Blaney wins, Reddick’s in, and The most ridiculous race ever

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Before we recap NASCAR’s final race of the regular season and list the ten drivers who have made the playoffs we have to tell you about a Formula One race that lasted less than a lap.

The Belgian Grand Prix never saw a green flag.  No driver earned points for fastest lap because every lap was run behind the pace car, or as they call it in F1, the safety car.  A relentless downpour was the culprit, but so was the series’ policy of running a race on the day it was scheduled to be run.

Even if it never was a race.  Even if the finishing positions were the starting positions.

Here’s how it all came down:

First, torrential rain came down.  Then the scheduled start time came down.  No go. After a           three-hour wait, the safety car led the field out of the pits.  The competitors did the ceremonial formation lap but did not halt for the usual standing start. Instead, they kept circulating for two more laps and returned to the pits, never to turn go out again.

The official time of the race was three minutes, 27.01 seconds.

Formula 1 rules say a race is official after completion of just two laps.  The rules say the final finishing order is determined by positions on the lap before the suspension of the race.  Thus, the Grand Prix of Belgium, 2021, goes into the history books as lasting one lap, with pole-sitter Max Verstappen the winner with George Russell, who qualified second giving the Williams team its first podium finish since 2017, and giving defending F1 champion Lewis Hamilton third, his starting position.

Points are usually awarded to the driver who achieves the fastest lap.  There was no such lap in this, uh, event.

Racefans.net says the race actually lasted less than one lap because there is a 124-meter offset between the start line and the finish line. Therefore, says the site, the race did not lost 7.004 kilometers, the length of one lap, but only 6.88 kilometers.

All three of the podium drivers apologized to fans who waited throughout the rain but only got to see an almost-race that has been described with various derogatory words in the European media.

Because the race fell 32 laps short of reaching 76% of its distance, the points were reduced by half.  Verstappen, by “finishing first” received 12.5 points.  Hamilton’s third was worth 7.5 points.  He now leads Verstappen in the standings by three.

Hamilton called the event a “farce” said he hopes the fans get their money back.  There’s been no comment from F1.

However, Motorsport.com is reporting that Formula One CEO Stefano Domenicali “is eager for discussions with the sports stakeholders,” and F1 Race Director agrees. “We’ll look at a whole lot of things that we can all look at, to see what everyone wants,” he says.

-0-

Now, to a race that was a race.

(NASCAR)—The last race of NASCAR’s regular season was a must-win situation for most of te field, a contest between teammates for the last playoff spot, and a second straight win for Ryan Blaney.  The race went an extra five laps because a scramble for positions with thirteen laps to go saw eight cars get tangled up, leading to a stoppage of the race.  Eleven cars got together in the first overtime attempt for a finish and nine cars got wadded behind Blaney on the last lap.  The race finished under the yellow flag with Chris Buescher trailing Blaney to the finish.  However, Buescher’s car failed a post-race inspection and was disqualified, leaving him last in the final standings and Bubba Wallace second.

The last playoff spot had been in contention between Childress Racing teammates Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon. Dillon was caught up in the crash on the last lap.  Reddick, whose car was damaged in the wreck 13 laps from the end, was able to keep going after some quick repairs in the pits, and finished fifth.

Reddick was 16th in the standings after the first 12 races with only one top-ten finish. He had climbed to 11th going into the Daytona races, posting nine top tens in the last fourteen races. His fifth on Saturday night is his best finish of the year.

Blaney heads into the playoffs with two straight wins, three for the year, and second-seeded behind regular-season points champion Kyle Larson.

The first of ten playoff races will be at Darlington next Sunday.  The drivers who will run for the championship are Larson, Blaney, Martin Truex, Jr., Kyle Busch, defending champion Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman, Denny Hamlin, William Byron, Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski, Kurt Busch, Christopher Bell, Michael McDowell, Aric Almirola, Reddick, and Kevin Harvick.  Only Hamlin, Reddick, and Harvick have yet to win this year.

(Photo Credits: Formula 1, Bob Priddy)

 

 

Racing: Championship chases tighten

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor.

Why is this young man happy?

—because he’s Pato O’Ward and he has become the points leader for the INDYCAR championship with three races left in the season.  (Actually, he’s not celebrating in this picture; he’s responding to fans a week earlier at Indianapolis.)

This man has hit another milestone:

Will Power had to sit in the pits protecting his ears when competitors tried to beat his qualifying speed.  They did not and Power picked up his 63rd INDYCAR pole, putting him within four of Mario Andretti’s career record.

O’Ward might have taken the points lead but he came up just short of beating Josef Newgarden to the checkered flag at the World Wide Technology Raceway, where the St. Louis skyline can be seen from the track at Madison, Illinois. Newgarden and three teammates dominated the top five finishing positions in the race; only O’Ward’s runnerup position kept Team Penske from going 1-2-3

Newgarden beat O’Ward by less than six-tenths of a second in a race bedeviled by early yellows and late twists that took some top competitors out.  The win, Newgarden’s third at the track, moves him past Scott Dixon into third place in the points. He led more than half of the race.

 

 

Newgarden took the lead from Colton Herta, who had led 101 of the first 185 laps but dropped out when he broke a drive shaft leaving the pits.

Palou, who started 21st, had charged to tenth when he was caught up in a three-car crash on the 65th lap, relegating him to 20th place. The crash let O’Ward overhaul Palou, the points leader for most of the season and now puts him up on Palou by ten points. Palou has had two terrible finishes in a row, counting his 20th at WWTR when he was caught up in a three-car crash before the race was half done.

Scott Dixon, who went into the race third in points, was forced to the garage area for repairs after another three-car incident. Although his crew made his car roadworthy again, Dixon was so far behind that he turned laps while some others dropped out, elevating him in the final results. He packed it in after running 100 laps, enough to get him to 19th.  His withdrawal from the race ended a string of 28 straight races in which he had been running at the end.

INDYCAR resumes its season September 12 in Portland, Oregon.

Switching to cars with fenders:

This fellow is relieved although he finished 14th in the NASCAR Cup race at Brooklyn, Michigan. That was good enough to lock him in as the 15th driver in NASCAR’s 16-driver playoff field.

Kevin Harvick had to make it on points this year because he has failed so far to extend his eleven-year streak of winning at least one CUP race.  He does have eleven more races in this season to snag a win.

The win at Michigan went to Ryan Blaney. It’s Blaney’s second win of the year. He got a push from competitor Kyle Busch on the last restart that gave him the lead he then defended for the last eight laps of the race, the only laps he lead in the whole race.

Blaney beat William Byron to the finish line by 0.077 of a second, the closest NASCAR finish in Michigan International Speedway history since timing and scoring went electronic.  Blaney, who finished second on the Indianapolis road course the weekend previous, started third at WWTR but didn’t think he had a car as good as the starting position indicated.

His win and Harvick’s clinching of 15th place on points leaves only one race left to determine that 16th driver.  And that race next Saturday night is at Daytona, where the unexpected is expected.  Tyler Reddick has a 29-point lead over teammate Austin Dillon.  Nobody else is close enough to become the 16th driver because of his number of points.  And Reddick and Dillon could be eliminated if someone who has not won a race this year wins at Daytona.

Dillon was in the playoffs last year. Reddick was not.  Two other active drivers will not repeat in the playoffs unless one of them wins Saturday—Matt DeBenedetto or Cole Custer.  Clint Bowyer, the fourth driver in the 2020 playoffs, has retired to the broadcast booth.

Forty drivers are entered for Saturday night’s race meaning two dozen will be trying to be number 16.

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)

Racing: Coming from Behind

(INDYCAR)—Most of us hardly notice many of the bumps in the road we travel over, but if you’re in an INDYCAR, they get your attention.  They did last weekend as INDYCAR ran its first-ever race on the streets of Nashville.  The race included two crossings of the Korean Veterans Memorial Bridge per lap that, with the bumps elsewhere, tested drivers’ skills.

The win went to Marcus Ericsson, whose car (hitting a bump) went airborne on the fifth lap when he rear-ended Sebastian Bourdais on the fifth lap.  The suspension held together when the car landed but Ericsson had to hit the pits to replace a broken front wing.  The incident set him farther back because he had to serve a stop-and-go penalty for avoidable contact.

The collision was even more costly to Bourdais, who could not continue. He finished 27th, last in the largest field in at least eight years for an INDYCAR race that wasn’t the Indianapolis 500.

Ericsson worked his way back up during the last twenty laps to challenge leader Colton Herta. Herta went into the tire barrier after coming off the bridge, leaving Ericsson to fend off a charge by Scott Dixon as the laps wore down.  He finished  about 1.6-seconds ahead of Dixon in a two-lap shootout after a red flag stopped the race because of a multi-car crash that clogged the track.

It’s Ericsson’s second win of the season. Dixon’s second-place finish moved him past Pato O’Ward into second place in the points although he lost ground to leader Alex Palou.

INDYCAR stays on a road course next weekend when it returns to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a Saturday race, part of a triple-header weekend that also will feature NASCAR’s Infiniti and Cup series races.

(NASCAR)—Kyle Larson withstood a furious charge by teammate Chase Elliott at Watkins Glen to pick up his fifth win of the year and tie Denny Hamlin for the Cup points lead with three races left before the season re-starts with a ten-race playoff.

It’s Larson’s fifth win of the year. He also has five runnerup finishes in the first 23 races of the year.  Hamlin, who ran off a lengthy string of top-five finishes at the start of the year, has yet to win a race.

Larson finished 2.4 seconds ahead of Elliott, who was dropped with Christopher Bell to the last starting positions because their cars flunked pre-race inspections. Bell rallied to seventh. Both Larson and Elliott had to deal with lapped traffic as the race wound down. Elliott said he made too many mistakes too late in the race to win.

With only three races left, thirteen drivers are locked into the playoffs with wins. Hamlin and Kevin Harvick, also surprisingly winless this year, are in on points, leaving only one slot open.  Tyler Reddick has the edge over Austin Dillon for the sixteenth playoff position.

NASCAR races on the Indianapolis Speedway road course for the first time ever on Sunday afternoon for the Brickyard 200.  The race replaces the Brickyard 400, which has been run on the oval since its inception in 1995. Several drivers aren’t happy about the change including two-time Cup Champion Kyle Busch. “I don’t view this track as Indianapolis,” he says, “Indianapolis is the oval. That’s where the allure of Indianapolis comes from.”

Three-time BY400 winner Kevin Harvick refers to the road course race as “a tough pill to swallow.”

The switch to the road course comes after years of declining attendance at the 400-mile race on the oval.

(FORMULA 1)—It’s summer break time for F1—no race until August 29 when the series runs the GP of Belgium.

(Photo credit: Joe Skibinski, INDYCAR; Jim Coleman)

Racing: Helio takes over; Brad moves over; F1 looks ahead

The Olympics overshadows everything and dominates domestic television networks that otherwise would be broadcasting races on weekends.  So INDYCAR and NASCAR are standing down because NBC is in Tokyo.  But there are things afoot in all three major racing series.

(INDYCAR)—Helio Castroneves has a full-time ride for the 2022 INDYCAR season, taking the primary seat at Meyer-Shank racing that Jack Harvey has this year.  The team already is capitalizing on his “Drive for Five,” and effort to become the first five-time Indianapolis 500 winner.  If he pulls it off he’ll be the first driver to win back-to-back 500s twice.  He won his first two races at the Brickyard.

Although Castroneves (shown at the Speedway last week with A. J. Foyt, Al Unser Sr., and Rick Mears) has won the 500 four times, he has never won the INDYCAR championship.  He’s finished second in points four times. “I have been missing racing in INDYCAR full time so much,” he says. “I cannot wait to get a head start on next year with some strong races to finish this season.

MSR plans to run a second car full-time next year.  Harvey will not be in it. The team says a new driver will be announced soon.

-0-

INDYCAR fans might see a little history made at World Wide Technology Raceway just across the river from St. Louis next month.  Testing on the rack today (Tuesday) will include Romain Grosjean, the former Formula 1 driver who has run road courses in the series this year. WWTR might be his oval track debut in the series.  The race will be August 21.

-0-

Some big-track names have signed up for the quarter-mile dirt track race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway August 18-19.

Defending NASCAR champion Chase Elliott will drive a midget for the first time. He’ll be joined by fellow NASCAR driver Chase Briscoe, who has a lot of dirt track experience, and INDYCAR driver Conor Daly.

The Speedway created the track inside the third turn four years ago and has run the annual BC39 midget races on it, except for last year when the pandemic caused its cancellation.  The race honors Bryan Clauson, a three-time USAC midget champion and three-time starter in the Indianapolis 500 who was killed in a midget race crash in Belleville, Kansas in 2016. The event promotes organ donor awareness on behalf of the Indiana Donor Network and Driven to Save Lives.

-0-

INDYCAR returns to action August 8 at Nashville.

(NASCAR)—-The decision was made in March, has been rumored for weeks, and is now public—Brad Keselowski is leaving Team Penske and will drive for and have a minority ownership interest in Roush Fenway Racing.

He’ll continue to drive, next year taking the 6-car that has been Ryan Newman’s ride.  Discussions are under way with Newman about driving a part-time schedule next year.

Keselowski’s move is seen as part of the succession plan for the day Jack Roush steps away—although he says it’s not in his immediate plans. “I’ve been asked to say that I’m passing the baton to him, which I am, but I still have one hand on the thing, so I’m not going to give it up completely for a while.  There are no retirement plans for me in my immediate future.”

Roush turned 79 last April.

Keselowski’s ride for Team Penske will go to Austin Cindric, who won the championship in NASCAR’s second-tier series last year and tops the point standings this year.  Cindric is the son of  the president of Team Penske, Tim Cindric. But Penske says the  younger Cindric, 22, has earned his place: “He’s proven to be the driver he is; the individual he is today. It’s a big step for him, but as far as I’m concerned, the team, the sponsors, are fully committed.” Cindric has run six races in Cup this year. His best finish is 15th in the Daytona 500.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 runs the Hungarian Grand Prix next Sunday.  This past week, teams got their first look at of life-sized model of the next generation car that will be campaigned next year.
The new car is designed with new aerodynamic regulations designed to make it easier to pass by reducing the amount of “dirty air” behind the cars.  The air flow over the present body work produces turbulence behind the car, upsetting control of trailing cars wanting to pass. The series says the turbulence is so severe that trailing cars lose as much as thirty-five percent of their downforce when they’re about three lengths behind another car.

The new design’s front and rear wings are expected to push the airflow up and over the trailing car. That coupled the use of ground effects for the first time since the 1980s is expected to produce more exciting racing.

Next year’s cars will run with 18-inch wheels instead of the 13-inch wheels now used.

(photo credits: IMS, Chris Owens; Keselowski, Bob Priddy; Formula 1)

 

A NASCAR Cinderella Story at New Hampshire

(LOUDON, NH)—The rain started early at New Hampshire Motor Speedway but the lightning did not strike until the end.

Aric Almirola, mired in 27 place in the points standings with no hope of making the playoff unless he won a race—

Won the race.

LOUDON, NEW HAMPSHIRE – JULY 18: Aric Almirola, driver of the #10 Smithfield Ford, celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series Foxwoods Resort Casino 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on July 18, 2021 in Loudon, New Hampshire. (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)

Almirola, with only two top-ten finishes in the first 21 races and an average finish this year of 21.8, took the lead with 28 laps to go and held it until NASCAR ended the race because of darkness eight laps from scheduled 301.  Almirola finished about two-thirds of a second ahead of oncoming Christopher Bell, who noted afterwards, “I was able to get to him, and it was going to be a heck of a race.

The win not only is the first of the year for Almirola, it’s the first of the year for his team, Steart-Haas Racing.

The race got off to an unhappy start with. One of NASCAR’s officials reported a wet track in turns 1 and 2. Leader Kyle Busch immediately reported it was raining but before NASCAR acted, he and several other cars spun in that area. Busch’s car backed into the wall and could not continue, leaving him 37th and last. NASCAR finally red-flagged the race on lap 7 and didn’t restart it until an hour and 41 minutes later.  That delay led NASCAR to stop the race eight laps from the planned finish because of darkness.

Almirola is the thirteenth winner this year, leaving only three playoff slots available based on points. One of those slots will go to Denny Hamlin, who leads all drivers in points although he is still winless this year. Kevin Harvick seems solid for the fifteenth position.  But Childress teammates Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon are headed for a four-round fight for the last playoff berth.  They are separated by only five points.

NASCAR won’t race again until it runs the road course at Watkins Glen on August 8th. Its season second-half broadcast partner, NBC, will be busy covering the Olympics instead.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR is on its summer break until August 8 at Nashville. And when it comes back, Helio Castroneves will come back, too.  It will be his first INDYCAR race since winning his fourth Indianapolis 500 in May.  He’s driving a limited schedule of six races for Meyer-Shank Racing.

He’s filled the racing gap by running in the SRX series—six races on dirt as well as on paved tracks.  The series wrapped up its season Saturday night with defending NASCAR champion Chase Elliott winning at Nashville, edging series co-founder Tony Stewart. Stewart won the season championship.  Castroneves finished fifth among the ten regular drivers in the series.

(FORMULA 1)—Lewis Hamilton has chalked up his 99th career Grand Prix victory but not without controversy and some hard feelings by his top competitor for the championship, Max Verstappen.  Hamilton’s aggressive move to the inside on the second lap of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone sent Verstappen’s car careening into the barrier.  Verstappen was unhurt but made it clear he was unhappy with Hamilton’s move. Verstappen called Hamilton’s move “dangerous” and his Red Bull team’s principal, said it was an “amateur” move by a “desperate driver.”

Hamilton countered that he had conceded a position to Verstappen in the past to avoid collisions, but, “Unfortunately, the aggression stayed from his side and we collided.”

Hamilton’s victory and Verstappen’s early exit chopped twenty points off Verstappen’s point lead.

(Photo credit: NASCAR/James Gilbert-Getty images)

Racing: Brothers going 1-2 in NASCAR? Rare, but done

(NASCAR)—Kurt Busch beat brother Kyle in the Atlanta race Sunday, raising questions about how often that has happened in NASCAR history. It’s rare but not unprecedented. The Busch brothers have done it four times, each finished ahead of the other twice.

There have been several sets of brothers who have run against each other since June 19, 1949 when NASCAR ran its first race at the old Charlotte track.

After Sonoma six years ago, NASCAR combed through its records and found the first time brothers finished 1-2 was in the second year of the series. Tim and Bob Flock finished 1-2 at Charlotte on April 2, 1950, the first of thirteen times they went 1-2.  There was a third brother, Fonty, but he never made it a 1-2-3 finish for the family and was never part of a 1-2 finish with either Tim or Bob.

Bobby and Donnie Allison did it four times. Herb and Donald Thomas went 1-2 in a 1965 race in Hillsboro, NC.

Terry and Bobby Labonte went 1-2 three times. Bobby was on top two of those times.

Jeff Burton won three races with brother Ward in second.

So the answer to the question of how many times is 28.

Other brother combinations failed to do it.

Darrell and Michael Waltrip never did it. Nor did the three Bodine brothers—Geoff, Brett, and Todd.  The Wallace boys of Missouri, Rusty, Kenny, and Steve didn’t pull it off. Benny and Phil Parsons didn’t either. Neither did Richard and Maurice Petty.

Back to the weekend’s  NASCAR:  Kurt became the twelfth driver to lock in a playoff position with his first win of the year.  Until the run at Atlanta he had been fighting to stay in the playoff picture on points after a slow start in 2021. He led more than half of the laps; Kyle led a little more than a third of them.  Kyle blamed his brother’s teammate, Ross Chastain, for slowing his charge for the lead, allowing Kurt to stretch the margin between the two brothers. Observers say Chastain did not exactly block the younger brother but he did take away Kyle’s preferred line around the track in the late running. The margin of victory was a little more than 1.2 seconds. Chastain finished a lap down in 21st.

Martin Truex, Jr., Alex Bowman, and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five. The all have victories to clinch their places in the playoffs.

Only five races remain to determine the sixteen drivers who will run for the title in late November.  Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick, who won sixteen races between them last year but who are winless in 2021, Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick fill out the remaining playoff slots based on their points. Chris Buescher, Matt DiBenedetto, Chastain and Bubba Wallace have the five races to win their way onto the list or gain large quantities of points to force their way into the final four slots.

NASCAR races at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway at Loudon next Sunday.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR is taking a summer break and will race next on August 8 at Nashville.

This weekend was one of the great party events of big-time auto racing, the Goodwood Festival of Speed which this year paid special honors to Roger Penske. One of the events at the festival each year is a hill climb and Penske, who is 84, took the wheel a 2008 Porsche RS Spyder that won the Sebring 12 Hours to run the annual Goodwood Hillclimb. Several of his cars that raced at Indianapolis or in NASCAR and Formula 1 also were featured.

https://www.goodwood.com/grr/event-coverage/festival-of-speed/2021/7/gallery-roger-penske-celebrated-at-fos/

(SRX)—INDYCAR veteran Marco Andretti has won his first race in a stock car.  He won the SRX race at the Slinger, Wisconsin quarter-mile oval Saturday night, beating back a challenge from 17-year old Luke Fenhaus, who earned a chance to race against the bigger names in the race by winning the Slinger Nationals earlier in the week.

The series wraps up its six-race first season next weekend at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. Series founder Tony Stewart has a 38-point lead in the standings.

(FORMULA 1)—F1 was off this weekend before running the British Grand Prix at Silverstone next Sunday.

Ken Schrader: The Racer’s New Racer

(ROSSBURG, OHIO)—Ever wonder whether some of today’s race drivers could do well on dirt? Or whether the old guys still have it?  Guys like Helio Castroneves, a four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 who has only driven on pavement, or Bill Elliott, who is 65 now, or Paul Tracy who earns a living by telling people about INDYCAR races instead of driving in them, is 50 and hasn’t driven in a race for 15 years, or Bobby LaBonte who has finally made the transition from track to booth?

They’re racing in the SRX series—Superstar Racing Experience, which ran its third race of the season Saturday night at Tony Stewart’s Eldora Speedway, a dirt track.  Stewart and NASCAR championship crew chief (three of Jeff Gordon’s four titles) are the creators of the new series that matches drivers from different eras and disciplines in cars that are as equal as they can be

The man who does his best to make sure the cars are as equal as possible is Fenton native Ken Schrader, a year older than Elliott, who still competes from time to time at his own track at Pevely and in Modified Stocks, Midgets and ARCA cars in a lot of other places. He’s the chief test driver for the new series, which he says focuses on “good ol’ racecars that let the driver’s ability shine through.”

He talked about the series at Knoxville (Iowa) dirt track a couple of weeks ago—and reminisced a little about some of his runs there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzIEslHM88Q

Stewart won the race on his home track Saturday night, coming from last place (12th) at the start of the Feature.  But he had to hold off local star driver Kody Swanson to do it.  And Castroneves, running the second race of his life on dirt, was third.  Other drivers in the series: Willy T. Ribbs, Tony Kanaan, Michael Waltrip, Marco Andretti, Scott Speed, and Ernie Francis Jr.  Francis is a seven time champion of the Trans-Am Series.  Speed is a champion Rallycross driver.

The debut season for SRX Racing is only six races long.   The remaining three races will be run at:

Lucas Oil Raceway (Indianapolis) next Saturday night; Slinger Speedway (Slinger Wisconsin) on July 10, and Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway on July 17.  CBS is the broadcast partner for the series.

After the first three races, Stewart has a big points lead over Castroneves and Francis. Andretti, taking a break from fulltime INDYCAR competition, is fourth, ahead of Labonte, Tracy, Waltrip and Elliott. Kanaan and Ribbs round out the top ten.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s doubleheader weekend at Pocono was nothing if not unpredictable. Late race circumstances ended two winning streaks and produced unanticipated winners.

Kyle Busch, driving a crippled car, emerged on top of the Sunday race when he squeezed every last mile out of his fuel while two frontrunners had to make late splash-and-go pit stops.  Busch’s transmission locked into fourth gear with more than 100 laps to go and he toasted the clutch trying to re-start in fourth gear—with a big push from his pit crew.  Several competitors elected not to top off their tanks during a caution period with 45 laps left. But Brad Keselowski lost the gamble and the lead with eight laps left. William Byron had to pit with three left and Denny Hamlin pitted on an empty tank a lap later, giving Busch a big lead over Kyle Larson, who was trying to make up for his disappointing Saturday finish.  Busch finished 8.6 seconds ahead of Larson, who also was trying to nurse his fuel supply to the end.

Busch’s win for Joe Gibbs Racing was the first time a Hendrick Motorsports driver had not finished first since May 9th—seven races, including the non-points All-Star Race.

Kyle Larson’s hopes of becoming the ninth driver in the modern NASCAR era (since 1972) to win four straight points-paying races came to an abrupt end with a blown tire on the last lap of Saturday’s Pocono race.   Larson had waged a fierce battle with teammate Alex Bowman for most of the last twenty laps before finally getting past him with three to go.

But on the second turn of the “tricky triangle” track, Larson’s left front tire let go and put him into the wall.  He kept his car going and finished ninth.  Bowman crossed the finish line seven-tenths of a second ahead of Kyle Busch.  It’s Bowman’s third win of the year.

Larson has built a good lead when the white flag signaled the start of the last lap but as he exited turn two he found his car “wouldn’t turn.”  He thought some debris from another car punctured his tire.

Bowman’s win was the sixth straight for Hendrick Motorsports, its longest streak since 2007.

NASCAR goes road racing at Road America next weekend.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR took a little break last weekend and will be back on-track at Mid-Ohio on July 4.  The track is one of Scott Dixon’s best venues. He’s won there six times and needs a win to tighten the championship points race.  He’s third with two of the young lions of INDYCAR ahead of him: Alex Palou, up by 52 points and Pato O’Ward, who is 28 points ahead of Dixon.

(FORMULA 1)—This year is looking more like Max Verstappen’s year.  He handily beat defending F1 champion Lewis Hamilton in the Styrian Grand Prix. Hamilton admitted his Mercedes had nothing to a challenge Verstappen’s Red Bull ride.  Verstappen started from pole, took a good lead on the start and never lost command of the race. Hamilton was second and his teammate, Valtteri Bottas, was third.

(Styria is a state of Austria).

Verstappen has now won four races to Hamilton’s three.  The victory is the third straight for the Red Bull team. He leads Hamilton by 18 points after Red Bull’s fourth straight win. The race was the eight F1 GP of the year. There are fifteen more chances for Mercedes and Hamilton to regain the dominant position in the series.

F1 returns to the same circuit next week. But that race will be the called The Austrian Grand Prix.

(Photo credit: SRX)

 

Disappointments for Racing Veterans; Next-Gen Stars Assert Themselves.

Three big wins for a younger generation in INDYCAR and NASCAR during the weekend came at the expense of major disappointments for three established stars in the two series.

(NASCAR)—-Kyle Larson moved from exile to millionaire All-Star champion at the Texas Speedway by pulling past veteran Brad Keselowski, NASCAR’s 2012 champion, with eight laps to go and beating Keselowski to the checkered flag by two-tenths of a second.

Keselowski had gotten ahead of Larson in a three-wide pass of leader Chase Elliott with nine laps left.  He led just one lap before Larson whipped past him easily and pulled away to the win. “It feels like running second to the Hendrick cars right now is an accomplishment. They are just stupid fast.  I had (him) off turn 4 but…he just motored right back by me,” Keselowski said after the race.

Larson, 28, wasn’t in the All-Star race last year because he’d been suspended indefinitely for using a racial slur about another driver in a computer-generated race while NASCAR was shut down in regular competition in the early days of the pandemic.  But owner Rick Hendrick offered him a ride for 2021 after Larson was reinstated and Larson has responded with three wins and the All-Star race victory.

(INDYCAR)—The two races at Detroit’s Bell Isle Park were big wins for 30-year old Marcus Ericsson and 22-year old Pato O’Ward but were bitter pills for veterans Will Power and Josef Newgarden.

Power, the 2018 Indianapolis 500 winner and the 2014 INDYCAR series champion, appeared to have Saturday’s race well in hand when a red flag came out because of a Romain Grosjean crash with eight laps left.  But his engine would not re-start, apparently because of the failure of part of the car’s computerized fuel system, and he was left in the pits when the green flag started the final laps.

Ericsson pulled away from youngster Rinus VeeKay in the final three laps and won by 1.8 seconds. His win was the seventh win by seven different drivers to start the INDYCAR season. That last happened four years ago and has happened only five other times in a century of INDYCAR racing.  He became the fourth driver this year to get his first win in the series, following Alex Palou, Pato O’Ward, and VeeKay.

Two time series champion Josef Newgarden was on the way to making it eight different winners in eight races when 22-year old Pato O’Ward passed him with three laps left and became the first two-time winner this year.  Newgarden, 30, won the series championship in 2017 and 2019.

But it’s O’Ward who has emerged from the Detroit double-header with the season points lead. He’s just one point up on Alex Palou, 24.  Defending national champion Scott Dixon has slipped to 36 points behind O’Ward and to third place in the standings. Newgarden is fourth, fifteen points behind Dixon. Rinus VeeKay, another young star of the series is fifth.  Palou, Dixon and VeeKay each have one win this year, as does Ericsson, who has risen to seventh in the points, and Brian Herta, who is running ninth in the points standings.

(HELIO)—Helio Castroneves became the first Indianapolis 500 winner in several years not to compete in the next INDYCAR race.   His deal with Meyer-Shank racing did not include Detroit.  He will be racing however. He’s one of the senior drivers who has signed to be part of Tony Stewart’s Superstar Racing Experience, which involves older driver (most of them retired) racing one another on dirt.  Stewart will be racing in his own series.

The series ran its first race last weekend at Stafford Connecticut. New England driver Doug finished ahead of retired NASCR Cup drivers Greg Biffle and Stewart.  Castoneves finished fourth, ahead of former NASCAR champion Bobby Labonte.

(BASEBALL)—-We plan to have things on stick and ball sports on this new page, too.  But when both of our major league baseball teams seem to be in a race to the bottom, we’re not very inspired to say much.  We faithfully await a turnaround.

Seven is a serious number

Maybe even a sacred one in auto sports—-

—-because many have hoped to reach eight and haven’t made it.

The road has suddenly turned uphill for Scott Dixon, the reigning INDYCAR champion who hopes to get to seven and for Lewis Hamilton, the reigning champion of Formula 1, who wants to get beyond it.

Dixon hopes to equal A. J. Foyt’s seven championships in INDYCAR. Hamilton wants to break his tie with Michael Schumacher and become the first eight-time champion in Formula 1.

Early trouble for Dixon in the Indianapolis 500 left him 17th at the end in a double-points race and dropped him out of the series point lead to 36 points behind young Alex Palou, who was second at Indianapolis.  Dixon is only one point up on another fast-developing  youngster, Pato O’Ward.  All three have one victory so far this year.

Dixon has a chance to re-establish himself this weekend when IndyCar races twice at Belle Isle Park in Detroit, on Saturday and on Sunday.  Those will be races seven and eight on the INDYCAR on the 16-race INDYCAR schedule. One will be Saturday, August 28 at Gateway International (Worldwide Technology Raceway), just across the river from St. Louis.

Hamilton had lost the points lead at Monaco to Max Verstappen and was in danger of falling 15 points behind him as the laps wound down last weekend at the Grand Prix of Azerbaijan when Verstappen blew a left rear tire and went into the wall.  Hamilton was running second at the time with an excellent chance to take the lead when the race was restarted.  But Formula One cars have a switch that cars in many other series don’t have and Hamilton used it, causing him to crash, too.

The switch turned off the brakes on his car, forcing Hamilton to take an escape road while the rest of the field roared past him. The switch is used to change the balance of the brakes on grand prix cars.  Hamilton wound up 16th, failing to score a point in a race for the first time in 54 events, a record.

Hamilton has plenty of time to recover.  The Azerbaijan race was only the sixth in a 23-race schedule. He’ll have his first chance to regain his dominance on June 20 at the Grand Prix of France.

Only a few drivers either in INDYCAR, NASCAR, or Formula 1 have claimed seven championships.  The eighth has been elusive.   Richard Petty won his seventh NASCAR title in 1979.  He raced until 1992 but was never higher in the standings than fourth.

Dale Earnhardt, Sr., was the second NASCAR driver to claim seven titles. He won his seventh in 1994 but finished second in 1995 and 2000.  He was looking for that eighth crown when he was killed in the season-opening race at Daytona in 2001.

Jimmie Johnson became the third NASCAR driver to win the title seven times. He won five titles in a row, 2006-2010, with single titles in ’13 and ’16.  He retired after four more years with a best finish of tenth in the standings.

  1. J. Foyt won his seventh INDYCAR crown in 1979, the same year Petty reached seven. He stepped out of his car for the last time in 1995, never finishing higher than fourth in the standings after his seventh title.

Michael Schumacher reached seven by winning five Formula 1 titles in a row, the last coming in 2004. He raced through 2012, finishing third in ’05 and second in ’06. A skiing accident late in 2013 left him with severe head injuries. His condition has been closely-guarded by his family.

Here are some others who never got to seven or never got past it:

Jack Nicklaus won six Masters Tournaments.

Tom Brady has quarterbacked six Super Bowl champion teams.

Roger Clemens won the Cy Young Award seven times.

Barry Bonds won seven Most Valuable Player awards.

Michael Jordan won the NBA MVP only five times, one more time than LeBron James has won it. Nobody has reached six.

However, Wayne Gretzky won NINE NHL MVPs, including eight in a row. There’s always an exception, isn’t there?

 

Racing’s Happy Warrior (updated)

(We’ve decided to add a sports page to bobpriddy.net.  With some re-construction going on with the Missourinet web page and its sports section, we’ve decided to move our weekly racing summary reports to this page—-and expand it with sometimes keenly insightful observations about other sports and their participants)

We watched something remarkable happen Sunday at the Indianapolis Speedway—not from our usual perch on the back porch of the media center but from the forced comfort of our living room recliner—put there by recent surgery and by limits on spectators and reporters because of COVID.
There is a Missouri connection with Helio Castroneves, the man we call “racing’s happy warrior,” and his career at the Speedway that now includes him as the fourth man to win the 500 four times.  We’ll get to that in due course.

The phrase has been used in politics from time to time. When young Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated New York Governor Al Smith for the presidency in 1924, he called Smith “the Happy Warrior of the political battlefield.”  The same title was applied to Senator Hubert Humphrey during his time on the national Democratic tickets, and more recently it was affixed to Joseph Biden by Barack Obama in his presidential victory speech.

But there is no one in all of sports, at least today, to whom that title applies more fittingly than Helio Castroneves, and watching him celebrate his long-sought fourth victory at Indianapolis Sunday makes it clear why. 

Castroneves, fierce behind the helmet’s face shield, is animated and joyous when the hat comes off and the most instant issues of car and contest are set aside. Any INDYCAR fan has seen it many times.

What he did Sunday, however, is only part of the incredible story of the race.

Let’s begin with this:

Castroneves’ fellow Brazilian, Tony Kanaan, won the 500 in 2013 at the record speed of 187.433 mph.  Castroneves broke that record by more than three miles an hour.  190.690.

The first sixteen cars averaged more than 190 miles an hour. The slowest car to finish the full 200 laps, driven by2014 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay, still was two miles an hour faster than Kanaan’s record. RHR finished 22nd.  Will Power, the 2018 winner, finished 30th, three laps down, and was still faster than Kanaan’s record.

Let me put some personal context into this discussion.

When I was but a sprout, my parents and I went to the Speedway for the first time to watch the first day of qualifications for the 1954 race.  From our seats in the low wooden bleachers between turns one and two we watched Jack McGrath in his yellow Hinkle Special run the first officials laps at the Speedway at more than 140 miles an hour.

Sunday afternoon, I watched SIXTEEN DRIVERS run the full 200 laps and average more than 50 mph more than Jack McGrath ran on my first day at the track.

And how about this:  Castroneves was only 2.6 seconds per lap away from averaging 200.

Here’s another thing about this guy:  He has finished second three times by .2011 of a second, .2290 of a second, and .0600 of a second.  He has come within a combined total of less than one-half second of winning SEVEN of these races.

There a a few other remarkable things about what might have been (individual perceptions using individual standards will differ) the greatest 500 ever run.  This race produced the most remarkable finish in race history, beyond what we outlined earlier.

Al Unser Jr.’s .0423 of a second victory margin over Scott Goodyear in 1982 remains the closest finish; the  Castroneves-Palou finish ranks eighth at .4928 of a second.

BUT—-Until May 30, 2021, the closed first-to-third finish had been in 2006, when Sam Hornish Jr., beat Marco Andretti by .0635 of a second (now the third closest finish) and finished 1.0187 seconds ahead of Michael Andretti.  This year, the top FOUR drivers finished within 0.9409 of each other (Castroneves and Palou, then 2019 winner Simon Pagenaud, and Pato O’Ward.

A couple of the Kanaan race records survived the 2021 race.  His race had 68 lead changes involving 14 drivers.  The 2021 race had 35 lead changes involving 13 drivers.

The Missouri connection to his story:

Helio (the “h” is silent) was born Hélio Alves de Castro Neves a little more than 46 years ago.  His first taste of big-time open-wheel racing in the USA came in 1998 when he ran for Tony Bettenhausen Jr., with a best finish of second at Milwaukee. But it was when he drove for St. Louis trucking entrepreneur Carl Hogan in 1999,  that he began to arrive. He started third and finished second at Gateway International (now World Wide Technology International) just across the river from St. Louis, leading 38 laps—more than he had led in his entire season with Bettenhausen, in this car, a Mercedes-powered Lola owned by Hogan.

The next weekend, he won his first pole at Milwaukee. There are those who thought he should have won at least three times that year for Hogan but mechanical issues short-circuited those hopes. In those days, Helio had not yet combined the last two parts of his name into one.

He became Castroneves in 2000 when, after gaining some prominence, some reports in the United States referred to him either as “Castro,” or “Neves” and he wanted them to use his whole name.

Hogan folded his team for financial reasons at the end of the year but the young driver by then shown the kind of potential a man named Roger Penske liked to see.

He drove for Penske in 2000, picked up his first three wins, and in 2001 as a rookie at the Indianapolis 500, got the first of his now-four 500s.

In 2003, the last year Gateway hosted an INDYCAR race until the series returned in 2017, Castroneves led a 1-2-3 Brazilian podium sweep with Tony Kanaan and Gil de Ferran finishing behind him.

He lost his fulltime ride with Penske a few years ago when Penske decided to bring in some younger talent. He drove for Penske’s sports car team until it was disbanded last year after winning the IMSA Sports car championship. He was picked up by Wayne Taylor Racing for the Daytona 24-hour sports car endurance race.  He won it. But Taylor doesn’t run INDYCAR.

So IMSA competitor, Meyer-Shank Racing, which does run at Indianapolis, signed him.  Many people doubted an aging Castroneves driving for a small team such as Meyer-Shank, could contend for a win.  But Helio was fast throughout practices and was among the nine fastest qualifiers, an indication that he couldn’t be dismissed lightly.  He ran near the top all day, led a few laps, and didn’t go away.  And when crunch time came, he knew he could pass Alex Palou on the outside going into the first turn on the next-to-last lap and have his chance for that cherished fourth win.  He won by a half-second.

So that’s our connection to this remarkably talented, persistent, happy, warrior.  And anybody who has watched him climb the fence after each of his four wins at Indianapolis and especially who watched his unrestrained joy on Sunday has no doubts that he deserves the designation.

(photo credits: Bob Priddy, various times and places, and Meyer-Shank Racing Facebook)

-0-

We would be remiss if we didn’t report that NASCAR ran its longest race of the year, 600 miles at Charlotte, its Memorial Weekend tradition, Sunday night.  Kyle Larson started first and finished first. He led 327 of the 400 laps. He averaged 151 miles an hour and he won by eleven seconds.

And that’s about all we can say about that race.

-0-