By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(SRX)—Next up for the Superstar Racing Experience drivers: Ken Schrader’s I-55 Speedway at Pevely, Missouri, the first dirt track they’ll drive on this year. And Schrader finally gets to race in a series he helped create.
Former NASCAR champion Bobby Labonte will be going to Pevely after winning the last pavement race in the short-track series at Nashville. Labonte, who is 58, is the oldest driver to win an SRX race. He started from the pole and led every lap in the final heat, holding off a serious challenge from INDYCAR driver Marco Andretti. Another former NASCAR champion, Matt Kenseth, was third and former INDYCAR driver Paul Tracy came home fourth. Four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves was fifth.
Two-time INDYCAR series champion Josef Newgarden, a native of nearby Henderson, won the first heat while driving his first race in a car with fenders. Local track favorite Cole Williams won the second heat but was only 12th in the 13-car field in the final.
Newgarden spun on the 49th lap of the 75-lap final heat but rallied back to finish seventh. He called the race “a big learning session…just how these guys drive. They’re very rough.” But he wants to do it again.
Labonte’s win has moved him ahead of Ryan Newman in the SRX points standings. Andretti’s runner-up also moves him ahead of Newman.
The series finishes up with two dirt-track races, the first being next Saturday night at Pevely, a track owned by veteran NASCAR driver Ken Schrader. Schrader, who helped develop the cars used in the series, will compete in an SRX race for the first time—as the home track “guest” racer.
Pevely is about a half-hour south of St. Louis on I-55.
(NASCAR)—Chase Elliott is the first driver to pick up three wins this year, and number three has come at Atlanta Motor Speedway, his home track. Elliott is from Dawsonville, about an hour’s drive south of Atlanta.
The win was in doubt as Elliott and Corey Lajoie battled for the lead through the first two turns of the last lap. But Lajoie hit the wall trying to pass Elliott on the backstretch as Elliott moved to block him and the race ended under caution with Elliott in front. Lajoie took his injured car home in 21st place.
Lajoie’s crash produced the last of thirteen caution flags. A dozen drivers contributed 27 lead changes in the 260-lap race.
Ross Chastain, whose reputation as a driver often in the center of incidents, added to his credentials before finishing second, his fifth top-two finish of the year. He was collected in a nine car crash near the halfway point of the race then tangled, again, with Denny Hamlin when both were running in the top ten, leaving Hamlin with a badly damaged car that limped to the end 25th.
Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric, the leading Rookie of the Year candidate, was third. Erik Jones and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five.
Elliott’s win ups his regular season points lead to 47 over Blaney. Chastain runs third, fifty points back.
(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR’s next race is in Toronto next Sunday.
(FORMULA 1)—Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc had to deal with throttle issues and with challenges from Max Verstappen to win the Austrian Grand Prix. It’s LeClerc’s first win since the Australian Grand Prix in April. He’s been dogged by mechanical and strategy problems since.
He beat Verstappen to the line by about 1.5 seconds to claim his first podium finish after five failures and move to within 38 points of Verstappen’s lead in the standings.
LeClerc and teammate Carlos Sainz were headed for a 1-2 finish before an engine failure sent Sainz’s car afire with fourteen laps left.
(Photo Credits: SRX and Rick Gevers)