by Darrell Waltrip

Darrell Waltrip: The new spoiler and tire package is very, very controversial. Teams have a love/hate relationship with the package. If your car runs pretty good with the new smaller spoiler and softer tires, then you've got no complaints. But the drivers who complained that they were unable to race side-by-side with other competitors outnumbered those who liked the new package so I think it will stay under review for a while.

Look at the Busch cars. They didn't make any aero changes on those cars. NASCAR gave the Busch teams the same softer tires that the Cup guys are running, and the Busch race was awesome. Mark Martin certainly had the best car and dominated the race, but Martin, Tony Stewart and Shane Hmiel were having a race of their own while the rest of the guys were closely bunched as well. I just think that last year's Cup aero package with this softer tire would have made Cup race even better.

Last year at California, cars ran all over the place. They ran right up against the outside wall, in the middle and around the bottom. We had cars going everywhere because you could make your car work just about any place. With this year's new softer tires and shorter spoiler, the cars don't handle quite as well, and everybody hugged the bottom, hanging on to the white line.

The new package doesn't make for very good racing so we will have to keep an eye on it and see if NASCAR sticks with it or not. I'm sure they will, but they might want to tweak it a little bit.

Impound had no impact on engines

Jeff from Monroe, N.H.: Hey DW, after the first weekend under the new rule, what are your thoughts on impounding the cars after qualifying?

Darrell Waltrip: There are some issues with qualifying and impounding the cars. That's not surprising. Everybody knew there would be. You can predict, analyze and anticipate all you want, but something's always going to pop up that you didn't think about.

A quicker inspection procedure would help resolve one issue. Teams are inspected by where they sit in the point standings. In other words, you're put in your garage stall by last year's point standings so Kurt Busch is first, Jimmie Johnson's second, Jeff Gordon's third and so on. And you're inspected in that same order.

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If you were outside the top 35 in points at California like Robby Gordon and Kevin Lepage, then you were going to be one of the last teams to go through inspection. If you had any inspection issues that you had to work on, you missed the first practice, and a number of cars did miss that first one-hour session. Hopefully you resolved the issue and were ready to go by the second practice, but that's one thing that NASCAR has to work on.

Some people are saying that impounding the cars and not letting the teams work on them could have added to or been part of some of the engine failures. I question whether that's a fact or not. I guess we'll have to wait and see the final analysis from everybody involved. There are a few little odds and ends that NASCAR needs to sani up or look at, and I know they will.

Overall, the weekend was pretty successful. The teams are arriving at pretty much the same time they always did, but now they've got a lot more spare time on their hands and that would worry me a little bit as an owner. What are those crew members going to be doing with all of that extra time away from the track?