By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(NASCAR) Kyle Larson’s ninth win of the NASCAR Cup season was far more than just another trophy in his growing collection as he hurtles into the final three races of the year, the favorite to win the championship. It was a tribute win.
Before the race, car owner Rick Hendrick telephoned Larson to mention that the race was being run on the 17th anniversary of the death of his son, Ricky Hendrick IV, in a plane crash on the way to a race. Ricky had a brief career in the truck series, where he won his first race at the Kansas Speedway twenty years ago this year, and in the then-Busch Series—NASCAR’s second-tier series.
Larson’s number and the design of his car’s paint job (seen here at Indianapolis in August) has been a tribute to Ricky Hendrick for most of the season. He started from the pole at Kansas, led 130 of the 267 laps in the race, and finished 3.6 seconds ahead of teammate Chase Elliott. It’s his third straight win and the second time this year he has won three in a row. Two three-race winning streaks in a single season has not happened in NASCAR since Dale Earnhardt, Sr., did it 34 years ago.
The race was a struggle for the eight driver in this semi-final round, leaving the determination of who will be the final four running for the Cup to be decided at the shortest track on the schedule. Martinsville is a .526-mile track, the only track still used by NASCAR since its beginning in 1948. It’s the only track with a concrete surface on the turns (banked at only twelve degrees) and asphalt on the straights.
Five of the eight drivers had issues that juggled the points and point to a possible wild scramble at Martinsville.
The most costly mishap was Austin Dillon’s collision with Ryan Blaney that sent Blaney into the wall with 44 laps left. Blaney had been a solid second in the point standings going into the race. But the crash ended his day and he goes to Martinsville fifth, one point below the cutline.
He is one point behind Kyle Busch who hit the wall twice and blowing a tire late. He was still running at the end, six laps down, but picked up enough stage points to hold fourth place, one up on Blaney.
Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex, Jr., went into Kansas 7th and 6th, respectively in the points but got together and both had to pit with flat tires shortly after. The two have swapped position in the points with Truex three points out of fourth and Keselowski six points back.
Joey Logano wen to Kansas 40 points below the cutline, managed to keep the fenders on the car and gained 14 points. But he still needs to win at Martinsville to make the final four.
Larson, Elliott, and Denny Hamlin go to Martinsville with solid margins above the cutline. But the “paper clip,” as the track is called leads to a lot of bumping and rubbing seven drivers trying to fill the last three slots for the season finale.
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Our adopted Missourian, Clint Bowyer, will be climbing back into his fire suit and helmet later today to run some test laps in NASCAR’s Next Gen car. He and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., will test the car at the quarter-mile Bowman Gray Stadium in Salem, North Carolina.
The track is the same length as the special asphalt track that will be laid down around the football field inside the Los Angeles Coliseum—where the Rose Bowl is played and where the 1984 Summer Olympic Games were held. NASCAR plans to run its pre-season Clash there on February 6, the first time the event will have been held away from the Daytona International Speedway since NASCAR created the race in 1979. The event will be the first competitive event for the Next Gen car.
Bowyer, a native of Emporia, Kansas who often raced on Missouri tracks as he built the career that put him at NASCAR’s top level for sixteen years, is part of the FOX broadcasting team that will do the first half of the 2022 season and Earnhardt is part of the NBC broadcasting team that will cover the second half of the season.
(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton went into the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas just three points apart and the season dwindling down. They leave with Verstappen up by a dozen.
Hamilton, starting from pole, edged Verstappen going into the first turn but gave up the lead in the first round of pit stops and came out nine seconds back. He closed to within a second of Verstappen but could get no closer and finished 1.3-seconds back.
Verstappen’s eighth win of the year ends a five-race win streak for Hamilton at the Circuit of the Americas and makes his run to a record eighth F1 title an uphill fight in the five remaining races of 2021.
(INDYCAR)—Another European driver on track to move up to Formula 1 will race, instead, in INDYCAR. Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan Tacing has signed Danish driver Christian Lundgaard to a multi-year contract. Lundgaard is the FIA Formula 2 champion. He was impressive in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in his first INDYCAR start in August. He qualified fourth with limited experience on the course and finished twelfth despite dealing with a bout of food poisoning. He will run both road and oval races.
He’s 20 and has come up through a Renault program designed to train young drivers to compete in Formula One. He’ll join Graham Rahal and Jack Harvey on the three-car team.
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Arrow McLaren SP is considering adding a third car to its lineup for 2022 and has given another European driver a little seat time. Nico Hulkenberg, who has 179 F1 starts and a LeMans overall victory to his credit, was scheduled to turn laps yesterday at the Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama. Hulkenberg, who is 34, says he has no “current plans” to move to INDYCAR but he was “pleased to try out an Indy car and see what it’s all about.”
AMSP says it’s focusing on its two car setup for now with Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist but it will continue evaluating adding a third car in the future.
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(Photo credits: Racing Reference.com; Bob Priddy)