By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s ten-race runoff for the championship has become a race of crumpled and burned cars, bruised hopes, and a historic win.
The historic win of the Southern 500 at Darlington is by Erik Jones, driving for Richard Petty’s team, now rebranded as Petty GMS racing, who took the lead with 22 laps left when Kyle Busch’s car’s engine blew up while the field was running under caution and he was leading. Busch, who led 155 of the race’s 307 laps, had taken the lead when teammate Martin Truex Jr., also lost an engine a few laps earlier.
The on-track chaos almost obscured the historic nature of Jones’ victory. It was number 200 for car number 43, a number usually associated with “The King,” Richard Petty. It’s the first time that number has been in Victory Lane at Darlington since Petty won with it in 1967. The number hasn’t been in victory lane anywhere since Aric Almirola won the July race at Daytona eight years ago.
Jones is not one of the sixteen drivers competing for the NASCAR Cup Championship and is the first driver not in the running to win the first race of the runoff series.
Denny Hamlin, who is in the competition, finished second. He was able to get to Jones’ back bumper in the closing laps but couldn’t get past and finished a quarter of a second behind. Playoff drivers Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano and Christopher Bell rounded out the top five.
Chase Elliott, who started the race as the number one seed in the playoffs hit the wall and collided with the car of 12-seeded Chase Briscoe early in the race. Elliott finished last. Briscoe went three laps down but was able to continue but finished 27th. Elliott has fallen to ninth in the seedings.
Former champion Kevin Harvick, who started as the sixth seed, bailed out of his burning car on the 274th lap and finished 33rd. Defending series champion Kyle Larson had engine problems early, went four laps down but climbed back to the leader’s lap and wound up 12th. Busch remains seeded 12th despite his early exit after finishing 30th.
The field of sixteen will be cut to twelve after the next two races. Rookie Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Briscoe, and Harvick are outside that group heading into next weekend’s race at Kansas.
(INDYCAR)—The INDYCAR championship is Will Power’s to lose next weekend at Laguna Seca. Power finished second in the Grand Prix of Portland to teammate Scott McLaughlin and enters the series’ final race of the year with a twenty-point lead over Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon.
The race at Portland, however, belonged entirely to McLaughlin, who led 104 of the 110 laps and at one tinme was 7.5 seconds ahead of Power, who closed to about 1.2 seconds at the checkered flag. His win makes him a long-shot possibility for the championship, along with Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson. “I don’t care,” he said about being a long shot. “We’re a shot and I’m looking forward to it.”
Power, the 2014 INDYCAR champion says he wants to win the title “for the guys that have been with me for more than a decade. It’s a lot less selfish for me this time around because they deserve it.” He can claim the title if he finishes third or better next weekend. Newgarden won the championship in 2017 and again in 2019. Dixon, who drove to third from a 16th starting position, is looking for his seventh championship, tying him with A. J. Foyt.
This is the seventeenth straight season that the INDYCAR championship will be decided in the final race of the year. It’s the first time in five years that five drivers have a mathematical shot at winning it in the last race.
(Formula 1)—It’s not quite time to engrave Max Verstappen’s name on the Formula 1 trophy for 2022 but it’s close. His win at the Dutch Grand Prix gives him a lead of 109 points over Charles LeClerc with seven races left that will generate 190 points to the winners. F1 veteran observers say the championship could be decided during the next three races at Monza, Singapore, or Japan.
Mercedes’ George Russell was second and LeClerc was third with Lewis Hamilton a disappointed fourth. He was critical of his team’s tire strategy late in the races that took away his lead and dropped him off the podium. But the Dutch Grand Prix appeared to be the first race of the season when his Mercedes worked well enough to give him a shot at winning.
Hamilton has recorded at least one grand prix victory every year since his debut season of 2007. Although he was gravely disappointed at the results of this weekend’s race, he commented, “If the car feels like this at other races we’re going to be fighting for a win.”
(BASEBALL)—Albert Pujols’ farewell tour is turning into a series of dramatic memories as the Cardinals plunge toward a post-season extension of his career. Pujols, called to pinch hit late in a scoreless game with the Cubs Sunday, responded with a two-run homer that gave the Redbirds a 2-0 win. It’s his 695th career home run, one short of Alex Rodriguez, who is fourth on the all-time list, and gives him 27 more games to reach 700.
(Photo credits: NASCAR, Bob Priddy at WWTR)