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Five races into the 2008 Sprint Cup season, the Fanhouse recaps the Top-5 lessons learned in 2008. Check back each day to get revved up for Sunday's Goody's Cool Orange 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

Five weeks into the first full season with the next-generation race car in the Sprint Cup Series, and its hard not to surmise that the reaction is still quite mixed.

At Daytona, it was a great race car, creating more drafting and passing opportunities while also returning much of the handle to the drivers.

Since then, there really hasn't been much difference in the way the car races with the exception of Atlanta. However, the tire combination was also a significant factor in the race car there, so defining its performance at AMS would best be described as a "crapshoot".

Otherwise, "bland" might be a little better of a word for the car.

Five races into the 2008 Sprint Cup season, the Fanhouse recaps the Top-5 lessons learned in 2008. Check back each day to get revved up for Sunday's Goody's Cool Orange 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

Can we blame probation? Toyota? Subway commercials? A new girlfriend?

I don't know which one to pick exactly, but for some God-awful reason, Tony Stewart has given up on his barber.

As you can see to the right, Stewart's hair has gotten to unbelievable levels. It looks waxy, unkept, and straight out of an Italian crime drama. And it could very well be part of the Tony Stewart we've seen in 2008.

One week, he's ripping Goodyear for its tire selection at Atlanta. He's the only one, so he says, that is willing to take such a decisive stand on a issue in the garage area.

The next, he's giving one of the oddest interviews of his career after getting out of his wrecked race car in Bristol. Instead of being livid, mad, and otherwise Tony Stewart-like, Driver No. 20 had a strange sense of sarcasm and a cool head, despite being wrecked with 2 laps to go.

For once, Stewart wasn't snappy with a reporter, didn't throw anyone under the bus, and played off a disappointing finish with a cool approach.

What does that have to do with his hair?

Five races into the 2008 Sprint Cup season, the Fanhouse recaps the Top-5 lessons learned in 2008. Check back each day to get revved up for Sunday's Goody's Cool Orange 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

Toyota may have scored its first Sprint Cup win two weeks at Atlanta, but that doesn't mean that the manufacturer is ready to be a dominant force in the sport.

However, one of its teams already is proving that racing in the Car of Tomorrow world isn't necessarily based on the performance of a manufacturer as whole.

Instead of having a distinct advantage from make to make -- i.e. Ford vs. Chevy with spoilers, etc. in the 1990s -- the Sprint Cup world has become one in that it matters what kind of depth and talent your team has behind the wheel, not your downforce or engine numbers.

Joe Gibbs Racing made the jaw-dropping switch to Toyota in the best-case scenario for them. Leaving Chevrolet to run Toyota in the old car would have guaranteed at least a half season of struggling for the team, but the new car changed all of that. Simply, NASCAR nearly builds the race cars for the teams now with the direct set of rules that have about as much leeway as David Ragan Sprint Cup victories.

Yep, that's pretty much zero.

Five races into the 2008 Sprint Cup season, the Fanhouse recaps the Top-5 lessons learned in 2008. Check back each day to get revved up for Sunday's Goody's Cool Orange 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

NASCAR on Fox has had a better start to its broadcast season over 2007, and no one is completely sure why.

The ratings have jumped 5.7% on average -- including the rain-plagued Auto Club 500 -- over last year's numbers. There isn't much that has changed in the sport that I'd think would increase ratings. A new car? More foreign drivers at the back?

Those don't seem like plausible reasons. Maybe it has something to do with Hendrick Motorsports being winless so far, or even the fact that Dale Earnhardt Jr. even has a legitimate shot to win races right now.

People tire quickly of watching the same winner in each race especially when its Jimmie Johnson winning two of the first five in 2007, or Jeff Gordon starting from the pole in two of those races.

Sure Carl Edwards has won two in 2008, but he's penalty after winning at Las Vegas kept people involved, not bored.