is more than a few seconds.

Sunday had the second option, as well as the closest finish since Regan Smith edged out Carl Edwards to win the Southern 500.

Also, after four debris cautions last week at Pocono, there were no such cautions this week on a track that generally has a few. The number of debris cautions at Pocono was awful, but it looks like that may be the exception this season rather than the rule, as it has been in past seasons.

As for Hamlin, this win should quiet the critics who say his team is off its game and he barely has a chance at the Chase. The win puts Hamlin up to ninth in the points standings with 11 races left in until the Chase begins. Don’t worry, the #11 team is fine, and it will be a factor come Chase time.

On the other side of the results, several big-name drivers struggled throughout the race, including Jeff Burton, who started outside the top 30 and never could make his way to the front.

Burton currently sits 25th in the points standings and has not proved yet this season the #31 team can consistently contend in a race, much less contend for a Chase spot. Burton could make a comeback late this season like he did two years ago, but this time the Childress organization is succeeding while Burton lags behind, whereas both the #31 team and Richard Childress Racing struggled for most of the 2009 season.

So, next week the Sprint Cup Series takes a break from the ovals and heads out west to Sonoma for the first of two road-course events.

Prepare for the annual “Should NASCAR have more road-course races?” and “Should a road-course race be in the Chase?” debates in the coming week. The two issues will likely never change, but people will still talk about them each time the sport visits a road course.

Rating the Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips 400: 2 Stars **

Another week, another win for Joe Gibbs Racing and another set of teammates battle it out on the track. All in all, it was not a spectacular weekend. The first 2010 race at Michigan gets a 2 Star Rating.

Denny Hamlin continues to dominate after the return of the spoiler. So much for all those who said it wouldn’t make much of a difference. The power shift we have seen with the spoiler change is more than we saw with the initial change to the COT. Yes, Hendrick Motorsports dominated 2007, but that group was already on top before the change, and managed to stay there afterward.

Overall, the change to the spoiler has been a good one. After a while the leader would gain a sizeable advantage on the second-place car on a long run, but cars were able to hang with the leader for a longer period of time than what we saw with the wing.

Other good news that came from this weekend was talk that more changes will likely be made to the COT in coming years. After the COT came on board in 2007, many people complained of the generic nature of the cars. Well, now NASCAR says it is working on restoring some brand identity to the cars. Imagine that subject coming up at Michigan. Anyway, NASCAR took the first step back to better racing earlier this season with the spoiler change. Now the next step is to give each manufacturer a unique nose. That was mainly the only difference on the old-style cars anyhow.

Once again, teammates got together on the track and were unhappy with each other afterward. Casey Mears got into Scott Speed this time, which is unfortunate because Brian Vickers had a good thing going with that #83 team and now they kind of have to take a few steps back for the rest of the season.

OK, on to Sunday’s race. All week everyone was preparing for a fuel-mileage race. Well, it didn’t happen. The way the cautions flew ended up leaving only half a fuel run at the end. But hey, some races just end normally, and that is totally fine. They aren’t all going to be like Daytona and Talladega. That’s what makes those races special. Every race is not like that, and every track is not designed to always provide close finishes. Live with it.

I really don’t want to get into the whole debris caution issue again. That horse has been beaten plenty on this blog. However, allow me one quick thought. Some say the phantom debris caution has been around forever. Well, I haven’t been around forever so I can’t say one way or the other. But, many people seem to be content with NASCAR continuing to cheat the race, the drivers, the crews and the fans. Are fans really that fickle?

I also don’t like comparing NASCAR to other sports because in most cases auto racing is just different. But, do fans go to baseball games expecting a no-hitter and then get fed up with the sport when it doesn’t happen? Hardly. The fact that an exciting game only happens once in a while makes those moments special. Same is true for NASCAR. Please, once and for all, let the races happen naturally. If a race ends in a photo finish, great. If not, well maybe next time, but a normal race is still better than pretty much anything else that happens during a given weekend.

So, next up is Sonoma. The technical zig-zag track in California is a nice break in the middle of the season, please just leave it there. Hopefully one of the road-course ringers has a good run, but lately that has not been an exception to the rule, as Cup drivers get better and better on these types of tracks. In any case, a different face up front will be a nice change from the latest stretch of races to feature only four different winners in the last eight races. Take a nice sip of wine and enjoy the weekend everybody.