By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(FORMULA 1)—The intensity of their rivalry has been building all season and their rivalry is white-hot as Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen prepare to slug it out in the final race in Formula 1 next weekend. It’s the last race of the year for the three big-time series we follow.
Hamilton’s third straight win, at the new Saudia Arabia course, has drawn him into a points tie with Max Verstappen with everything on the line next weekend in Abu Dhabi.
Only once before in the sport’s 72 year history have two competitors entered the final race tied in the points. Emerson Fittipaldi and Clay Reggazoni went into 1974’s last race tied. Fittipaldi finished fourth in the race but Regazzoni had handling problems and finished 11th, a lap down, giving Fittipaldi his second Formula One title. .
The Saudi Arabia Grand Prix included numerous yellow lights and two red-light stoppages, bumping, shortcuts through turns, a nose-to-tail collision between the two top competitors, and a penalty that forced Verstappen to give back the lead to Hamilton with six laps left. Verstappen was not able to threaten Hamilton the rest of the way.
The front wing of Hamilton’s car was damaged when Verstappen suddenly braked on a straightaway. Verstappen said after the race he did it to obey race stewards’ demand that he let Hamilton pass him because of an improper short-cutting of a corner that let Verstappen keep Hamilton out of the lead. Hamilton said nobody had told him Verstappen was going to suddenly brake.
Hamilton drove the rest of the way with a damaged right front wing and turned the fastest lap of the race despite it.
(NASCAR)—NASCAR has crowned its first minority Cup champion—Kyle Larson, the grandson of Japanese internment camp inmates during World War II, also is the first graduate of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity program to win the championship.
In his extraordinary season, he won ten races, the first driver since Jimmie Johnson in 2007 top post a double-digit victory total. Larson demolished the record for most points in the playoff series previously held by Martin Truex Jr. He led more laps (2,581) than any driver since 1995. In leading 28% of the laps in all of his races, he became the first NASCAR driver to get to that mark since Missouri’s Rusty Wallace did it in 1993.
At the championship banquet, Larson paid tribute to his wife, Katelyn, who helped him survive his suspension from Cup racing for most of 2020: “We didn’t know where our lives were headed but you always kept the family strong,” he said. “We packed up the motor home and hit the road for months at a time with our crazy children while we tried to figure those things out…Those hard times made me a better person and made us a stronger family.”
He also told team owner Rick Hendrick, who took a chance on him when the suspension was lifted, “This year you taught me so much about respect and how to treat people.”
Larson’s championship was the fourteenth for Hendrick Motorsports. Hendrick also has more Cup victories than any other team in NASCAR history.
(INDYCAR)—McLaren Racing has increased its commitment to INDYCAR by increasing its ownership share in the Arrow McLaren SP racing team. McLaren has taken over majority ownership of what has been Smith-Peterson Motorsports. Sam Schmidt and Ric Peterson will remain on the team’s board of directors. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Bown will be the Chairman of the five-member board.
McLaren Racing, founded by Bruce McLaren in 1963, has twenty Formula 1 Championships and three Indianapolis 500s. It will expand into Extreme E racing next year, an all-electric off-road series.
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And light 70 candles for Rick Mears, who hit the three score and ten mark last Friday. Mears won 29 of the 202 INDYCAR series starts. He started from the pole in about one-in-five of those races. He is one of four drivers in Indianapolis 500 history to have his face on the Borg-Warner trophy four times. Eleven of his Indianapolis 500s starts came from the front row, six times from the pole. Half of the times he started P1 he finished there.
(Photo of Kyle and Katelyn Larson from NASCAR/Chris Gaythen-Getty Images)