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 Finger Lakes 355: 4 Stars ****

It took a race track covered in motor oil to produce an exciting finish, but the Sprint Cup Series drivers sure went nuts as they slid through the final two laps Sunday at Watkins Glen. The first 88 laps weren’t much different than the rest of the relatively boring season, but the wild and crazy finish gives this race a 4 Star Rating.

Kyle Busch had the race won until he ran up on oil laid down by Bobby Labonte’s #47 car and had to slow his pace to stay on the race track. Brad Keselowski caught him in Turn 1 on the final lap and promptly spun him out. Then the battle was on between Keselowski and Marcos Ambrose.

The remainder of the final lap looked like the track’s surface was dirt rather than asphalt. Keselowski and Ambrose swapped the lead several times as they both tried thrashed to get to the finish line first. Ambrose eventually won the battle and took the checkered flag for his second consecutive win at Watkins Glen.

Now, many folks will say an exciting final few laps does not make a good race. There is certainly truth in that statement, but it’s also true that races aren’t designed to be exciting the entire time. Some of the greatest finishes in NASCAR history have come at the end of an otherwise forgettable race. This week’s race gets 4 stars because it had the best finish of the season. Period.

The first 95 percent of the race was about as typical of a Watkins Glen race as possible. Several drivers fell out of the race early because of mechanical problems and teams made varying strategy calls throughout the race. Otherwise, not much happened.

Busch, Keselowski and Ambrose had the three best cars all day, so it was fitting they were the three to battle for the win. And boy, they battled.

Busch should’ve won the race. He beat Keselowski and Ambrose on the final restart and would not have been caught if the track had been dry. His spin on the final lap relegated him to seventh on the scoreboard and moved him to 14^th in the points standings, six points away from the second wild-card spot, which is currently held by Ryan Newman.

Maybe the biggest lesson from Sunday’s race is how the slick conditions made for such exciting racing, and how much the drivers enjoyed the battle.

Certainly Busch and Jeff Gordon, who also spun out on the final lap, would disagree, but Keselowski and Ambrose had a ton of fun sliding around for the win.

That type of racing has disappeared in NASCAR in the last five years or so. In the greatest finish of all time, Ricky Craven and Kurt Busch slid around Darlington Raceway in 2003 for the final 15 laps banging into each other and having a great time. Craven won the race by .002 seconds.

Unfortunately, that type of racing isn’t possible any more, even at tracks such as Darlington. Nearly every track on the NASCAR schedule has been repaved since Craven’s win in 2003. Atlanta Motor Speedway is just about the only track left that hasn’t been recently repaved and has an abrasive surface that is difficult to drive.

The fresh asphalt gives cars better grip and allows the cars to go faster, but it doesn’t make for better racing. Hopefully, the track surfaces start to give up grip in the near future and become more difficult to drive. That will make for better racing.

Next week the Sprint Cup Series heads to one of the tracks with the newest pavement: Michigan International Speedway. Speeds surpassed 200 mph in June, but that likely won’t happen this weekend with hotter temperatures.

Maybe Dale Earnhardt Jr. will win again. We’ll likely hear plenty about his win in June next week. Regardless, expect the big teams to dominate the front of the field. The quality of the car matters a lot at Michigan.

Have a great week, everybody

Rating the Quicken Loans 400: 4 Stars ****

He did it. NASCAR’s most famous son won his first race in four years at the same track and on the same holiday as the last one: on Father’s Day. Dale Earnhardt Jr. spanked the field Sunday at Michigan International Speedway. Although all of the attention will obviously focus on Dale Jr., there was also the rest of a race, and it gets a 4 Star Rating.

It took 143 tries since that June day in 2008 when Earnhardt Jr. coasted across the finish line to win his last race. Now, I’m not going to say it is better to have it this way because fans of any driver would say life would be great if their driver won every race, but Earnhardt Jr.’s odyssey to reach Victory Lane made Sunday a pretty special day.

As we said last week after Joey Logano’s win at Pocono, for whatever reason getting that first win, either in a career or a very long time, is extremely difficult. Just ask Martin Truex Jr. or A.J. Allmendinger.

Logano got caught up in a wreck at Michigan, but don’t be surprised if he contends for several more wins before the season is over. The same can also be said for Earnhardt Jr.

Like it or not, Earnhardt Jr.’s win Sunday was a big moment in the sport. The stands at a racetrack haven’t shook like that since … well, a very long time. Earnhardt Jr. is the most popular driver in the sport, and therefore a large portion of the NASCAR fan base had been sitting on its collective hands for four years.

People will also talk about Earnhardt Jr. and the #88 team now as a legitimate championship contender. However, that team would’ve contended for the championship with or without a regular-season win. This is a Hendrick Motorsports team that has run as consistently well as any team in the sport this year. It was just a matter of time before the win happened.

The race itself was OK. The action on the track might have been a tad better than expected aside from Earnhardt Jr. pulling away from everybody during the final run of the race. However, NASCAR and Goodyear narrowly sidestepped the second edition of the 2008 Brickyard 400 when the race had to be stopped every 10 laps or so because tire wear was so horrible.

Plenty of teams had issues with the tires Sunday, but thankfully no tires blew out while at speed on the track. Drivers entered Turn 1 at 215 mph. A blown tire at that point would’ve been plenty dangerous.

Instead, Denny Hamlin provided the danger highlight of the day when he spun out on lap 133 and his car caught on fire as he drove down pit road. He was OK, but that will also likely be forever imbedded in the highlight package for Earnhardt Jr.’s streak-busting win.

So, next week the series heads out to California for the second time this year to bob-and-weave through the myriad of turns at the road course in Sonoma. That might be a bummer for Junior Nation considering he has never had a top 10 at that place.

Anyway, now that the trip through the repaved tracks is over, the upcoming schedule should be entertaining. The road course is next week, followed by the return to Kentucky and the Fourth of July weekend race at Daytona.

Hold on to the couch with both hands next week. Sonoma has been the site of intense races in recent years, and that should be no different this weekend.

Have a great week, everybody.

Rating the Pocono 400: 4 Stars ****

A weird, largely confusing day at Pocono Raceway ended with Joey Logano getting his first full-length Spring Cup Series win as he nudged Mark Martin out of the way with four laps to go. The first race on Pocono’s new pavement gets a 4 Star Rating.

This was a huge win for Logano. He set a new track record with his qualifying speed Saturday to win the pole, and then he won the race Sunday that was littered with pit road speeding penalties.

We’ll get to the speeding issues in a bit, but Logano went from possibly losing his ride in the #20 car at the end of the year to a legitimate Chase contender in just one weekend.

He now sits tied for 14^th in the points standings with Ryan Newman. Newman holds the tie-breaker because he has one more top-five finish than Logano, but those are the two drivers currently battling for the second wild-card spot. That’s not bad for a guy who came into the weekend with no wins, no poles, no top fives and just four top 10s in 13 races.

The way he won the race was also impressive. A debris caution within the last 10 laps of the race forced a late-race restart. Mark Martin lined up next to Logano and took the lead. Most people probably thought the veteran Martin would not get beat by a 22-year-old Logano who had just one rain-shortened win in 2009 at New Hampshire to his credit.

Instead, Logano closed in after Martin bobbled in Turn 3 and moved Martin up the track just enough in Turn 1 to take the lead and never look back. Logano had the best car this weekend, and he was able to close the deal.

That could be huge for him heading into the summer stretch of the season. Drivers often really struggle to break into Victory Lane for the first time, or even for the first time in a long time i.e. Martin Truex Jr. and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

However, once a driver gets a win, they tend to carry that momentum for several weeks and perhaps the rest of the season. Brad Keselowski did so last year after his win in the spring at Kansas Speedway.

As for the rest of the race, the uncertainties about the track after the repave proved to be nothing more than worries. The racing was fine for the most part, and it was better than what we see in the first races at many other tracks after a repave.

But, the racing took a back seat to all of the confusion on pit road for much of the first part of the race. NASCAR handed out 22 pit road speeding penalties throughout the race. NASCAR moved the timing lines during the repave, but many teams failed to realize the difference before the race, causing mass confusion as driver after driver served a penalty.

The penalized drivers are lucky this happened at Pocono. Many did not lose a lap, but a ton of cars would’ve fallen multiple laps down if this had happened at a short track.

People have debated, vehemently in some cases, where to place the blame in this situation. Most, if not all of the blame, should rest on the teams’ shoulders because they failed to include that detail in their pre-race checklists.

Sure, NASCAR could’ve made an announcement at the drivers meeting or something, but the pit road map was available to teams all weekend. Some checked the map and others didn’t. The ones that didn’t check felt those consequences Sunday.

Now the series will head to another repaved track at Michigan International Speedway. Drivers sped into Turn 1 at Pocono at nearly 210 mph, and the speeds heading into Turn 1 at Michigan could be even higher.

That should certainly make for some tense qualifying laps. Hopefully the race is just as intense.

Rating the Pure Michigan 400: 3 Stars ***

In a season full of different winners, the final trip of the season around Michigan International Speedway had the most common winner out front. The race itself was also common for Michigan, minus the fuel mileage, and gets a 3 Star Rating.

Kyle Busch became the first driver to lock himself into the Chase with his fourth win of the season Sunday. This race was a little bit back to normal after a stretch of surprising contenders and unusual finishes.

The big-name drivers came to the front and the different lanes in the corners at Michigan actually gave drivers a chance to pass each other. Some of what has caused all of the different winners of late is that it’s just so darn hard to pass.

That finally wasn’t the case Sunday. Busch won from the 17th starting position and Jimmie Johnson finished second after starting 19th, even though he caught a break with a caution coming out while he was in the pits.

So what happens after a race where drivers can find ways to improve their position without having to use strategy? They repave the track that gave them that ability. Who knows what the track will be like next year. There will be slight progressive banking, but new pavement doesn’t often make for really good races. Sunday’s race was classic Michigan, and it’s a shame that type of race is in jeopardy.

In the big picture, Brad Keselowski continued an amazing stretch with a third-place finish at Michigan and moved up to 12th in the points. He has now moved up 11 positions in the points standings in the past four races. That is incredible. He’s gone from an also-ran that lucked into a win early in the year to a driver that will likely make the Chase. He could have one of the biggest in-season turnarounds in the history of the sport.

People talked a lot about how much more a bad finish would hurt a driver in the standings when the new system was announced before the start of the season. While that has been true to an extent, the real difference is how much ground a driver can gain with a good run.

What may have taken two months to achieve in making big gains in the standings now takes about one month, as Keselowski has proved. Maybe it is easier to make up ground under this format even though many thought it would be harder.

All of that means a lot could still change in the final three races before the Chase is set. Denny Hamlin’s 35th-place finish really opens the door for about eight drivers who either have to get a win to have a shot at the Chase or already have a win and need to pass Hamlin in the standings to grab that second wild-card spot.

Now the Sprint Cup Series heads to one of the best stretches of the season. Bristol, Atlanta and Richmond are all fun tracks and the uncertainty in the points standings will make those races all the better. This is going to be a great final push to the Chase.

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 5-Hour Energy 500: 1 Star *

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series began the second half of the regular season in the damp and cloudy Pocono Mountains with a tough day on the cars and a boring day for the fans. The first race at Pocono Raceway gets a 1 Star Rating.

Pocono is an interesting track and probably takes more criticism than it deserves, but Sunday’s race, no matter the track, had everything NASCAR haters or bandwagon fans love to complain about the sport.

This race had nothing but single-file racing and debris cautions. Plus, most of the races Jeff Gordon wins seem to be similar to Sunday's performance. When that #24 car is right and gets in clean air, he can still drive away from the field.

However, true diehard race fans may have found the tidbits of strategy and all of the mechanical issues interesting. While there wasn’t much strategy to be found, especially compared to the past couple of weeks, there were plenty of mechanical problems that aren’t seen that often in today’s NASCAR.

NASCAR instituted a gear-rule change for the weekend that made it possible for the drivers to shift between third and fourth gear at certain parts of the racetrack.

This was a nice gesture to bring back some of the aspects that made Pocono interesting and unique in the past, but it didn’t do much to help the racing and certainly took its toll on the engines and transmissions Sunday as no less than seven drivers who were in the top half of the points standings had some type of problem during the race.

It will be interesting to see what kind of improvements the teams will make on their transmissions before the Cup series returns in August. Pocono is always one of the toughest tracks on equipment, but this race had as many failures as any race in several years. Teams might prepare for the next Pocono race the way they would for a restrictor-plate race with some of the focus teams will put on the transmission if NASCAR leaves the gear rule the same.

The first race at Pocono last year had the best post-race show of the season as several drivers spoke their mind and Joey Logano dropped the “his wife wears the firesuit in the family” line on Kevin Harvick.

This time around, the only pushing and shoving came early in the race after the first caution when Harvick drove Kyle Busch all the way down the frontstretch to the point where they were driving through water and not too far away from the end of pit road.

They didn’t touch each other and NASCAR told both drivers and teams to take it easy, but Busch’s and Harvick’s probation ends next week, so maybe the emotions will start flowing more freely once again, even though Harvick’s car owner, Richard Childress, didn’t need any help last week at Kansas when he went after Busch himself and got slapped with a $150,000 fine and probation for the rest of the year.

From this point on, it looks like Childress will have to let his driver fight his own battles. For Harvick, those battles usually come around fairly regularly.

So, after one of the most uneventful races of the season the series heads to Michigan for another long fuel-mileage race.

Fuel mileage was a concern for teams at Pocono, but it is an extreme concern at Michigan. Some drivers will be told to try and save gas from the drop of the green flag, and the same will likely happen the following week at the road course in Sonoma. It’s that time of the year.

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 Carfax 400: 3 Stars ***

The stars, and even the regular field fillers, of the Sprint Cup Series rolled into the Irish Hills (Was that referenced enough throughout the weekend?) of Michigan for the final northern race of the summer. The track was big, wide, and fast and made for a race worthy of a 3 Star Rating.

Kevin Harvick put to rest any talk that the #29 team was merely consistent during the regular season. This team is very strong and will likely be a top contender for the championship. The Richard Childress Racing organization struggled mightily last year, and maybe some still believe that such a remarkable turnaround is not possible at this level. Sorry folks, RCR is as good as they come this year.

The transition actually began late last year, as Jeff Burton in particular came on strong at the end. After going 18 races without a top-10 finish, Burton finished in the top 10 in each of the final four races, with two second-place finishes to complete the season.

Unfortunately, money got in the way of Childress’ latest personnel decision. The entire organization seemed to suffer when RCR added a fourth car in 2009. So, this year it contracted back to three cars and has been arguably the top organization in the sport. Then, last week Childress announced that he signed Paul Menard to come drive a fourth car in 2011. Not only does this not make sense given the history of the organization, but Paul Menard? That sponsorship money has gotten Menard a career-best finish of 26th in the final points standings for 2008. He is currently 23rd in the points this year.

Go ahead and say he hasn’t been in great equipment up to this point in his career. That’s not quite fair, though. He hasn’t been in a Hendrick car, but up until this year an RCR car wouldn’t have looked much better than where he has been the past few years. Anyway, good luck to RCR in 2011. However, it just signed a driver who will finish fourth out of the teams four cars almost every week next year. Good thing he brings in a bunch of money.

Another week, another heated battle between two drivers. The previous race at Michigan this season saw Casey Mears take out his then-teammate Scott Speed. This time, Joey Logano and Ryan Newman got into it coming through turn 4. Newman pinched Logano tight to the bottom of the track, Logano’s car got loose and he had to chase it up the track, where it caught the rear corner of Newman’s car.

After the race the two drivers had a discussion about what happened. This situation actually looked fairly similar to the incident between Logano and Harvick at Pocono several races ago. It’s understandable that Logano got loose and couldn’t hang on, but his comments make one think he made sure he caught the back end of the #39 in the process.

"I'm down there just hanging on and hanging on," Logano said. "I saved it three times before I'm like, 'I can't save this one; he should have given me room by now.’”

After a little dust-up, there is no better place to go than Bristol Motor Speedway. Although drivers can run side-by-side without wrecking each other at Bristol these days, it won’t take much for someone to jump out of their car upset after the race, or wreck, is over.

Anyway, the long, strung-out races are over, and this next stretch of races is one of my favorites. Bristol, Atlanta and Richmond are three of the best tracks on the schedule and should make for some great racing leading up to the start of the Chase.

Get settled in quickly this week, the truck race is tomorrow night already and will lead into what should be a fantastic weekend of racing.

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.

Rating the Carfax 400: 4 Stars ****

The second race at Michigan this season brought with it another good old fashioned fuel mileage race. Just like the race in June, things set up perfectly for a nail-biting race to the finish. In typical Michigan fashion, there were not many wrecks, and lots of green flag racing with several teams on different strategies at the end. The reward for a good strategic race with major Chase implications is a 4 Star Rating.

The man who was able to outlast them all in the final run to the checkered was none other than Brian Vickers, and man did he work a long time to make it happen? Vickers showed early on in his Nationwide career that he could run well in NASCAR by winning the Nationwide Championship in 2003. However, once he made the step up to the Cup Series with Rick Hendrick in the #25 car he found himself battling to stay relevant in the sport. After one win in three years with Hendrick, Vickers moved over to the newly formed #83 Red Bull program that was starting from scratch along with Toyota in 2007. Now, after two and a half years with the #83 team, Vickers was finally able to pull off the long-awaited victory at Michigan.

This was not really a fluky win like some fuel mileage victories turn out to be. Vickers was right on Johnson’s tail during most of that final run, a move that may have lead to him winning the race because of the draft he was able to use down the straightaways. But, if both Johnson and Vickers did have enough fuel to run like normal in the final laps I think Vickers may have been able to pull off the pass for the win. Plus, Mark Martin would have been right in the mix.

As for the Chase standings, Martin took a big hit, while Vickers was able to pull within just 12 points of the final transfer spot. The great thing about how this battle is shaping up is that it’s not just the driver in 12th that has to look over his shoulder in the final three races. With Biffle, Kenseth and Martin all within just 32 points inside the Chase, there are many drivers that are still not sure if they will make the Chase or not. The past couple of years it has seemed like there was really just a one-on-one battle for that final spot. Not this year. Kurt Busch in fifth is probably safe, but with three races to go in the regular season anyone from sixth on down could still miss the Chase come Richmond.

With the final regular season fuel mileage race out of the way, next up is the great short track in Bristol, TN. Fuel will not be a factor there. Instead, keeping the fenders on the car will go a long way towards victory lane and the all important bonus points. 13 drivers have been to victory lane this year, surpassing the total from a year ago. I would actually expect a few more different winners yet this season as there are still good drivers and good teams that have not yet won a race. Have a good week!