Just a mirage in the desert, or a real sign of progress?

Strange things happen in the American desert southwest. If conspiracy theorists are to be believed, the U.S. government is quarantining alien spacecraft in an off-limits area not too far away from Las Vegas Motor Speedway. If Martin Scorsese movies are to be believed, mob henchmen take potential stool pigeons for long car rides and never bring them back. If the more paranormally inclined are to be believed, unidentified flying objects converge on the region like fire ants to a picnic basket. There's something about all that heat, all that unyielding sunlight, and all that vast openness that sometimes seems to knock things slightly askew.

Head2Head

There's been no shortage of feel-good stories early in this NASCAR season, but who's been the biggest surprise?

• Read, then weigh in
• Rodman: Early success
• Cross: Full of storylines
• Vegas: Overcoming odds

Maybe that's what happened in Sunday's Sprint Cup event on the 1.5-mile speedway in Las Vegas, where normal went out with low table limits. Sure, Kyle Busch won the race and Jeff Gordon returned to the top of the point standings. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But a track-record-shattering 16 cautions? Nine cars suffering engine trouble throughout the course of the weekend? Three-time champion Jimmie Johnson spinning out all on his own? Driver after driver wobbling through Turn 2 or speeding on pit road? Somebody over at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site must have cracked a window.

And that wasn't the half of it. How strange was it to see David Reutimann and Bobby Labonte -- the former without even a career top-five finish, the latter without a victory in more than five years -- in the mix for the win at the end? Reutimann finished fourth, Labonte fifth. Don't blame this one on dry air. Those strong results continued an interesting early season trend, one where each week several unusual suspects are nudging guys like Johnson and Carl Edwards aside to secure positions at the front of the field. We saw it in Daytona, where Richard Petty Motorsports drivers A.J. Allmendinger, Elliott Sadler and Reed Sorenson nearly swept the first three places. We saw it at Fontana, where Brian Vickers, Juan Montoya and David Stremme all enjoyed solid runs. We saw it at Las Vegas, where Reutimann and Labonte held their own with the leaders, and David Gilliland came out of nowhere to place 14th.

Granted, it's very early in the season, the Daytona results are almost surely a restrictor-plate aberration, and there are plenty of championship-caliber drivers lurking down in the standings. But given the results at Fontana and Las Vegas -- both high-speed intermediate tri-ovals of the kind that compose the majority of the race tracks on the Cup schedule -- are we perhaps seeing the beginnings of this long-awaited leveling of the playing field NASCAR has sought to accomplish through the implementation of the new car and the ban on sanctioned testing? The answer is a definitive, absolute, maybe.

"It's nice to see that there are different groups that are up there, for sure," said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president for competition. "I think that's what our goal is, to make every attempt that [the racing] is more competitive. But I also believe it's too early to tell. Three races doesn't make a season, but we have had some other teams that have shown to be very competitive and have some very quick cars, so that's good to see."

No question, it's early. This young season still has been dominated by one driver (Matt Kenseth), and four teams (Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing) have combined to win 35 of the past 39 Cup events dating to the start of the 2008 season. Last year only six teams reached Victory Lane -- a far cry from 2001 when 13 organizations won, among them teams like the Wood Brothers and Bill Davis Racing and Andy Petree Racing and Cal Wells' outfit. Some of those teams were wiped out and others marginalized by the economic slowdown and consequent sponsor freeze that followed the 9-11 terrorist attacks. But while it lasted, it was maybe the closest modern NASCAR has ever come to parity. (Continued)