Rating the Pennsylvania 400: 1 Stars *

A Sunday afternoon destined to be cut short by rain ended in tragedy with a big thunderstorm at Pocono Raceway. Jeff Gordon happened to sit in first place as the rains came, but the final race of the year at Pocono gets a 1 Star Rating.

The race really doesn’t matter following the death of a fan and injuries to nine others who were struck by lightning at the racetrack after officials ended the race on lap 98, and there is no way it could get a higher rating amid such a devastating event.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what happened before the storm Sunday at Pocono.

After a season filled with about every different type of disappointment imaginable, Gordon made a withdrawal from the luck bank when Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth and the rest of the frontrunners tried to make it through Turn 1 sideways on the final restart.

Sure, Gordon and his team worked hard to get him in position to sneak through for a win, but he still caught one heck of a lucky break.

The same thing happened for Ryan Newman at Martinsville when Clint Bowyer took out Johnson and Gordon in Turn 1 on the final restart. Now Newman and Gordon are tied for the final wild-card spot, with Gordon winning the tiebreaker because he has more top-five finishes.

Maybe the final wild-card spot should be renamed the lucky card if one of those two drivers makes the Chase based on their lone win.

Sunday’s race actually had a fair amount of action for a rain-shortened event at Pocono. Yes, Johnson jumped out and paced the field by four seconds or so for a while, but the leaders stayed close during several runs, especially compared to most races at Pocono or most of the races this season.

Perhaps it’s fitting a Hendrick Motorsports car won the race because that organization again dominated the day. Dale Earnhardt Jr. charged to the front early in the race and would’ve been in strong contention for the win if his transmission hadn’t broke. Kasey Kahne had the second-best car at the start of the race and then Johnson made his usual run to the front.

Hendrick Motorsports could have placed four cars in the top five if not for bad Johnson and Earnhardt Jr.’s problems.

With all of the crazy issues throughout the day, Kyle Busch came out as the biggest loser. A problem with the back of his car sent him into the Turn 1 wall on lap 19 and he finished 33^rd. More importantly, he scored just 11 points and now sits 15^th in the points standings with one win. He came into the race 11^th in the points and in position for the second wild card. He is now 12 points behind Gordan and Newman for that spot.

Either way, a big-name driver is going to miss the Chase this year.

Next up for the Sprint Cup Series is the road course of Watkins Glen. Marcos Ambrose and Juan Pablo Montoya will likely receive all sorts of attention and people will say they have a chance to make the Chase if they can win that race.

Well, technically they would have a chance, but neither car is running well enough these days to pose a real threat to the drivers currently in the wild-card positions. It would be great for Ambrose or Montoya to get a win, but let’s not push the issue too far.

Kahne, Gordon, Newman or Busch will be the wild-card drivers this year. Even Carl Edwards would have to mount a charge in an incredibly short amount of time to make the Chase.

He likely won’t win next week at Watkins Glen, so that means he has just Bristol, Atlanta and Richmond to make the Chase. He could catch fire and win two of those three races, but there is little reason to think that will happen based on his performance so far this season.

Anyway, have a great week and pray for those who were affected by the lightning strike at Pocono.

Rating the Brickyard 400: 2 Stars **

The Jimmie Johnson domination tour stopped in one of his favorite field-stomping grounds Sunday as he drove away from everybody to win his fourth Brickyard 400. Unfortunately, dominating performances rarely make for an exciting race, and that was the case again this week. This year’s Brickyard 400 gets a 2 Star Rating.

Look out, folks. Johnson and the #48 team are back on top of the NASCAR world. The numbers about Brickyard winners becoming Sprint Cup Series champions have been well-documented. The Brickyard winner has gone on to win the championship eight times in the first 18 years of the race. Johnson went on to win the championship each of his previous three victories at Indy.

Johnson will surely face strong competition from a number of drivers, but all of the signs are there for the #48 team to make another successful championship run this year.

Aside from marveling at Johnson’s greatness, there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot to get excited about Sunday afternoon. The only stretch of the race that had tense racing quickly ended once Joey Logano spun out and hit Matt Kenseth, causing the #17 car to burst into flames.

More than anything, the race at Indy looked like an extended, faster version of the race at New Hampshire. If there wasn’t any interesting strategy developing in the pits, there just wasn’t much to talk about.

This shouldn’t be surprising, however. The Brickyard is typically a race of prestige more than a race of excitement. That’s what makes Daytona so great. It hosts the most important race of the year and often the most exciting.

In any case, big congratulations are in order for Johnson. He is reaching the point in his career where he is approaching, or in this case reaching important milestones.

His four Brickyard wins tie him with Jeff Gordon for the most by a NASCAR driver at that track. This was also win #58 of his career, his third of the season and he is charging toward his sixth Cup championship.

It stinks for many fans of other drivers to see Johnson win seemingly every week and win the championship every season, but trust me, what Johnson is doing is special. Today’s fans will tell their children about Johnson’s accomplishments, even if it’s by saying, “I hated his guts because he won every week for almost an entire decade.”

The one other note that we can’t forget is that Dale Earnhardt Jr. took over the lead in the points standings. Kenseth finished 35^th after his wreck, and Earnhardt Jr. finished fourth to take a 14-point lead over Kenseth.

While it’s nice for Junior Nation to see their driver on top of the standings, the Chase has made this point somewhat meaningless. When Kenseth was told he lost the points lead, he just shrugged because he knows the Chase is the only time it matters where a driver sits in the standings. As long as a driver is currently in the top 10 in points, he doesn’t have to worry about whether he is first or 10^th because they get reshuffled for the Chase anyway.

Just imagine what today would’ve been like if the Chase didn’t exist. People would be falling over themselves with excitement that Earnhardt Jr. leads the points. At this time in the season, Earnhardt Jr. would be considered the championship favorite under the old format. Now he is still considered a darkhorse because he has just one win while Johnson, Tony Stewart and Brad Keselowski each have three wins.

Oh well. The Chase has its good points and bad points, and both have been discussed more than enough in the last seven years. But wait and listen to the reaction if it turns out Earnhardt Jr. would’ve won the championship under the old points system this year but loses the Chase.

Next up is Pocono Raceway, another 2.5-mile track that generally lacks exciting racing. Maybe we’ll be surprised and something interesting happens, but we probably shouldn’t cross our fingers.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pocono decides people can’t handle its 500-mile races

Sprint Cup Series drivers will likely catch a break and race about 200 miles less in 2012 than they have in past years.

Pocono Raceway announced Wednesday that both races in 2012 will be just 400 miles long instead of the traditional 500-mile races.

There will surely be people throughout NASCAR land that think this is the greatest decision Pocono has ever made.

I’m not one of them.

Shortening a race to 400 miles is like adding double-file restarts, a wave-around rule for cars a lap down or even implementing a playoff format. They are all gimmicks intended to make the sport more “exciting.”

Sorry folks, people loved the sport long before all of these new rules were dreamed up. Why did they like it? Probably because they thought it was exciting to watch cars race as fast as they can all afternoon.

The reason people show up to a race isn’t to see how the points standings will look at the end of the day or whether the race finished in a certain amount of time. They go to see racing. All of the other sideshows are cute, but they are called race fans for a reason. They enjoy watching racing.

So, now they will race 400 miles twice a year at Pocono. Now the track is even more meaningless than it was before. Part of what makes Pocono special is that it tests the drivers, teams and cars like no other track on the schedule. Sure, road courses and short tracks are tough, but those races are at most 300 miles.

It doesn’t make sense for fans of any sport to want their events to be shorter. We hear the same complaints about baseball. “It takes too long.” Well, what do you want? Do fans not go to a game to enjoy an afternoon or evening at the event? What else do they possibly have planned that day that makes them want the event to finish 30 minutes sooner?

Attending these events is something special. One would think a fan would want their event to last as long as possible, even though it seems some people show up just to see how soon they can leave to "beat the traffic." What’s wrong with spending more time watching what you came to see?

Ok, enough with the rhetorical questions. Having a 400-mile race at Pocono is not a good idea. Ed Randall, the former governor of the Pennsylvania, which ironically is where Pocono Raceway is located, might say this is just another example of the “wussification of America.”

People will say they think it makes the drivers race harder throughout the race. Honestly, they race pretty darn hard most of the time. Sunday’s race wouldn’t have been any more exciting if it had finished on lap 160. If anything, it would’ve been less exciting. Kurt Busch would’ve won by a larger margin than Brad Keselowski beat Kyle Busch.

People will still complain the racing is boring at Pocono whether the race is 400 or 500 miles long.

Unfortunately, this is part of our culture. Now there will be just 10 races that are 500 miles long next year, including a stretch of 12 races during the summer without a 500-mile race.

Sorry folks, 400 miles at Pocono won’t be any more exciting than the 500-mile races at that track. The only thing that changes is a shorter time to enjoy races that happen just one day out of a week.

NASCAR racing isn’t like sitting in church listening to a pastor preach a sermon that lasts three times longer than necessary. We aren’t forced to watch NASCAR races, but we choose to because we like it. If somebody likes something, they generally want more of it, not less.

In this case, we got less.

Rating the Good Sam RV Insurance 500: 2 Stars **

The incredible storylines just keep coming this season as Brad Keselowski wins just days after a horrific crash at a test earlier in the week that broke his left ankle. However, the race took forever and the real battles didn’t happen until the very end. Race #2 at Pocono gets a 2 Star Rating.

Good strategy put Keselowski up front after a rain delay of nearly two hours, but after the rain Keselowski ran a perfect race to bring home his second win of the year after holding off a hard-charging Kyle Busch.

NASCAR couldn’t have asked for a better scenario to play out as the season heads toward the Chase. All of a sudden there are guys like Keselowski, Paul Menard and David Ragan in serious contention for a Chase spot.

That would have been unthinkable in past years. Guys like Greg Biffle and Clint Bowyer are supposed to fill out the Chase field, not newcomers and guys that have been second-tier drivers for several years.

Also, who would’ve guessed Keselowski and Menard would be two of the contenders for the Sprint Summer Showdown? All of a sudden they, a charity and a fan could each have an extra $1 million if they win Labor Day weekend at Atlanta. Maybe a regular suspect will once again grab a win and make the world feel normal again.

There is just something different about this season. In a normal year, Kyle Busch would have jumped out on the final restart and driven away, or he would have at least run Keselowski down, passed him and driven on to a relatively uneventful victory.

Not this year. This year anybody can win. Keselowski’s win Sunday is the sixth “surprise” win of the season, a win by somebody that doesn’t typically fill up the prerace shows or receive attention once the Chase starts to take shape.

Last year there were only five surprise wins, and that’s if you include Jamie McMurray’s three wins and Juan Pablo Montoya’s win at Watkins Glen.

One would think this crazy stretch of different winners will come to an end soon, but Watkins Glen is often a crap shoot. People may have thought a Penske Racing car might win at Pocono, but that would almost certainly have been Kurt Busch’s #22 car, especially with Keselowski trying to drive with a broken ankle.

Shoot, most people wouldn’t drive their passenger car with a broken ankle, much less spend what turned out to be five-and-a-half hours slogging through 500 miles while driving as fast as possible around one of the most difficult tracks in the country.

The other interesting deal in Sunday’s race was the final laps battle between Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch. They had a great battle, but started beating on each other between turns 1 and 2. That led to a discussion on pit road and a possible feud that could really spice up the rest of the season.

The five-time champion wouldn’t step into a feud late in the year, would he? Well, he’s certainly picked a battle with somebody who doesn’t worry about showing people he’s upset with them. Just think, Johnson and Busch in a tight battle during the Chase. Oh, that would be fun.

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.

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.

Rating the STP 400: 2 Stars **

The Sprint Cup Series drivers endured another extremely hot day of racing Sunday at Kansas Speedway. Although the drivers were hot, the racing wasn’t. The first-ever spring race at Kansas gets a 2 Star Rating.

For the second straight week, everything came down to fuel mileage. Unfortunately, this week’s strategy did not carry as much drama.

Brad Keselowski definitely used some fancy tricks to save fuel, including pressing the clutch at the end of the straightaways and letting the car coast into the corner, and it looked like Dale Earnhardt Jr. might have the magic strategy to win the race, but the intrigue couldn’t match what happened the previous week in the Coca-Cola 600 where drivers were falling victim to fuel mileage left and right.

Maybe most of the crew chiefs learned their lesson at Charlotte and simply didn’t want to run out of gas for a second week in a row, but with 10 laps to go Keselowski was the only driver among the leaders who legitimately was running well beyond his fuel window.

It looked like Earnhardt Jr. was set up to make a run on Keselowski for the win because Keselowski was in major fuel-conservation mode, but after coming up empty at Charlotte the #88 team played it safe this week and had Earnhardt Jr. slow down to make it to the end as well.

Although it cost him a shot at finally winning a race, this was still a smart call by his crew chief, Steve Letarte. Earnhardt Jr. sits third in the points standings and is in a very good position to make the Chase heading into the summer months. At this point, it wasn’t worth the risk to try and win the race if it meant Earnhardt Jr. might fall back out of the top 10. It’s points racing, but this team has to take that into account considering where it has been in the standings in recent years.

A Chase berth will be worth much more than winning this race, there will be many more opportunities to win a race and it wouldn’t have been smart to put the Chase berth in any risk by trying to go for one win. Shoot, Earnhardt Jr. could just win a race or two in the Chase. That would be the best situation for him and his team because they would likely contend for the championship.

Other than the fuel-mileage finish, Sunday’s race had several of the same issues many bad races dealt with in the past few years. There were three debris cautions and basically three leaders for the majority of the race. Kurt Busch, Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart were the class of the field and without fuel mileage one of those three, likely Busch, would have easily won the race.

In fact, other than Landon Cassill hitting the wall and Earnhardt Jr. spinning, there wasn’t a heck of a lot of action on the track. Plus, Cassill’s wreck was caused because the field was bunched up again after one of the debris cautions.

Without that, there was one legitimate caution the entire race, and even with that one Earnhardt Jr. didn’t totally spin out, although it would’ve been difficult to go all the way around the track if he missed the entrance to pit road.

So, get ready for more spread out racing this week as the series heads to Pocono Raceway. The triangle track is tough on the cars, but the teams that bring the best equipment usually come out on top. This could be another race where the top teams dominate the top 10 the entire day. Have a great week!

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 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.

Rating the Gillette Fusion ProGlide 500: 3 Stars ***

It took until lap 199, but the boys finally had at it in the beautiful Pocono Mountains. The race was so-so, but the aftermath was quite interesting. Pocono gets a 3 Star Rating.

Logano vs. Harvick, Kahne vs. Allmendinger, Stewart vs. the field. Anyone who had a chance to voice an opinion after the race did so, except Jeff Gordon, he let Kasey Kahne handle the questions after walking out of the camera shot. What fired everyone up this particular weekend? This was set to be a nice lazy afternoon at Pocono with everyone just putting in laps to get to the finish. However, once they got close everything went crazy.

Let’s start with Joey and the Harvicks. The second-year driver who has been trying to mind his p’s and q’s ever since he debuted in the Cup series last year has developed a reputation as a smooth, consistent driver. But, that may have led to the thought that he can be pushed around. Every driver goes through this at some point in his career; this was just the first time we had seen Logano take the bait afterward. While the comment about DeLana Harvick’s firesuit was quick-witted, it sounded a little funny coming from a 20-year-old guy whose father was out on pit road chasing him around after the race. I don’t expect this to carry on much further on the track, but it would be intriguing to see Logano get up on the wheel and use the chrome horn a time or two. We shall see.

Next up is Kahne vs. Allmendinger. That Richard Petty Motorsports group is quite the dysfunctional organization. For years now the management has been unstable at best, last year drivers were not getting paid, getting sponsorship has been a chore for several years now and the drivers hardly speak to one another. If that’s the case, I can’t see why Kahne expected Allmendinger to cut him a break on the final lap. Yes, the dinger drove Kahne straight into the grass, but it would seem that the teammate deal is kind of hollow words when the “teammates” hardly even speak to each other. Kahne is fed up and done with this group. Might as well stamp that Hendrick Motorsports patch on his uniform now because he is likely going to race those guys cleaner than he will his own teammate.

Finally, Tony Stewart said everyone was driving like idiots throughout most of the race. Considering the entire field was strung out for most of the first 97 laps I’m not sure they were driving like idiots the most of the race. They may have on restarts because once things got strung out nobody had much of a chance to pass anyone.

In any case, it was surprising to see such aggression at the end of the race. This week I watched the race at Pocono from last fall and everyone was more than content to let the final laps wind down and finish quietly. Not so this year.

The incidents we have seen between drivers this year makes me wish the “Have at it, boys” slogan had been applied last year when Kyle Busch spun out Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Richmond. I don’t know if Jr. would have engaged in a shouting match, but the possibility of seeing Jr. pull a Jeff Burton on Busch makes my mouth water.

So, next week the series continues the northern swing with a trip to Michigan, the place where car manufactures will be talked about way too much in one weekend. Late cautions ended a chance at a fuel-mileage race this weekend, but Michigan may have the greatest rate of fuel-mileage races of any oval track. It will be interesting to see if the Hendrick Motorsports group can get back on track. Yes, Jimmie Johnson finished fifth, but not one Hendrick car was up front much during the race. Roush has always been good at Michigan and the new Ford engine will be used by every Ford in the field. See? We’re already talking car manufactures. Have a great week everybody.

Rating the Pennslyvania 500: 4 Stars ****

An emotional day at Pocono brought with it plenty of excitement and intrigue. There were guys upset all over the place on Monday. Plus, some close racing throughout the second half of the event gives Pocono its second 4 Star Rating of the year.

Things started off as normal with Jimmie Johnson jumping out to his mandatory two second lead during the first run. While that happened I was thinking “O boy, this is going to be a long one today.” Johnson, however, ended up having plenty of other issues to make his day stressful. Although none of the problems were able to take him out of the race. I don’t know if the #48 team just has more luck than anybody else, or if they are so good that nothing can ever knock them out of contention. If they had that type of problem at any other track their race would have been over with no questions asked. Only at Pocono and the restrictor plate tracks could have left them with any chance. This team will be right there once again in contention at Homestead.

Aside from the #48 saga, there were plenty of other battles Monday that had people fired up, and things just got tighter and tighter as the race wound down. First, Robby Gordon and David Stremme had about three dustups on the track before NASCAR stepped in and slowed them down. Robby kind of seems like an older version of Kyle Busch. He is a great all-around racer, but he can never keep his cool when something goes wrong. I guess I thought he would have matured past that eventually.

Then, on the final caution of the day at lap 180, David Ragan runs up the back of Bobby Labonte going down into turn 1 and send Labonte flying into the wall while collecting five other cars. Labonte was obviously upset after the wreck because Ragan basically bump-drafted him going down into the corner over 200 mph. Not a great move on Ragan’s part after struggling for much of the weekend.

Finally, coming up to that final restart, Denny Hamlin told his crew while sitting in sixth with only 13 laps left that “I’m going to win this race,” and crew chief Mike Ford responded, “I know you will.” Four laps later the #11 would take the lead and never look back. With his grandmother’s passing weighing heavily on his mind, plus pure relief that he finally returned to victory lane; Hamlin’s victory celebration was as emotional as any this season.

So, a pretty good Monday in the Pocono Mountains means the week is one day shorter before things get started up in Watkins Glen. This will be another race where the road specialists show their stuff. However, it will also be a huge test for guys like David Reutimann. He will need to have the best road course race of his career in order to remain in serious contention for a Chase spot. On the other hand, next week’s race gives guys like Juan Pablo Montoya a chance to solidify their spot for the final ten races.

Get your rating hats on for next week as it will be a “You Rate the Race!” weekend. Then it’s back to more traditional ovals, but next week will still have good racing, only twisted.