1. Kyle Busch (car No. 18): He wasn’t a factor at Indianapolis, but as screwy as that race was, does that matter? Previously: 1.

2. Carl Edwards (car No. 99): Second at the Brickyard and wasn’t particularly happy about it. You have to like that. Previously: 2.

3. Jimmie Johnson (car No. 48): Maybe they got their lull out of the way early this year. Class of wacky field at Indy. Previously: 5.

4. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (car No. 88): Early victim of Indy tire mess but came back to finish 12th. But it’s time to pick it up. Previously: 4.

5. Kasey Kahne (car No. 9): Needs to be a factor in the return trip to Pocono to get momentum going once again. Previously: 6.

6. Jeff Burton (car No. 31): Finished ninth at Indianapolis after running better than that pretty much all day long. Previously: 7.

7. Matt Kenseth (car No. 17): Probably took the biggest hit, points wise, from the debacle that was the Brickyard. Previously: 3.

8. Denny Hamlin (car No. 11): Couldn’t quite convert strong Indianapolis run into a victory, but it was a good day. Previously: 11.

9. Jeff Gordon (car No. 24): Like the No. 88 team, this team needs to start converting top-10 runs into some wins. Previously: 9.

10. Greg Biffle (car. No. 16): He’s having a pretty solid year, but solid isn’t going to be enough to win the title. Previously: 10.

For the rest of the top-40 rankings, go online and visit www.thatsracin.com

It’s a waste of time and effort to attempt to assign blame for what happened Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

There is no problem assigning responsibility.

NASCAR runs the Sprint Cup Series. It falls on NASCAR to make sure the events in stock-car racing’s premiere series are staged and conducted in an acceptable manner.

In that regard, the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard was an abject failure.

After the race degenerated into a series of short runs between cautions for excessive tire wear, virtually everyone was saying how nobody liked how things turned out. At the same time, though, most everyone was asking what could have been done differently.

The correct answer, sadly, is nothing. At least not once everyone had

arrived in Indianapolis. The tires Goodyear brought didn’t work and nothing that could be done on site was going to change that.

Did the fans get their money’s worth? Not entirely, but they did get a completed event with a full field. Because of that, nobody’s going to be getting any refunds like the ones this track had to give when a tire issue mucked up its Formula One race in 2005.

But NASCAR does owe two things to the fans who attended the race and those who watched on television at home.

First, it owes them an apology. Yes, there were circumstances that led to this debacle; and, once the weekend began, those circumstances were beyond the point of being managed.

But decisions made weeks and months ago put those circumstances into play;

and, as the body responsible for staging Cup events, those decisions are NASCAR’s domain.

Should there have been a full test involving all Cup teams at Indy? Should tires have been dragged around the track to fill in the grooves in the diamond-ground surface that had created challenges in past years? Is there anything else that could have been done?

The answers matter, but the real problem is that NASCAR and Goodyear seem to be guessing too often about what’s going to happen with tires — especially right-side tires — on the new car being used at all tracks this year.

That leads to the second thing NASCAR owes the fans: a vow that things like what happened Sunday won’t happen again.

The only way to make that happen is for NASCAR to get up off its backside and off its corporate wallet to establish and

maintain a testing operation that can work with Goodyear and the sport’s manufacturers to know its race cars and the parts and pieces that go with it.

NASCAR has no business guessing what the new car is going to do to tires or brakes or anything else when it goes to a track for the first time. It has to know, and it has to figure that out on NASCAR’s time and on NASCAR’s dime — and not at the expense of both race teams and fans.