By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(NASCAR)—NASCAR is going back to its long weekends.
Practice and qualifying, which have been casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic for most of the last two seasons, will return in 2022. NASCAR had eliminated practice and qualifying for most races because of the need to cut back on the number of people at the track during the social-distancing era.
But qualifying is being changed to the knockout format.
Much of the new format is designed to give more broadcast time to FOX, NBC and other broadcast partners.
The announcement has come as NASCAR heads for its championship week, which starts in Nashville a week from today and goes through December 2. The week not only will recognize NASCAR champions in its three touring series, it also will honor champions in three ARCA series, NASCAR’s Modified Tour champion and the Weekly Series national champion.
NASCAR has held special awards ceremonies for forty years, beginning in New York in 1981, continuing in Nashville in 2009, and moving to Nashville in 2019.
(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has become the hunted. Lewis Hamilton has become the hunter—and shows signs of being a relentless one.
Hamilton led from start to finish in the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix to finish 26 seconds ahead of Verstappen, his second straight win over the F1 points leader. The win cuts Verstappen’s points lead to just eight, with two races left on the schedule. Mercedes team leader Toto Wolff says the previous race’s penalties that relegated Hamilton to the last starting position, from which he charged to victory, “have woken up the lion.”
“He’s absolutely on it—brutal, and cold-blooded,” he said.
Hamilton was 19 points back after Verstappen had won two straight races.
Two-time Formula 1 Champion Fernando Alonso snagged the final podium finish, his first since 2014. F1’s statisticians say his 105 races between podium finishes is a record and says he’s only the third driver older than 40 in the last 35 years to have finished in one of the top three positions in a race.
F1’s season finishes with races in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.
(INDYCAR)—Put the name of Alexander Rossi in the racing history books as the only driver to win an Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 24 hours, and the Baja 1000 off-road race.
His “wild ride” (his term) victory in the 54th Baja, the most prestigious off-road race in North America, came at the wheel of a highly-modified Honda Ridgeline was shared with three other drivers and a navigator. The race is 1,226 miles long, from Ensenada, California to Lapaz, Mexico. He described the ride as “equally chaotic, awesome and terrifying.”
He also used the words “insane” and “really cool” in describing his drive in the daylight and the dark and the ocean fog—and in the dust from hundreds of other vehicles in the race.
Rossi’s overnight stint covered 251 miles and built his team’s lead to 100 miles.
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This year’s Indianapolis 500 winner, Helio Castroneves, who returns to fulltime driving in the INDYCAR series next year, is not abandoning the sports car racing that he has done for the last couple of years. He’ll drive Meyer Shank Racing entries in both open wheel and sports car races in 2022, running the full INDYCAR schedule and picking up stints in MSR sports cars in the four endurance races on the IMSA circuit. He’ll try to be a repeat winner in the Daytona 24. He was part of the winning team with Wayne Taylor racing this year.
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When we talked with INDYCAR President Jay Frye in August, we talked about the hybrid powerplants coming to the series in 2023. But Frye suggest it will be a long time, at the least, before the internal combustion engine disappears from INDYCAR.
But if electric-only cars are far off in the series, electric car drivers might not be. Two Formula E teammates from Europe will test INDYCARS on December 6 at Sebring. Stoffel Vandoorne and Nyck deVries, teammates in the Mercedes EQ Formula E program will be in cars from the Arrow-McLaren and the Meyer Shank racing stables. DeVries won the Formula E championship for 2020-21. Vandoorne was second in the 2019-20 Formula E Season and ninth in the most recent season. Mercedes is withdrawing from Formula E.
(Photo Credit: Bob Priddy)