A year ago Joey Logano made his NASCAR debut. Not his Sprint Cup debut, his debut in any of the top three touring series. With two poles and a win in his first three starts in the Nationwide Series, he appeared to match the hype surrounding his young career. Ever since Mark Martin boasted that Logano could drive a Cup car better than some veterans when Logano was 15, people have waited for the newest NASCAR superstar.

The hype continued to grow after Joe Gibbs named Logano to replace 2-time champion Tony Stewart in the Home Depot car. People started calling him Sliced Bread and expectations grew in line with the hype. Then in the fall Logano made three Cup starts and stunk. He didn't finish better than 32^nd in three starts. Logano's 2009 started the same as 2008 ended. He wrecked and finished dead last in the Daytona 500.

With greater coverage and exposure in sports media, everyone is looking for the next superstar. And that makes people search earlier and earlier to unearth that next Big Thing. When Kyle Busch made his decut and almost immediately ran at the front of the pack and challenged for wins, that was suddenly the expectation for rookies. Kyle Busch is a phenom and that makes him the exception, not the expectation. The important thing to remember is that Logano just turned 19. With testing banned for 2009 Logano not only faced bigger expectations, but a steeper learning curve. A curve where seat time gets crammed almost exclusively into race weekends.

His early spring was a typical rookie season filled with decent runs (13^th at Las Vegas), days where the team struggled or experienced a total nightmare all weekend like at Daytona. After five races he was on the edge of the top 35 in owners points and in danger of losing his guaranteed starting spot. Now look at his May. Logano has scored three top 10's in his last five races and posted finishes better than 21^st in every race since Phoenix. He has led laps at Darlington, Talladega and Lowe's showing he's becoming more comfortable in the vaunted #20 car. He has gained With top cars provided by Gibbs and his steady improvement, it's not impossible to see Logano knocking on the door to Victory Lane before November.

Share your thoughts. Can he win a race this year? Is Logano overrated or just a victim of the hype machine?

Allow me to preface this with one point: I hate All-Star games. All of them. Maybe it's because my childhood awe for pro athletes was vanquished a long time ago, or that I just don't have as much time for exhibition games, All-Star games just can't do anything to get me worked up (aside from disgraceful decisions that lend meaning on the World Series). In most cases of All-Star games it comes down to a simple theory of "Why should I care about the game if the athletes don't?" For NASCAR drivers it's a race and the same rewards await him in the Victory Lane, so there's plenty of incentive to care about the All-Star race. It's still a contrived race weekend trying to mirror stick-and-ball sports. Pit crew challenges, crew chief races and burnout contests? None of these will appear next to a Nate Robinson dunk on Sportscenter or Youtube (nor should they).

-It's expensive for teams. All of the individual events feature their own costs. It's not like basketball where they have the gym rented for the whole weekend so they can just add 3-point and dunk contests with little additional cost.

The race itself is guaranteed overtime for anyone working in the fabrication department. The burnout contest is costly, especially when you consider that a blown engine is much more costly than simply wadding up your hood. Further, it's hard to see the motivation for an unsponsored, under-funded team to show up. They don't have a sponsor to show off, there are no owners points to chase, and unless someone pulls off a David Gilliland/Brad Keselowski type upset, running a "Your Ad Here" sign probably won't do much either. It seems like a floundering team would be better off taking a week off to get ready for the 600 and the chance at a decent pay day.

-No one knows the rules. Even drivers have trouble remembering what the format is because it gets changed every year (old school fans might chime in and say so does the championship format). Similar to the Bud Shootout, the format changes yearly. It's four 20 lap segments, no 25. You have to pit twice for fuel, especially on qualifying, although only in the final segment. Inverted restarts, This year the first draft of the rule book had drivers begin on the new drag strip, then do 80 laps with no pit stops for fuel or tires, then get out of the cars, do a snow angel while each crew chief shotguns a PBR (I haven't seen the final copy of the format, some elements may have been dropped).

-It's not really a week off. I hear the argument that since it's a short race at NASCAR's unofficial home track in Charlotte, that it's like giving the teams an extra week break during the season. Tell that to the crew and shop workers. Sure everyone can sleep in their own bed (heck, Dale Jr has a condo at the track), but it still looks like a lot of prep work to get the cars to the track, through inspection and set up for all the practices and heats. On top of that, there is the potential for more work thanks to the other silliness of the weekend (did I mention fab shops will likely pull in time-and-a-half?).

One of the few bonuses I see for the All-Star race is that it's about two days shorter than the Coke 600. A better solution is to use the Bud Shootout as the only exhibition in the preseason, and then have a true off weekend for the teams and crews, Even better move up the races and save the off week for late August or September leading up to the Chase.

What do you think of the All-Star race? Watch it and love it? Watch it and tolerate it? Or do you consider it an off weekend and do yardwork? Share your thoughts.

10 races into the 2009 season is enough time for some larger themes to form. The Chase field boasts only accomplished names and that means it's time to look at the big issues around NASCAR. Kind of like a mid-term report card, but without the gimmicky grades.

• Roush Fenway Racing is still working out the kinks. Last year the team had the intermediate tracks figured out. Carl Edwards has led 42 laps and hasn't been a factor in most races (only one top five). Matt Kenseth won at Fontana (His Daytona win is pretty irrelevant to the rest of the season) but has been AWOL since. David Ragan's breakout season hasn't materialized and Greg Biffle has yet to catch fire. Oh yeah and Jamie McMurray just isn't the driver everyone expected in 2005.
• Startups aren't Starting. Remember in February when Tommy Baldwin and Jeremy Mayfield started new racing teams citing lower operating costs thanks to the CoT and the no-testing policy? Costs may be down, but neither team has made a big impact.The two teams have combined for 11 starts and only one finish better than 30th,
• Stewart-Haas Racing is better than advertised. I predicted Tony Stewart would make the Chase and have a nice year, but I thought it would take much longer to threaten for wins. With slightly different circumstances he could have won at Martinsville ,Texas or Phoenix. He followed it all up with a strong 2^nd place at Richmond and Ryan Newman has begun running in the top 10 as well.
• Testing? We're talkin' about testing? NASCAR's decision to ban all testing at NASCAR sanctioned tracks posed a large question mark entering 2009. The goal was to save the team's money, but how would it affect the racing? Well, let's hope the ban has saved teams a lot of money. The action at the front of the pack, especially on intermediate tracks, has been sparse. 
• Kurt Busch is a pretty good driver too. Kyle gets all the pub, both good and bad, but Kurt is showing he hasn't forgotten how to wheel it. Since the elder Busch switched from a Ford to Dodge he has almost single-handedly carried the Dodge banner. He dominated at Atlanta and has finally found consistency from his pit crew, allowing him to bring home deserved top 5's and top 10's.
• It's official: Dale Jr is struggling. The early season schedule plays to Dale Earhardt Jr's strengths and played a big part in his hot start in 2008. It used to be he could show up to Atlanta, Bristol, Texas, Phoenix or Richmond and effortlessly rattle off top tens. Now the team struggles with handling or pit road problems on a weekly basis, regardless of the track type. I'm not convinced a crew chief change is the answer, and the team has plenty of time to make the Chase, but something is not clicking right now. No matter your opinion on how good of a driver Jr is, he's clearly too good to regularly be mired in 25^th with a poor handling car. 
• Is RCR any better than they were in 2005 (Casey Mears makes a good Dave Blaney)? Sure they've won 13 races in the past three seasons, but the 2009 lineup at Richard Childress Racing is looking a lot like the team that won one race in 2005 and looked largely lost. Sure they can paper over the cracks on short tracks and road courses, but RCR has taken a step back on the intermediate tracks. Maybe it's the strain of a fourth team or combining their engine program with DEI, but none of the teams looks capable of notching more than a handful of top 10's all season.
• One Down, who's next? The #8 car at Earnhardt-Ganassi has already been put on cinder blocks thanks to sponsorship woes. There are bound to be others to follow. Because most teams have already merged or formed partnerships, it's less likely an entire team will fold like previous sesaons. But there are a lot of cars that could use more decals on their cars to ensure the parts and sheet metal keep arriving at the shop and the haulers keep arriving at the track.

 

• In case you forgot, Mark Martin is one of the greatest drivers of this era. Sports are littered with aging stars that hang on too long (psychologists have termed this affliction Favre's Syndrome). When Mark Martin first wavered on his decision to retire in 2005, it was fair to wonder if Martin would head down that path. After three poles and a win at Phoenix, Martin is clearly a top driver at age 50.
• There are only 10 races that matter for Kyle Busch. And everyone, including him, knows it's not the first ten. He's running like he did last year, leading laps and closing out races with wins. Great. Grand. Wonderful. Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus have used the first 26 races as one big preseason test session to peak for the final ten. We'll see where the #18 team truly is at that point.