By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—Finishes of NASCAR races of late have had something of an NBA quality to them of late with last-laps events that determine winners.

Case in point: Darlington, Joey Logano—pardon us for mixing our sports terms here—punted race leader William Byron into the wall on the last restart to end a 40-race winless streak.

Logano becomes the tenth winner in the season’s first dozen races. He now has at least one win in the last eleven seasons.

Logano, who started on the outside of the first row on the last restart, complained Byron went up the track and pinched him against the wall. With two laps to go, Logano got his revenge, bumping Byron in the third turn, sending him into the wall and Logano into the lead. He got the checkered flag about three-quarters of a second in front of Tyler Reddick.

“If someone’s going to be willing to do that to you, then the gloves are off,” Logano said after the race. “There’s something to be said for an angry race car driver.”

Byron brought his damaged car home 13^th and he did have something to say: “He slammed me so hard, it knocked all the right side off the car and sent me into the corner. He’s just a moron. He can’t win a race, so he does it that way.”

Also having behavioral problems was to-time series champion Kyle Busch who had nowhere to go when another wreck took out former NASCAR champion, Brad Keselowski. He took his car to the pits but instead of driving it into the garage area, he climbed out and abandoned it. That forced NASCAR to close the pits to other drivers until Busch’s car could be hauled away.

Only 23 of the 36 starting cars were still on the track at the end.  The 13 DNFs equaled the season high established at Talladega last month.

The show moves to the Kansas Speedway, just west of Kansas City last weekend.

(FORMULA 1)—The first Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix has gone to Max Verstappen, who is charging back through the points standings after a dismal start to the season.  Verstappen started from the second row with Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, bolted around Sainz on the first turn then hunted down Leclerc on lap nine to take a lead he never surrendered.

Verstappen now has three wins and has cut Leclerc’s points lead to 19. Just two races ago he was 46 points behind.

The drivers are calling for improvements in the course. Some suggested the pavement need to be fixed, complaining driving in some areas was like driving on a wet track. The situation made passing difficult and led to some straight-line racing.

Grand Prix managing partner Tom Garfinkel promised organizers will take “a really hard look” at the situation “and make the track as good as we can.”

(INDCAR)—Three drivers are locked in a tight three-way points chase as INDYCAR heads to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for next weekend’s May race on the road course.  Although Josef Newgarden has won twice, he’s only third in the points behind runnerup and Penske team member Scott McLaughlin and winless points leader Alex Palou. The three are separated by only nine points with the road course race next weekend and the Indianapolis 500 on the 29^th.

(Photo credit: Bob Priddy)

Two drivers pick up their first wins of the year—-although one has to wait an extra day.

INDYCAR)—INDYCAR has finished the part of the season preceding the traditional month of May at the track that gives the series its name.

Pato O’Ward has ended Team Penske domination of the early part of the INDYCAR season with a focused victory at Barber Motorsports Park, his first win since one of the June races at Belle Isle in Detroit last year.  The win moves O’Ward from ninth to fifth in the points. Palou’s runnerup finish moved him top the top of the points list. McLaughlin remains second with previous points leader Josef Newgarden dropping to third with a 14^th place finish.

It’s O’Ward’s third career win in INDYCAR and it tightens the standings after the first four races of the year.

The race boiled down to tire strategy and a fight between O’Ward, Alex Palou, and Rinus VeeKay.

VeeKay had a two-second lead on O’Ward just before the two, plus Scott McLaughlin, pitted on the 62^nd of 90 laps. VeeKay led coming out of the pits but O’Ward got past him on the course’s fifth turn to take the lead for good.  Palou’s quick pit stop two laps later put him between O’Ward and VeeKay but O’Ward held the lead at almost one second for the remainder of the race.

The next action for INDYCAR will be at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The drivers will run on the infield road course on May 14^th before re-tuning their cars for the famous squared oval and the 106^th Indianapolis 600 on May 29^th.

(NASCAR)—Everybody was chasing Chase at the end of the two-day NASCAR Cup race at Dover—Chase Elliott, becoming the last of the four Hendick Motorsports drivers to snag a win this year.

Elliott took the lead from Ross Chastain with 52 laps left on the one-mile concrete oval and led Ricky Stenhouse Jr., across the finish line under the thirteenth caution flag of the race.  Chastain finished third but not without ruffling the feathers of Martin Truex Jr., who tried to pass him on the outside on the final lap but lost control of his car when Chastain moved up the track.  Truex spun and hit the inside wall.  He kept his car running and salvaged 12^th.

Elliott, the 2020 season champion had gone 26 races since his last win last July at Road America.

The race was moved to Monday after rain interrupted Sunday’s race after 78 laps. Denny Hamlin’s disappointing season got worse when his car lost a wheel. Under NASCAR rules, the teams’ crew chief, tire changer and Jackman will be suspended for four races.

Elliott is the ninth winner in the first eleven races of the year.  The 16-car playoff field won’t be set until 15 more races are run.

NASCAR heads to Darlington next weekend.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 is back on track in Miami next Sunday.

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy)

Sports: Racing—Another Last Lap Gift; Fast and Green; F1 is Bullish

(NASCAR)—For the second race in a row, a collision between two leaders within yards of victory hands a race to a driver running third. And for the second straight week, the winning driver led only one lap in the race.

The beneficiary of the misfortune for the first two cars was Ross Chastain, the 16^th leader in a race that saw 41 lead changes and four racing cautions involving fourteen of the thirty-nine starting cars, leaving only twenty-one competitors on the leader’s lap at the end.

Chastain was behind Erik Jones and Kyle Larson who were set for a drag race from the last corner to the finish line when Jones moved to block Larson, leading to a collision that knocked both cars out of the way for Chastain to drive to the checkered flag. Larson finished fourth and Jones was able to get home sixth.

The win is Chastain’s second of his career, the second of his career, and the second for Trackhouse Racing, which bought out Ganassi racing at the end of last year. The eighth-generation watermelon farmer from Florida celebrated, as he does with all of his wins, by climbing on top of his car and throwing a watermelon to splatter on the track.

Jones was trying to give team owner Richard Petty his first win since 2014. He and Larson had swapped the lead six times in the last eighteen laps.

NASCAR returns to short-track racing next weekend when it takes its show to Dover.

(INDYCAR)—Two days of testing for all entrants for the Indianapolis 500 have shown many drivers prepared to go faster—and they will when the track opens for all-out testing next month.

This year’s points leader, Josef Newgarden, and two-time 500 winner Takuma Sato were the only drivers to top 229 mph and only five drivers (Newgarden, Sato, Tony Kanaan, Scott Dixon, and Scott McLaughlin logging single laps faster than last year’s slowest qualifying speed for the race, 228.353 mph.

To put some perspective to these “slow” speeds:  Newgarden’s fastest lap on the 2 ½ mile four-turns, four straightaways course was only 39.2125 seconds.

Arie Luyendyk set the all-time record for the fastest single lap in 1996, at 37.616 questions and an average speed of 239.260.  Although the speeds are ten miles per hour different, the lap times differ by only about 1.5 seconds.

Twenty-one cars qualified for last year’s race at more than 230 mph for a four-lap average, with eleven topping 231, paced by Dixon’s pole speed of just under 232 mph.

Only 32 cars and drivers ran test laps.  The starting field for the 500 traditionally is 33 cars but the field is still one short. Speedway officials have promised, however, that a 33^rd car will be entered.

The laps during the three test sessions are not intended to check out qualifying trim. But they will provide data that will help teams set up the cars for practice and qualifying for the 500 when it resumes May 17.

INDYCAR’s next race is on the road course at the Barber Motorsports Park next Sunday.  -0-0-0-0

There once was a time when the color green was considered unlucky in the early racing that was the foundation of Indianapolis-car racing.  But Jim Clark’s Lotus in 1963 buried that “curse.”

Now ALL of INDYCAR and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway are going green starting with the 500 next month.

We won’t see them in this race but we will see tires during Friday’s Carb Day pit stop contest made of a natural rubber from the guayule shrub. The what?

There are only two of the two-thousand-plus plant species that produce rubber that have been extensively domesticated. One is the rubber tree that is most associated with the Amazon basin region. The other is a little shrub found in the deserts of southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Both have been developed commercially after almost becoming extinct as the demand grew for more rubber products. The shrub tire will be used in the pit stop contest and then as the alternate tire in the Nashville race later this summer.

Penske Entertainment, the owners of the Speedway, say all tires delivered to the Speedway in May will be delivered in electric vehicles.  All electricity at the Speedway next month will be paid for with renewable energy credits. Recycling and food recovery programs will be increased. And some Speedway souvenirs will be made of recycled plastic or will be reusable and sold from a store inside an electric truck.

(FORMULA 1)—Defending F1 champion Max Verstappen finally had the race he expects to have at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola, Italy—leading all the way from pole to win for the first time this year and cut his points deficit from 43 to 17.  Teammate Sergio Perez took second after points leader Charles Leclerc spun his Ferrari off=course near the end. Lando Norris was third in a McLaren.

Mercedes’ handling problems remain unsolved and its chances of winning a ninth straight Constructors’ Championship are growing more questionable.

The best Mercedes  could do was a fourth place for George Russell.  Lewis Hamilton came home a distant 14^th.  Team boss Toto Wolff acknowledged after the first practice that the handling was so poor that Russell and Hamilton had to lift before reaching top speed on the straightaways because of severe “porpoising,” or bouncing. Wolff apologized to both of his drivers for the cars they were given to drive.

F1 is off for the next two weeks.

(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, 60^th 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 22^nd.

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 14^th 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 20^th place finish at St. Petersburg to start the season. He had a battery failure and finished 27^th on the Texas oval but had his best start and best finish of the year at Long Beach—starting fifth and finishing 8^th.

(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)

(BASEBALL)—Red State Missouri (Cardinals) and Blue State Missouri (Royals) are providing early-season optimism to their fans by with winning first weekends.

The Cardinals started with two straight wins over the Pirates, 9-0 behind six scoreless innings from Adam Wainwright in the first game and home runs from Tyler O’Neill, Tommy Edman, and Nolan Arenado.  Miles Mikolas struggled through a 41-pitch first inning and wasn’t around for the decision in a 6-2 win that featured Paul Dejong’s first homer of the year in the second game.  But new acquisition Steven Matz was bombed early in the third game of the series, won by Pittsburgh 9-3. Arenado had another home run. The Cardinals scored in the first innings of their first three games of the season for the first time since 1977.

The scheduled fourth game of the series was rained out Monday and will be made up as a doubleheader later.

Albert Pujols started the season opener, his 22^nd consecutive season opening start (second best in MLB history) but did not play the next two games.  He was 0-5 in his first role as a DH for the Cardinals.

The Royals went 2-2 to open the season, spoiling the debut of the Guardians uniforms of the former Cleveland Indians in the first two games of the series then getting hammered in the last two games.  The Royals won the first game 3-1 then edged the Guardians 1-0 in ten innings before being clobbered 17-3 on Sunday and outslugged 10-7 in game four.

The Royals and Cardinals have a two-game interleague series today and tomorrow in St. Louis.  Dakota Hudson will start tonight against Daniel Lynch, with Zack Greinke and Adam Wainwright getting their second starts of the season tomorrow night.

(INDYCAR)—Team Penske has gone three for three to open the 2022 INDYCAR season and Josef Newgarden is on a two-race winning streak.

Newgarden had to hold off Romain Grosjean for the final 15 laps on the streets of Long Beach, particularly during the last five laps after the final caution.  Grosjean made several runs at Newgarden but could not get even with him.  Newgarden’s two straight wins have put him top the points standings. He was the series champion in 2017 and 2019.

Team Penske is off to its biggest start since 2012 when it won the first four races. Chip Ganassi Racing was the last team to start the year with three straight wins, two years ago.

Colton Herta had a stranglehold on the field for the first 29 laps before crashing because of a “stupid mistake.”

Defending series champion Alex Palou picked up the last podium position.

Long Beach was a trying weekend for seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson who crashed twice in practice, the first time breaking a bone in his hand, and then crashed out of the race with a dozen laps left.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s first night race at The Paperclip was dominated by two teammates who led 397 of the 403 laps (two in overtime).  Pole sitter Chase Elliott led the first 185 laps at Martinsville but it was William Byron who controlled things the rest of the way to become the first two-time winner this year in the Cup series.

The race usually is 500 laps but it was cut to 400 this year.

Byron had to survive a two-lap overtime shootout with Joey Logano who couldn’t get the jump from outside on the overtime start and couldn’t get close enough to Byron to bump him out of the way.  Byron finished three-tenths of a second in front.  Elliott faded to tenth.

Martinsville, a .526-mile track likened to a paper clip because of its tight turns and long straights, often is the scene of numerous bumps and spins. But Saturday’s nights race drew only four caution periods, only two of which were because of on-track incident (the other two were pauses at the end of the first two stages of the race).  The four cautions were the fewest since 1997.

Elliott and Byron combined to give team owner Rick Hendrick a special distinction. Hendrick Motorsports is now the first operation to field cars combining to lead 10,000 laps at a single race track.

(FORMULA 1)—Ferrari and Charles Leclerc are the hot setup in Formula 1 through the first three races of 2022 while defending F1 Champion Max Verstappen and Red Bull are struggling.

Leclerc won the Grand Prix of Australia during the weekend by twenty seconds over Red Bull’s number two driver, Sergio Perez while Verstappen fumed about his second mechanical failure that has left him 46 points behind in the championship chase.

Mercedes seems far from the dominant team it has been for several years although George Russell did finish third, one slot above teammate Lewis Hamilton.

Leclerc with two wins and a second-place is 34 points up on Russell in the early standings. He’s the only driver with three podiums this year.

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NCAA)—It’s either the greatest comeback in NCAA men’s basketball championship history or the greatest collapse in the tournament’s history, depending on your perspective.

The Kansas Jayhawks, down by 16 late in the first half and trailing by 15 at halftime went on a 31-10 tear in the first ten minutes of the second half to turn a 40-25 halftime deficit into a 56-50 lead, then fought off repeated North Carolina comebacks to win the fourth national basketball championship in KU history, 72-69.  The Jayhawks held North Carolina scoreless for the last 1:41 of the game.

The comeback is the biggest in NCAA title game history. Kentucky rallied from ten points down to beat Utah in 1998.

Kansas finishes the season at 34-6 including a 102-65 win over Missouri in December. North Carolina’s season ends at 29-10.

So ends a season for the young guys.  Old Guys are part of the rest of our stories.

(BASEBALL)—The unofficial real end of winter will be Thursday—baseball’s opening day.

The Cardinals open at home against the Pirates. The Royals open at home against the newly-named Cleveland Guardians, a team named for some statues on a city bridge.

’22 will be 22 for Number 5 on Thursday—Albert Pujols’ 22^nd straight opening day start. He’ll be the DH.  Only Pete Rose had more season opener starts—23. Pujols will join Hank Aaron and Carl Yastrzemski for second-most.  Pujols is one of three old guys who might be making their last opening day starts. He’s joined by battery mates Adam Wainwright and Yadier, Molina. Molina has said this is his last year. Wainwright has come back for one more after a 15-win year in 2021.

The Royals old guy is Zack Greinke, who makes his sixth opening day start, fourth most among active pitchers. His last opening day start for the Royals was in 2010. Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner and Justin Verlander are the only pitchers with more.  He will start against an old franchise with a new name—the Cleveland Guardians.

(NASCAR)—Richmond was for the old guys of NASCAR. Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick ran down the young guns in the closing laps at the ¾ mile track at Richmond, passed leader William Byron with five laps to go and finished 1-2.  A third veteran, Martin Truex Jr., finished fourth.  It’s Hamlin’s 47^th career victory.  Hamlin, who is 41 is the seventh winner in seven Cup races this year, the first older than 30 to pick up a victory.

Kevin Harvick, 46, threatened to end his long winless streak but couldn’t get through lapped traffic at the end of challenge and came up just over a half-second short.  But he said the race was the “first clean day” he’s run all year.

Both Hamlin and Harvick used a late-race two pit stop strategy to give them newer tires than Byron had. The strategy enabled Hamlin to come from 14 seconds back with 25 laps left to get past Byron, who admitted after the race that his older tires didn’t have enough traction to hold off Hamlin and Harvick.

Hamlin becomes the seventh different winner in the first seven races of the year.  The record for most different winners at the start of a NASCAR season is nine, set in 2003 by Michael Waltrip, Dale Jarrett, Matt Kenseth, Bobby Labonte, Ricky Craven, Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Jeff Gordon.  Only Kurt Busch is still racing.

Hamlin’s 47 wins ranks him 17^th on the all-time list. Harvick, still looking for his first win since September, 2020, is tenth with 58 checkered flags.

Hamlin is still hoping to win a Cup Championship. Only one other driver with more wins that he has never won a driver’s title—Junior Johnson.

(INDYCAR)—Whether the Indianapolis 500 will see a full field of 33 cars this year remains a big question mark.  Only 32 car/driver/financial combinations have come together for the May 29 race.  RACER magazine says negotiations are continuing to put together a package that will provide the final entrant.  The major teams have indicated their satisfied with their plans.

(FORMULA 1)—Mercedes, winner of eight straight F1 Constructor’s Championships, is still looking for solutions to a handling problem in its cars that has left them uncompetitive with Ferrari and Red Bull teams in the early going.

The problem is called “porpoising” and is the result of Formula 1 allowing curved, not flat, bottom surfaces of the car that allow for once-banned ground effects.  The new chassis architecture allows air flow above the car to force it down closer to the track, thus creating greater traction. But when the bottom of the car gets too close to the ground, the underbody no longer funnels the air appropriately, causing the car to rise.  The up and down motion is called porpoising.

Mercedes’ first chance to show it has solved the problem comes up next week when the series runs the first Grand Prix of Australia since 2019.

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F1 has announced it will run a street race in Las Vegas in 2023.  The race will be held in November, hear the end of the Formula 1 season.  The race will be the third Formula 1 race in the United States in 2023.

The new track will be 3.8 miles long with 14 corners and three long straights. The famed Strip will be part of the course.

(Photo credit:  Bob Priddy)

(PUJOLS)—In part it’s a sentimental gesture. In part, it’s a hope that there’s a little something left in the tank.  The Cardinals’ signing of Albert Pujols as a platoon-DH and part-time first baseman gets one this generation’s greatest hitters back to St. Louis.  Pujols is 42 now. His best eleven years were with the Cardinals, followed by a decade with California and Los Angeles where his skills slowly eroded and the pennants the Angels anticipated when they signed him never happened.  It’s one last go-around.  Expectations might be measured by the modesty of his contract—one year, $2.5 million.

But to see him hit one more………

An instant memory.

(SHOW-ME BASKETBALL)—The top men’s and women’s high school basketball players in Missouri this year are Ysabella Fontleroy of Springfield Kickapoo High School and Luke Norweather of Blair Oaks in Wardsville.  She has verbally committed to Baylor. Norweather is evaluating invitations.

Missouri has a mixed record of keeping its top high school players at colleges and universities in Missouri.  Nine of the twenty Mr. Show-Me Basketball players have played with Missouri teams for all or parts of their college careers (including Norweather who has not declared).  Onlysix of twenty Miss Show-Me Basketball players have stayed in Missouri, the most notable being Sophie Cunningham who now plays in the WNBA.

The Missouri Basketball Coaches Association makes the awards.

RACING:

(NASCAR)—This was a weekend for people named Chastain.  Jessica won an OSCAR Sunday night for her portrayal of the wife of televangelist Jim Bakker, Tammy Faye.

Ross Chastain, a Florida watermelon farmer who is 15 years younger than the Oscar-winner and not directly related to her,  beat and banged his way through the last turns at the Circuit of the Americas to become the third first-time winner of the year in the NASCAR Cup series. He’s also the sixth different driver to pick up a win in the series’ first six races.

Austin Cindric and Chase Briscoe also have picked up their first Cup wins this year.

Chastain’s win, his first in 121 Cup races also is the first win for Trackhouse Racing, the team that bought out Chip Ganassi last year.  It’s Chastain’s fourth straight finish in the top three (he was second in the last two races).

Chastain, A. J. Allmendinger, and Alex Bowman fought for the lead going into the nineteenth turn of the last lap with Chastain who bumped the rear of Allmendinger’s car, sending him into the side of Bowman, spinning out Allmendinger.  Chastain beat Bowman to the line by 1.3 seconds. Allmendinger wound up 33^rd.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen, his problems in the last race behind him, picked up his first win the year at the Saudi-Arabia Grand Prix, finishing ahead of the two Ferraris that swept the top spots the previous weekend.  Teammate Sergio Perez, who started from pole, provided a Red Bull bookend to the Ferraris of Charles LeClerc (the previous week’s winner) and his teammate, Carlos Sainz.

Mercedes continued its early-season struggles with George Russell finishing fifth and teammate Lewis Hamilton struggling home tenth.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR heads to one of his most popular venues, Long Beach, the weekend after next, the third race of the year in the series.

(Photo credit:  Bob Priddy)

But first: Stick and ball news—

We now enter the busiest time of year for stick and ball sports.

The first players showed up during the weekend at spring training sites in Florida and Arizona, ending an extended winter of discontent in baseball.  Opening day is less than a month away. There will be 162 games with day/night doubleheaders making up for games previously cancelled.

College basketball tournaments are underway for men and women but the main focus, although not the exclusive province of great basketball, the NCAA Tournament, begins tomorrow afternoon.

The USFL is back after a 37-year absence.  Old-timers might remember it played three years, 1983-85 and had grand plans to compete head-to-head with the NFL in the fall of 1986.  But it collapsed before that season could start. The league filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL and won treble damages.  The jury awarded only $1 in damages, which was tripled to three dollars which didn’t do much to offset the $163 million dollars theleague lost.  The planned move to the fall was led by the majority owner of the New Jersey Generals, Donald J. Trump, who thought it would provoke a merger with the NFL.  The new United States Football League owns all of the trademarks of the original league but has no other connection with it. But that’s why we’ll see some names that might ring a bell with those who remember the original.

The National Hockey League still has about six weeks to go before it begins the long, long second season. The Blues are in good shape for the playoffs, second in their division, not likely to catch the Avalanche but hoping to hold off the Wild.

The National Basketball Association, which has former Missouri Tigers Jordan Clarkson and Michael Porter Jr., is a few days less than a month away after which it will compete with the NHL with its long, long second season.  Missouri has not had an NBA team since the Kansas City/Omaha Kings (the former Rochester Seagrams, Rochester Eber Seagrams, Rochester Pros, Rochester Royals, Cincinnati Royals) left town to become the Sacramento Kings in 1985.

And of course there’s golf and tennis and soccer.  And before too long the ground will be warm enough in Missouri for some sand volleyball in our city parks.

Now:  Racing

(NASCAR)—A three-lap shootout with four of NASCAR’s young guns at Phoenix has gone to Chase Briscoe, driving a car owned by his childhood hero, Tony Stewart, and sporting Stewart’s old number—14.  Briscoe had to survive three late-race restarts to get his first Cup win. He finished about eight-tenths of a second ahead of Ross Chastain, Tyler Reddick, and Ryan Blaney. Two of the oldest drivers on the circuit, Kurt Busch, 43, and Kevin Harvick, 46, filled out the top six.

For those keeping track of such things, Briscoe also became the 200^th driver to win a Cup Race in NASCAR’s almost-75 year history.   Harvick’s finish was his 18^th top ten at Phoenix. Only two other drivers in NASCAR history have matched that consistency.  Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr., had eighteen straight top tens at North Wilkesboro, which no longer hosts NASCAR’s top series. Harvick has another streak going that he’d prefer to break sooner rather than later. He hasn’t won a race since September 19, 2020.

The win was an emotional one for last year’s series Rookie of the Year. “I was crying the whole last lap,” he said later. “Just seven years ago I was sleeping on couches, volunteering at race shops and was literally driving home to give up.

Next up for NASCAR is the first race on the newly-redesigned track at Atlanta which has been repaved since last year with progressive banking in the turns.

(INDYCAR)—The second race of the year for America’s premier open-wheel series is this coming weekend at the Texas Speedway.  It will be the first high-speed banked oval run for six rookies.  INDYCAR set up a nine-hour test last week for Kyle Kirkwood, David Malukas, Romain Grosjean, Devlin DeFrancesco, Christian Lundgaard, and Callum Llott.  Grosjean was there voluntarily. He’d done his oval testing last fall at World Wide Technology Raceway across the river from St. Louis. But he took the opportunity to get acquainted with a bigger, faster track.

A quasi-rookie in the race will be seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, who ran only road courses last year.  Most of his NASCAR career was on ovals and he expects to do better than his career-best 17^th place finishes on road courses. Johnson won 83 Cup races, 82 of them on ovals. He’s confident of better things in the five INDYCAR oval races this year after testing on the ovals at Texas and Indianapolis last year.

One of INDYCAR’s hottest young talents has landed a Formula 1test driver job with McLaren. F1 rules allow teams to use one of last year’s cars to test young talent.  If Colton Herta is impressive enough he could land an FP1 opportunity.  Formula 1 requires rookie drivers to have at least two FP1 sessions  before they can race. FP1 lets new drivers get accustomed to the current car in test sessions held before a race with the first session (FP!) focusing on car setups.  FP2 gives experience in simulated long race runs. FP3 lets them work on qualifications laps and more setups. Herta plans to fit those sessions in between his INDYCAR races this year.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 has wrapped up the last pre-season testing with three days on the track at Bahrain. The top rivalry, a carryover from last year’s heated championship run, is still Red Bull vs. Mercedes.  Mercedes turned the most test laps at Bahrain but was short of the top of the speed charts.  Red Bull had the only laps below 1:32. Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, who lost his chance for a record eighth championship because of a controversial race administration issue last year, says Red Bull looks “ridiculously fast” but he says Mercedes is still the better team.

Red bull driver, defending champion Max Verstappen thinks Mercedes wasn’t showing its full capability during the tests.

The season opens Sunday on the Bahrain circuit.

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy)

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(NASCAR)—Defending NASCAR champion Kyle Larson has charged from the rear of the starting field to notch his first win of the year, hanging on to a late lead to lead oncoming Austin Dillon by just under two-tenths of a second.

Larson was sent to the back because of unapproved adjustments to his car and needed 167 laps to surge into the lead, past Joey Logano, with only 33 laps left.

Tyler Reddick had dominated much of the race but a flat rear tire on the 152^nd lap dashed his hopes.  He led 90 of the first 151 laps but finished a lap down in 24^th place.

Larson teammate Chase Elliott challenged him for the lead but Larson moved up the track while dueling with Joe Logano and pinched Elliott against the outside wall.  Larson said on his radio he didn’t know Elliott was there.

Erik Jones and Daniel Suarez rounded out the top five.

Austin Cindric, the rookie winner of the Daytona 500 a week earlier, started on the poll and was 12^th at the end.

(INDYCAR)—Scott McLaughlin, a driver from down under has started the INDYCAR season atop the INDYCAR World.  McLaughlin, in his second full season for Penske after winning three championships in Australian V8 Supercar racing, started from P1, led almost half the laps on the St. Petersburg (Florida) road course and took the checkered flag half a second ahead of defending INDYCAR champion Alex Palou. The win is his first in the INDYCAR series.  Teammate Will Power got the last podium spot.

McLaughlin averaged almost 97 mph on the fourteen-turn 1.8-mile temporary street circuit.

McLaughlin, a New Zealand native whose family moved to Australia when he was 9, began his racing career at the age of six, driving go karts. He won his first championship three years later. In his first full season in INDYCAR last year, he had five top tens in sixteen races, with a runner-up finish at Texas his best result. He was the Indianapolis 500 rookie of the year.

The race was the first February INDYCAR race since 2003. INDYCAR has sixteen more races to run but won’t run its second race until March 20, at Texas. Another three-week layoff will lead to the third race of the year, at Long Beach, California.

(Photo Credit: Bob Priddy, McLaughlin at World Wide Technology Raceway)