(NASCAR)—Make it four in a row for Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson, including the non-points All-Star race. Next week he’ll try to join eight other drivers since 1972 to win four points races in a row. Five of those eight drivers went on to win the season championship.
Larson has dominated the three points races he’s won, leading 264 of the 300 laps at Nashville Sunday and running his total to 648 laps led of the 772 laps in those three races. He has not finished lower than second in his last seven races, including the All-Star race.
Larson attributes much of his success to his crew but he also thinks his peripatetic racing schedule has been a factor. Larson left Nashville after his win Sunday planning to run a series of open-wheel races during the week before resuming his NASCAR seat next weekend at Pocono.
The win is the fifth straight points victory for Hendrick Motorsports. Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott won races before Larson started his streak.
(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR powerhouse Team Penske is in its longest dry spell in more than two decades. The team is still looking for its first win of the year. The last time it went this deep into the season without a win was 1991, a disastrous year in which no Penske driver sat in victory lane.
Josef Newgarden thought he had broken through at Road America this weekend, starting from the pole and leading a race-high 32 laps. But his transmission betrayed him two laps from the end and left him limping around the track for the final two laps as Alex Palou raced ahead for his second win this year.
The win gave Palou a 28-point lead over Pato O’Ward in the series standings and made him the first Chip Ganassi Racing driver to win more than once since Dario Franchitti did it in 2011.
Newgarden finished 21st, the second straight disappointing week for the two-time series champion. Last week, he was leading the second race of the twin bill at Detroit when O’Ward got past him with three laps left. Newgarden led the first 67 laps.
The third Penske driver, Will Power, was in position to win the first of the Detroit doubleheader races when the race was stopped because of a crash with only a few laps remaining. His car wouldn’t re-fire when racing resumed, clearing the way for a win by O’Ward.
(FORMULA 1)—It is increasingly clear that Lewis Hamilton’s bid for a record eighth Formula 1 championship will not be easy. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, behind by three seconds after his last pit stop, chased down Hamilton and passed him on the next to last lap of the Spanish Grand Prix, and picked up his third win of the year. His win total equals Hamilton’s and gives him a 12-point lead over the defending F1 champion.
Hamilton’s second place finish left him with a three-race winless streak for the first time since 2019.
Every starter finished the race, a rarity in F1. It’s only the tenth time in all of Formula 1 history that all cars were running at the end.
(Photo credit: Hendrick Motorsports)