by Bob Priddy Missourinet Contributing Editor
(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s hottest driver of 2021 has guaranteed himself a shot at the Cup championship. Kyle Larson held off teammate William Byron through restart after restart to win the last 500-mile race of the year, finishing half a second in front at Texas Speedway. It’s his eighth win of the year and makes him the first driver assured of being one of four drivers to race for the championship at Phoenix November 7.
Larson, who led 256 of the 334 laps could not get Byron out of his rear view mirror in several restarts in the last phase of the race. Although he dominated the race, six restarts in the last race stage—four of them in the last 30 laps—challenged him to get the break ahead of the bunched-up field before the driver in the outside lane, usually Byron, could nose ahead. Christopher Bell, Brad Keselowski, and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top five in the race. Bell and Harvick dropped out of playoff picture last week.
Three drivers among the eight semi-finalists filled the next three positions at Texas: Ryan Blaney, defending champion Chase Elliott, and Kyle Busch. Denny Hamlin kept his championship hopes alive despite a spin with 21 laps left that dropped him to last among cars on the leader’s lap and a crash with seven laps remaining. His pit crew kept his car operable and he brought it home 11th. Fifteen cars finished on the lead lap.
The eighth contender, Joey Logano, suffered a rare engine failure and wound up 30th, putting him in a must-win situation in the remaining two races of this playoff stage if he is to contend for the championship.
Larson, Blaney, Hamlin, and Busch hold the top four spots. Elliott is five points below the cut line. Brad Keselowski trails by 15. Martin Truex Jr., who left the race with twenty laps left, is down 22. Logano is eighth.
The playoffs continue at the Kansas Speedway next Sunday.
(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou, the new INDYCAR champion, won his championship on a road course he’d never visited before. But he had driven the course a lot.
Palou, on Dale Earnhardt Junior’s podcast (IndyCar Champion Alex Palou: “You Get More Into Fights Than Us” – YouTube), explained, “I’d never been there. It’s like the most important race of my life.” So he want iRacing—driving a computer program that simulated the Long Beach track. ‘I needed as many laps as possible. I think I did driving, like, 17-18 hours” in one day.
He went into the race with a healthy lead in points and had to finish only eleventh to clinch the trophy. He finished fourth to become the first Spaniard to win an INDYCAR title, the seventh youngest champion and the first driver younger than 25 to win a championship since teammate Scott Dixon got the first of his six eighteen years ago (he’s 24).
Palou has a special diet when he wins a race—a big chicken dinner. He told USA Today’s “For the Win” podcast that the custom began when he was racing in Japan where “you don’t have the food we normally have…So the only thing that was similar was Spanish food—and it was bad food for you; it’s not salad—it was fried chicken. And I love friend chicken…So it was a perfect fit.”
Since winning the championship, he’s been making a lot of appearances and “I think I’ve had loads of fried chicken.”
He has also had a chance to see a different kind of racing close-up. He was at Charlotte earlier this month for the race on the Charlotte Roval, the combination of oval and road course. “There is nothing close to a NASCAR stock car,” he said. The car is huge. It’s mind-blowing. It’s a really big car. That is what makes NASCAR so amazing on track—lots of weight, lots of power. It’s difficult for the drivers to handle.”
Would he like to strap in one? Of course. He’s a racer. But just for some test laps. Open-wheel racing is still his thing.
(FORMULA 1)—No wheels turned in competition in F1 this week. Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton renew their hot rivalry for the championship Sunday at the Circuit of the Americas near Austin, Texas. Verstappen took a six-point lead on Hamilton at the Turkish Grand Prix a week ago.
Formula 1 has six races left this year, including Austin. It finishes up on December 12 in Abu Dhabi.
(picture credits: Bob Priddy and Dirty Mo Media/Youtube).