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Denny Hamlin will miss at least five races but won't require surgery after being evaluated on Tuesday after his last-lap crash on Sunday at Auto Club Speedway.

In the impact with the inside wall, Hamlin suffered a compression fracture of his L1 vertebra. Joe Gibbs Racing said in a statement Tuesday night that Dr. Jerry Petty determined that Hamlin would need approximately six weeks to heal. Petty will make the decision to clear Hamlin to resume racing activity when he is fully healed.

Because of the Sprint Cup Series off weekend this week, the minimum five races Hamlin will miss are Martinsville, Texas, Kansas, Richmond and Talladega. The race following Talladega is the grueling Southern 500 at Darlington before the non-points Sprint All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600.

[Also: NASCAR Power Rankings: A (Junior) Nation rises]

A replacement driver has not been named for the No. 11 for Martinsville or any other races. The logical in-house option at JGR would be Elliott Sadler, who is

It's time for Power Rankings! After every race, we'll opine about who we think is at the top of the Sprint Cup heap and how and why they got there. Remember, this isn't scientific, as our formula is the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. So let's get on with it, shall we?

1. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (LW: 2): Heeeeeeeere's Junior! He's the only dude to finish in the top five in every race this season and there's absolutely no way he can't be atop Power Rankings as we head into the first week of the offseason. If his potato chips are as good as he's performing, then he's really rocking it right now. And maybe the Gonzaga comparison in last week's rankings was a bit unfair. The Zags collapsed late on Saturday night. Junior surged forward on Sunday.

2. Kasey Kahne (LW: 3): Kahne quickly moved his way to the front after starting 16th and was one of the handful of drivers who tattooed (ha!) the wall off turn two thanks to the oil that was put down from Timmy Hill's

NASCAR fans have long said that noted temperamental driver Kyle Busch could use some anger management. Now — heads up, terrible pun coming out of Turn 4 — he's about to get some, courtesy of FX and Charlie Sheen.

Yes, the NASCAR driver everyone loves to hate is headed for Sheen's FX show "Anger Management," according to TMZ. No info yet on a date or plotline, but we'd bet it has something to do with either driving or those little dogs hanging around the hauler. You never know.

And hey, if this works out for Kyle, maybe Sheen could work his mojo on Tony Stewart ... or Joey Logano ... or Kyle's brother Kurt ... or pretty much every NASCAR fan ...

Not too much to talk about, is there? Geoffrey Miller and yours truly, Nick Bromberg, discuss the happenings from California, including, and not limited to Joey Logano, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Danica Patrick and even some F1 talk of all things.

Buckle up, folks, it's a long one. Click here to download the podcast or here to listen to in your browser. And we're now on iTunes! Find us in the Podcast section right here and subscribe. It'll soon be #1 in comedy.

As always, we'd love to hear from you. Email us your thoughts, questions, rants, etc here and we'll talk about them on our next episode.

Sunday's final-lap wreck with Joey Logano caused significant injury for Denny Hamlin. After Hamlin spent the night in the hospital, his team released the details on his injury: a L1 compression fracture. Following is the statement from Joe Gibbs Racing:

Via @dennyhamlin"Hamlin suffered a L1 Compression Fracture following an accident on the final lap of Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway.

"Hamlin hopes to be released today to fly to his home in North Carolina where he will be evaluated by Dr. Jerry Petty of Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates later this week."

NASCAR has an off week this weekend. At present, it is not known if Hamlin will miss any races.

Hamlin and Logano collided on the final lap of the race. Hamlin spun down into the infield and hit a section of the wall that is unprotected by a SAFER barrier. He got out of his car and immediately collapsed to the ground. He complained about back pain and was helicoptered out of the track because of traffic

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Since he arrived at Joe Gibbs Racing in 2008, the Kyle Busch Show has been an omnipotent presence in NASCAR. In those five plus years, Busch has won 88 races in NASCAR's top three series, many in dominating fashion like his weekend sweep at Auto Club Speedway, where he led 217 of the combined 350 laps of the Nationwide and Cup Series races at ACS.

Busch led the most laps on the circuit in 2011 and was second in 2012. But recently, all those laps led haven't turned in to wins.

How so? Before Sunday, Busch had led the most laps at nine different races without recording a win, a stretch that dates back all the way to the inaugural race at Kentucky Speedway, where he led 125 of the race's 267 laps from the pole for the win. Nine different races. Crazy.

2011 Watkins Glen: 3rd (49 laps led of 90)
2011 Charlotte: 2nd (111 of 334)
2011 Martinsville: 27th (126 of 500)
2012 Auto Club: 2nd (80 of 129)
2012 Kentucky: 10th (118 of 267)
2012 Watkins Glen: 7th (43 of 90)
2012 Dover: 7th (302 of 400)

So Tony Stewart is going to "bust [Joey Logano's] ass" for blocking him on the final restart of Sunday's Auto Club 400.

What a hypocrite.

It was just a few years ago at Talladega when Stewart blocked Regan Smith, forcing him below the yellow line and almost into the infield, all in an effort to keep Smith from winning the race.

"Dumb little [expletive] runs us clear down to the infield. He wants to [expletive] about everybody else. He's the one who drives like a [expletive]. I'm going to bust his ass."

Regan Smith? Nope, that was Stewart after Sunday's race when Logano, trying to win the race, blocked him.

If there's anything we've learned over the years it's that Tony Stewart is rarely in the wrong. He wasn't when he spun Matt Kenseth in the 2006 Daytona 500, a wreck that nearly got Kenseth T-boned by a trailing car going 200 mph; he wasn't wrong when he wrecked Clint Bowyer at Pocono later that same year; he wasn't wrong when he wrecked Boris Said at Watkins Glen in 2010; he wasn't

The car atop the Sprint Cup standings. (Getty)

If you ever wondered if you'll ever see the day when Dale Earnhardt Jr. taking the points lead would be an afterthought, Sunday was it.

Lost amidst the contact between Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin and the scuffle between Logano and Stewart, Junior drove past the crash to finish second, and thanks to the relative struggles of Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski, takes a 12 point lead atop the standings into the Easter off weekend.

After working his way up into the top 10 in the second half of Sunday's race, Junior's march towards the front stalled out. But when Clint Bowyer's engine expired with 16 laps to go, Junior and crew chief Steve Letarte made the decision to pit. But the entire field didn't make that same move. The top six stayed out. Those closest to the cars with fresh tires were easy targets, and over those last 11 laps, Junior was able to dice his way through the field.

"I'm not sure exactly‑‑ when we would take two tires, our car drove really bad. It just didn't like that