(NASKAR)—Kansas, Kurt, Kyle, Kyle.
Kurt Busch has won his first race at the Kansas Speedway after 33 career starts. He now has at least one Cup victory in four different brands of cars—Ford, Dodge, Chevrolet, Toyota.
It’s his 34th career victory but the first one in a car designed to look like an Air Jordan tennis shoe. And it’s the first time a car carrying the number 45 has won a Cup race since Lee Roy Yarbrough did it 58 years ago.
The number is significant because it’s one worn by team co-owner Michael Jordan, whose logo was on the hood of a car for the first time.
Bush had a two second-and-holding lead with 30 laps to go and did not need the caution flag with about thirty laps left. He came out of the pits third. He got past younger brother, Kyle, then set off to run down Kyle Larson—and got him with eight laps left, with an inside line. Larson, running the rim, tagged the wall for the third time in the race, letting Busch get clear and pull away to a 1.3 second win.
It’s only the second victory for the 23XI team (23-11, two numbers associated with Jordan’s basketball career and the number campaigned by the other co-owner, driver Denny Hamlin) but the final result is the best-ever for the team. Hamlin finished fourth and the third team driver, Bubba Wallace, rallied from a major pit road problem to finish tenth. Wallace picked up the team’s first win at Talladega last year.
The race marked the halfway point in the 26-race regular season. Busch became the eleventh winner, leaving only five playoff spots to be determined by points—assuming there are no new winners in the next thirteen races.
NASCAR’s next points race is its longest, the 600 mile Memorial Day race at Charlotte. Next week, Cup drivers race at the Texas Speedway in the annual non-points All-Star Race that pays the winner a million dollars.
(INDYCAR)—Wet. No. Dry. Wait. Wet. Aww, Dry. Raining in this corner. Dry in this one. Can’t see anything through the rooster tails of spray. Oops.
The weekend road course race that kicks off the lead-in for the Indianapolis 500 in a couple of weeks has been pronounced “one of the wildest races” in recent history. The win went to the driver who was able to best control the chaotic conditions for two hours. Colton Herta was seriously sideways at least once but never went all the way around, as several competitors did, and in the end beat Simon Pagenaud to the checkered flag by about four seconds.
“This is the hardest race I think I’ve ever done,” said Herta afterward
Pagenaud, who climbed from 20th starting position despite the chaos, called the track “treacherous” at the end, when officials decided to stop the race after two hours instead of going the full 85-lap distance. Sixteen of the 27 starters were still on the same lap when the checkered flag game down on lap 75.
Will Power, who started from the pole, got the final podium position with Marcus Ericsson finding his way from 18th to fourth. “The craziest thing I’ve ever experienced,” said Connor Daley, who had his best finish of the year—fifth.
Almost half of the starters struggled with the fluctuating weather. Eight caution periods for 31 of the 75 laps involved 13 of the 27 cars in the field.
Today (Tuesday) the Speedway becomes the historic oval again and Helio Castroneves begins his quest to be the first driver to win back-to-back 500s a second time, and the first driver to have five places on the Borg-Warner trophy.
(MONACO)—Suppose you were given a chance, at only 24 years of age, to drive one of the iconic Formula 1 race cars in a historic car event. Suppose you were one of the top stars in today’s Formula 1 competition. And suppose you wrecked the car that likely would bring several million dollars the next time it is auctioned.
Charles Leclerc was driving Niki Lauda’s Ferrari 312b3-74 in the Monaco Historic Grand Prix last weekend, when he backed it into the wall, damaging the rear wing which damaged the right rear wheel. Leclerc, who has two wins and two runner-up finishes in the first five races of the year. He was able to drive the car away from the crash site, but slowly.
The car is now privately owned. Lauda was second in the F1 championship points that year but won the first of his three world championships in an updated 312 the next year.
(photo credits: (Busch, Herta) Bob Priddy; (Ferrari): Andrew and Alan Frost, Wikimedia Commons, https://flickr.com/photos/95472204@N03/28578702257)