(INDYCAR)—Most of us hardly notice many of the bumps in the road we travel over, but if you’re in an INDYCAR, they get your attention. They did last weekend as INDYCAR ran its first-ever race on the streets of Nashville. The race included two crossings of the Korean Veterans Memorial Bridge per lap that, with the bumps elsewhere, tested drivers’ skills.
The win went to Marcus Ericsson, whose car (hitting a bump) went airborne on the fifth lap when he rear-ended Sebastian Bourdais on the fifth lap. The suspension held together when the car landed but Ericsson had to hit the pits to replace a broken front wing. The incident set him farther back because he had to serve a stop-and-go penalty for avoidable contact.
The collision was even more costly to Bourdais, who could not continue. He finished 27th, last in the largest field in at least eight years for an INDYCAR race that wasn’t the Indianapolis 500.
Ericsson worked his way back up during the last twenty laps to challenge leader Colton Herta. Herta went into the tire barrier after coming off the bridge, leaving Ericsson to fend off a charge by Scott Dixon as the laps wore down. He finished about 1.6-seconds ahead of Dixon in a two-lap shootout after a red flag stopped the race because of a multi-car crash that clogged the track.
It’s Ericsson’s second win of the season. Dixon’s second-place finish moved him past Pato O’Ward into second place in the points although he lost ground to leader Alex Palou.
INDYCAR stays on a road course next weekend when it returns to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a Saturday race, part of a triple-header weekend that also will feature NASCAR’s Infiniti and Cup series races.
(NASCAR)—Kyle Larson withstood a furious charge by teammate Chase Elliott at Watkins Glen to pick up his fifth win of the year and tie Denny Hamlin for the Cup points lead with three races left before the season re-starts with a ten-race playoff.
It’s Larson’s fifth win of the year. He also has five runnerup finishes in the first 23 races of the year. Hamlin, who ran off a lengthy string of top-five finishes at the start of the year, has yet to win a race.
Larson finished 2.4 seconds ahead of Elliott, who was dropped with Christopher Bell to the last starting positions because their cars flunked pre-race inspections. Bell rallied to seventh. Both Larson and Elliott had to deal with lapped traffic as the race wound down. Elliott said he made too many mistakes too late in the race to win.
With only three races left, thirteen drivers are locked into the playoffs with wins. Hamlin and Kevin Harvick, also surprisingly winless this year, are in on points, leaving only one slot open. Tyler Reddick has the edge over Austin Dillon for the sixteenth playoff position.
NASCAR races on the Indianapolis Speedway road course for the first time ever on Sunday afternoon for the Brickyard 200. The race replaces the Brickyard 400, which has been run on the oval since its inception in 1995. Several drivers aren’t happy about the change including two-time Cup Champion Kyle Busch. “I don’t view this track as Indianapolis,” he says, “Indianapolis is the oval. That’s where the allure of Indianapolis comes from.”
Three-time BY400 winner Kevin Harvick refers to the road course race as “a tough pill to swallow.”
The switch to the road course comes after years of declining attendance at the 400-mile race on the oval.
(FORMULA 1)—It’s summer break time for F1—no race until August 29 when the series runs the GP of Belgium.
(Photo credit: Joe Skibinski, INDYCAR; Jim Coleman)