Head2Head: Fuel mileage

I don't know about the rest of you, but after five-plus hours of racing in Charlotte, I was actually standing in front of my TV for the final laps of the Coca-Cola 600. Aside from the Daytona 500, I don't think we've had a better finish to a race then what we saw this weekend, and yes that includes Martinsville.

It's funny I say a win by 10 seconds was a dramatic finish, but not knowing if Casey Mears would have enough fuel to get his first Cup win was riveting.

This is why fuel-mileage races are so great. Look at the top-five: Mears, J.J. Yeley, Kyle Petty, Reed Sorenson and Brian Vickers -- all posting season highs, with a couple career-best finishes. These are drivers who don't get the opportunity to challenge for wins very often, yet here they are on top in the most grueling race of the season.

No Jimmie Johnson; no Tony Stewart; no Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- Why? Because they are so concerned about points and making the Chase, they all elected to pit instead of staying out and gambling for the win.

Those guys have to play it safe, and that's understandable. But blame NASCAR if you're unhappy about the finish. With the Chase format, it's now OK to not win races, but finish in the top 10 which is what all three of them did.

For guys like Mears and Yeley -- they could stay out, finish in the top three, and now Mears is securely inside the top 35 and Yeley is 59 points out of a Chase berth.

It's refreshing to see new names challenge for a win, and that's what fuel-mileage races give you. Pit stops are a critical part of this sport, why shouldn't they factor into the finish? Teams plan their stops right, take a chance or two and it pays off. Isn't that what this sport is all about? The fastest car doesn't necessarily win.

Complaints are at an all-time high about NASCAR staging races, throwing phantom debris cautions to benefit guys like Jeff Gordon and Johnson. Well for once we didn't have that. It was great to see the final 50 laps run under green, not interfered with by the dreaded yellow flag.

Did the best car win on Sunday night? Probably not. But the best team that night did.

• Bill Kimm, NASCAR.COM

Take absolutely nothing away from Casey Mears in Sunday night's Coca-Cola 600. He drove his butt off, the team made some great decisions on pit road and he deserves a trip to Victory Lane more than nearly anyone in Nextel Cup. There's something right about a Mears winning a race on the Memorial Day weekend.

Plus, who would have expected names like Yeley, Petty, Sorenson and Vickers to pop up in the top five? You've got a better chance of hitting the jackpot in the Fantasy Five lottery than to have selected all of those drivers in your fantasy pool.

New faces in new places -- that's better than the same old Jimmie Johnson-Jeff Gordon 1-2 finish, right?

All five of those cars ran well all night and deserved to be on the lead lap. But top-five finishes? Get real.

Take Mears. Certainly he was in contention at the end, but he led all of six laps, and those came after three other cars peeled off for a splash of fuel. Do you really think, all things being equal, that Mears would have caught Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. had they not been more concerned with their position in the overall standings? (Points racing is an argument for another day.)

Shouldn't the basic strategy of racing be that the fastest car wins the race instead of the one that can coast the farthest for 62 laps? Why should a variable so arbitrary -- like being able to draft off another car and conserve fuel, or topping off the tank on the final caution lap because you're not losing any track position -- be the deciding factor at the end of the race?

Do you really want to see cars coasting around the track well off race pace, trying to conserve an extra gallon of fuel? Remember Phoenix, when nobody would get out of line because they were so worried about not having enough fuel to make it to the end? I wouldn't call that exciting racing.

I'm not saying that NASCAR needs to throw a "competition caution" to manipulate the outcome. We've certainly seen enough late-race yellows this season -- or at least Tony Stewart has -- to wonder if there has been something fishy going on. But there's got to a better solution than "last one running wins."

• Mark Aumann, NASCAR.COM