(We reserve Tuesday for sports, usually sports that involve brightly-decorated cars going by very fast. Occasionally we might mention stick-and-ball sports, too)
(NASCAR)—Rookie Austin Cindric displayed a veteran’s cool in a two-lap overtime shootout to win the Daytona 500 Sunday night. Only fifteen of the forty starting cars completed the race and many of those cars were battered in one or more of the five major crashes that Cindric avoided.
One of those battered cars was driven by Bubba Wallace, who came within 37-thousandths of a second (about three feet) of winning. It’s the second time Wallace had come within a few feet of winning NASCAR’s most prestigious race.
The win was a double celebration for team owner Roger Penske, who observed his 85th birthday Sunday.
Cindric is the son of the Tim Cindric, the president of Team Penske, and has grown up in the Penske culture. He’s well spoken and seemed to modulate the emotions of winning the Daytona 500: “To be able to say that I’ve been able to accomplish this, there’s nothing more important to me than racing. There’s nothing more important to me than being part of this sport. And to think that I’m a Daytona 500 winner, you can’t take that away.”
Cindric inherited the #2 Penske ride when Brad Keselowski left to become part owner and driver of what is now Roush-Fenway-Keselowski racing.
Keselowski had help from Cindric who pushed him into the lead on the first lap, the first of 67 laps he led in the race. But Keselowski’s luck varied throughout the race. On the 61st lap he was pushing rookie Harrison Burton down the backstretch when Burton’s car went sideways and flipped onto its roof before rolling back on its wheels. The crash collected seven other cars. Keselowski pushed Ricky Stenhouse’s car too hard with five laps left, triggering another multi-car wreck. He finished the race ninth after a collision with David Ragan and Michael McDowell racing for the checkered flag.
(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR opens its season next Sunday on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida. All 26 drivers and teams got in their last pre-season tests last week at Sebring. The series has five former champions in the field including Alex Palou, who took home the big trophy last year, six-time champion Scott Dixon who wants to tie A. J. Foyt’s record of seven titles, Joseph Newgarden who will shoot for his third season championship, along with Simon Pagenaud and Will Power, who have won once each.
Four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves will be in a Meyer-Shank car for the entire season. Also in the series is two time 500-winner Takuma Sato along with Alexander Rossi, Power, Pagenaud, and Dixon, who have won the big race once each. The Formula 1 contingent has grown to four—Marcus Ericsson, Romain Grosjean, Sato, and Rossi. And back for his second season, this time on ovals as well as road courses, is seven-time NASCAR champ Jimmie Johnson.
(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 doesn’t start its season until next month.
(photo credit: Getty Images/NASCAR)