Weekend Review: Oddities and anomalies from ACS

FONTANA, Calif. -- Sunday's Auto Club 500 gave us a number of results that are outside the norm for recent years. Here are five:

• Paul Menard, 18th in the standings, is the top driver for Richard Petty Motorsports. Kasey Kahne, 33rd, ranks lowest in the RPM camp, with Elliot Sadler (24th) and A.J. Allmendinger (27th) also ahead of him.

A crew member sweeps the grass pulled from Kasey Kahne's grille.

Race Video

• Kahne spins into grass
• Newman blows engine
• Montoya blows engine

"I got loose and I didn't catch it," Kahne said of an early wreck at Fontana that relegated him to a 34th-place finish. "I did a bad job. We had a pretty good car. ... I think we had a great shot at running up front, and I just made a mistake. Now we're in a big hole."

• For the first time since Fontana got the second race of the season, starting in 2005, no driver posted a top-five finish in the Daytona 500 and backed it up with a top five in California.

• Ryan Newman had one DNF last year, the result of a Nov. 1 crash at Talladega. This year, he has failed to finish either of the first two races --crashing out of the Daytona 500 and blowing an engine at Fontana.

• Drivers who failed to make the Chase in 2009 occupy four of the top five and seven of the top 12 points positions through two races in 2010: Kevin Harvick (first), Clint Bowyer (second), Jamie McMurray (fourth), Jeff Burton (fifth), Matt Kenseth (seventh), David Reutimann (eighth) and Joey Logano (ninth).

• Juan Montoya, who didn't have a DNF last year, suffered his first failure of an Earnhardt-Childress Racing engine Sunday and fell out of the race after 140 laps. Harvick, Burton and Bowyer, also running ECR engines finished second, third and eighth, respectively.

Something not out of the norm

There's no doubt Jimmie Johnson turned a tough situation into Shinola after Johnson, who led a race-high 101 laps, was shuffled back in the running order more than halfway through the race. Johnson brought the No. 48 Chevy to the pits for a green-flag stop on Lap 223, moments before Brad Keselowski's Dodge spun off Turn 4 to bring out the sixth caution of the race.

Johnson beat the pace car to the scoring line at the end of pit road by approximately 3 seconds. Two drivers on pit road behind him, Kyle Busch and Greg Biffle, weren't as fortunate, and each lost a lap.

As the cars circled the track under caution, preparing for a restart on Lap 231 of 250, crew chief Kevin "Bono" Manion told his driver, Daytona 500 winner McMurray, that Johnson was leading the race.

"How can he be leading?" McMurray radioed back in amazement. "He was on pit road, wasn't he?"

"It's the 48, man," Manion replied.

Enough said.