Chase Elliott confirmed he’s this generation’s king of the road courses. A long-time NASCAR owner’s exit raises issues of other exits ahead, a big team gets a big win, and a big name gets a new deal.
(NASCAR)—Chase Elliott led 24 of the last 25 laps at Road America last weekend to wrap up his seventh career road-racing victory. Only Jeff Gordon with nine and Tony Stewart with eight have more victories when turning the steering wheel right as well as left.
The win on the four-mile long road course at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin was even more impressive because Elliott started 34th in the field of forty. He climbed to tenth in the first sixteen-lap stage, and was a front-row starter for the third stage.
It’s the seventh win in the last eight Cup races for Hendrick Motorsports (eight of the last nine if you throw in the All-Star race) and the tenth in this year’s twenty points-paying races. Kyle Busch, who interrupted the recent Hendrick domination last week, came home third behind Christopher Bell. Both drive for Hendrick’s top competitor, Joe Gibbs Racing.
Atlanta is the next designation for NASCAR, next weekend.
(THE END OF THE NASCAR ROAD)—Last week’s sale of Chip Ganassi Racing to Justin Marks’ Trackhouse Racing surprised just about everybody, including Ganassi, and raises questions about how much longer the major owner-names that have dominated the sport for decades will hang around.
Ganassi says he had no plans to sell his operations until Marks talked him into it. Marks gets the whole Ganassi kit and caboodle for 2022. But more investment will be necessary before Daytona next year. The cars that Ganassi is running this year won’t be used next year as NASCAR switches to its Next Gen car that is designed to be cheaper to build and run and to look more like the cars we see on the streets. It appears that at least one of the two drivers now with Ganassi will not be retained—either Kurt Busch or Ross Chastain. Trackhouse already fields a car for Daniel Suarez and will keep him next year. Busch said at Elkhart Lake last weekend that he already is talking with Trackhouse about staying with the team. His contract with Ganassi ends at the end of this year. There have been reports that Busch also is being considered for a possible second car by 23XI racing, the Denny Hamlin/Michael Jordan team that runs Bubba Wallace now. The team, however, has only one charter this year. Marks has said both Busch and Chastain are “under consideration” for the second Trackhouse car next year.
The Ganassi sale is a dramatic reminder that “Next Gen” might not only apply to cars. Last year’s creation of 23XI Racing by Jordan and Hamlin was a first step in reshaping NASCAR ownerships with younger faces. Hamlin, who will be 41 in November, is winless this year, and is running out of time to win a Cup championship, has followed Tony Stewart, 50, into transitioning from driver to owner (although not to owner-driver). Stewart took half ownership in Haas Racing in 2008 and Stewart-Haas has four drivers in CUP this year: Kevin Harvick, Aric Almirola, Chase Briscoe and Cole Custer. None has won a race this year and Harvick is the only one in position to make the playoff field—which will be set after only six more races.
Other top drivers are, or might be, moving into top positions in major teams. Jeff Gordon’s move to Vice-Chairman of Hendrick Motorsports positions him to be in an ownership position when Rich Hendrick, who will turn 72 this month, decides to step away.
Brad Keselowski is rumored to be ready to leave Penske Racing as a driver and move to Roush-Fenway Racing with an ownership stake. Jack Roush, who is 79, sold half of his team to Fenway Sports Group in 2007. He handles the competition operations while Geoff Smith is President of the company and handles business activities. Roush once had five teams in Cup (including Missourians Carl Edwards and Jamie McMurray at the same time), but was ordered by NASCAR to cut his group to four. RFR went down to three teams for 2012 and has only two drivers this year—Ryan Newman and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. Newman is out of playoff contention and Stenhouse ranks 19th in points. The playoffs only include 16 drivers.
Penske Racing is still headed by Roger Penske, who is 84 and has become the owner of the INDYCAR series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Tim Cindric is the President of the racing segment of the giant Penske Corporation. It appears the Penske NASCAR Cup operation will lose Keselowski at the end of the year and championship crew chief Todd Gordon, who is retiring after more than a decade on the pit box. Team Penske has 128 Cup wins but only two this year, one each by Keselowski and by Joey Logano.
A couple of other owners are no longer spring chickens: Joe Gibbs, who will be 81 before the end of the year, and Richard Childress, who already is 76. Richard Childress Racing has 109 Cup wins in 48 years but only four since Kevin Havick won four times in 2013.
Unmentioned so far as a possible future big-name owner in the top series is Dale Earnhardt, Jr., whose JR Motorsports has met success in the second-tier series. Earnhardt, who will be 47 this fall, has indicated he would like to move up but the economics behind purchasing a Cup franchise are problematic.
(INDYCAR)—Team Penske finally has won an INDYCAR race in 2021. Josef Newgarden dominated the race at Mid-Ohio but had to fend off a furious challenge in the last few laps from Ganassi’s Marcus Ericcson. The victory was one day after the fiftieth anniversary of Penske’s first win in Indy cars—Mark Donohue won the Pocono 500 on July 3, 1971.
Newgarden won by about nine-tenths of a second. He started from the pole and led all but seven of the 80 laps. He had started P1 in the previous two races but had lost the leads in the last three laps of both previous races. Points leader Alex Palou, an Ericcson teammate was third and another Ganassi teammate, Scott Dixon was fourth, giving Ganassi three of the top four finishing positions for the race.
It’s the first INDYCAR win for Penske since the last race of the 2020 season.
Palou’s podium finish expanded his points lead over Pato O’Ward to 39 points. Dixon, the defending and six-time series champion is running third in points, 56 back.
Newgarden, credits the “real magic” of the inter-team working relationships for his success at Mid-Ohio, and as a two-time series champion. In a Forbes magazine interview, he says, “We cultivate a culture where we feel we have the best of the best with the ability to focus—good or bad in the past races—we are constantly focusing forward on the next task.”
The Forbes article (https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2021/07/02/on-50th-anniversary-of-first-indycar-win-roger-penske-reflects-on-success-at-the-track-and-in-business/?sh=521e57d329d0) is with Penske and focuses on his successes on the track and in his private business.
In the article, Penske says his father’s advice has been his guiding philosophy: “Effort equal results.” He also says in the article, “Teamwork, technology, communication, precision, and performance under pressure are all keys to winning on the track and they are critically important to building a successful business and delivering for our customers.”
And retirement does not seem to be in his vocabulary.
(FORMULA 1)—-Max Verstappen extends Red Bull Racing’s winning streak to five, its longest winning streak since 2013. Verstappen won the Grand Prix of Austria, starting on pole, and coming home 18 seconds ahead of Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas. Lando Norris took his McLaren to third ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who drops farther behind Verstappen as he chases his record eighth F1 title.
It was landmark victory for Verstappen, who has dominated F1 lately. Formula One’s Lawrence Barretto observes that the race is the first time in his career that Verstappen has startaed first, led every lap, and posted the fastest lap of the race. He has led 142 consecutive laps in picking up his third straight win, his fifth of the year. He now leads Hamilton by 32 points. Hamilton has three wins. Carlos Sainz is the only other winner on the circuit this year. It’s the fifth straight win for his engine manufacturer, Honda, which has not seen a winning streak this long since Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost took the first eleven races in 1988 for McLaren.
Just before the race, Mercedes announced it had signed a contract extension with Hamilton that will keep him with the team through the 2023 season. He has won six of his seven championships with Mercedes.
F1 moves on to Silverstone and the GP of Britain on July 18.