(NASCAR)—Two of NASCAR’s young guns tried to race each other cleanly for the win on the Bristol dirt track Sunday night but wound up giving a gift to another driver, an old guy who was running third when Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe ran out of room headed for the finish line.
Briscoe went inside on the last turn, couldn’t hold the line, and spun himself and Reddick out yards from the finish line. The spin let Kyle Busch pick up the win, his first of the year, 60th of his career.
Reddick got his car straightened out but Busch came off the last turn at full speed and beat him to the finish by a third of a second. Briscoe finished 22nd.
The win means Busch has tied Richard Petty’s record of recording at least one win in 18 consecutive years. His 60 wins rank him ninth all-time. He leads all active drivers.
The race started late because of rain and then was red-flagged when another shower turned the track too slimy to run. The rain moved out quickly and track officials got the dirt back into racing shape in about 20 minutes so the race could go to the end.
Joey Logano, Kyle Larson, and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five.
The race was the ninth of the year. Busch is the eighth driver to win this year meaning the playoff field is now half full with about two-thirds of the season left to determine the 16 drivers who will take part in the 10-race championship runoff.
Fourteen yellow flags that slowed things down for about one-third of the 250-lap (125-mile) race lowered the average speed to only 34.973 mph, smashing Ned Jarrett’s 1965 slowest-winning speed record of 61.826 mph. It’s even slower than the winning average of the exhibition race on the special track around the football field at the Los Angeles Coliseum at the start of this year. That one went to Joey Logano at 39.029 mph.
NASCAR puts all the slow stuff behind it next week when it moves to Talladega, where Bill Elliott set a still-standing NASCAR record for the fastest lap ever, at 212.809 in 1987. In the race that year, Bobby Allison’s serious crash tore out several yards of safety fencing, narrowly missing going into the crowd. NASCAR immediately moved to slow down the cars by instituting restrictor plates for Talladega and Daytona.
(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR has an open test at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway tomorrow and Thursday. Jimmie Johnson plans to take part in the tests on the oval although his right hand will be in a carbon fiber splint because of a broken bone incurred during one of his three crashes at Long Beach. He also plans to race at Barber Motorsports Park on May 1 as he gets ready to race on the IMS road course on May 14th and run his first Indianapolis 500 fifteen days later.
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INDYCAR still has a lot of schedule left to run but already there’s a lot of speculation about drivers moving to other teams in 2023. The top buzz is about Alexander Rossi, whose contract with Andretti runs out this year. He’s been told he is free to make a deal with another team if he gets a good deal. Rossi won the Centennial Indianapolis 500 in 2016.
Rossi, however, isn’t able to talk to other tams yet because team owner Michael Andretti has exclusive rights to negotiating a new contract. The year has started poorly for Rossi. Bad team strategy is being blamed for his 20th place finish at St. Petersburg to start the season. He had a battery failure and finished 27th on the Texas oval but had his best start and best finish of the year at Long Beach—starting fifth and finishing 8th.
(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 heads to Ferrari Country next weekend with the Italian Grand Prix at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, Italy.
Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc is having a dominating season, scoring 71 of a possible 78 points through the first three races. He has two first and a second, two poles, and has turned the fastest lap in all three races so far. He is so far ahead that he would still lead the points if he goes scoreless in the race.
(photo credits: Bob Priddy)