By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing editor

Cutdown weekend winnows the field in both NASCAR and INDYCAR as the seasons head toward their final laps.

(NASCAR)—Kyle Larson won a wild last race of the first playoff round for the NASCAR Cup championship and will lead twelve drivers into the second round.  Four drivers have fallen by the wayside and cannot finish higher than 13^th this year regardless of how they run the next seven races.

The long race at one of NASCAR’s shortest tracks is known for generating short tempers, and the crowd saw them on display in the pits after the race when Kevin Harvick (still in his helmet) and Chase Elliott got into an angry discussion of Elliott’s maneuver that Harvick claimed cost him the race.

Harvick, winless this year, challenged Elliott for the lead with 35 laps to go. Contact between the two cars left Elliott with a cut tire.  He lost three laps during a pit stop and came out right behind Harvick, Elliott’s better grip helped him get past Harvick and stay ahead of him by running Harvick’s line while Larson closed, and passed Harvick for the lead with three laps left and beat him to the finish by about two-tenths of a second.

The victory is Larson’s sixth of the year, the most of any driver. Elliott wound up 25^th.

Harvick and Elliott had heated words as soon as their cars stopped in the pits. NASCAR officials got between them before things went beyond verbal.  Harvick called Elliott’s blocking move “a temper tantrum” and a “chicken (expletive) move.”  He said he told Elliott he wanted to “rip his freaking head off.”  Elliott said Harvick’s bump of him in passing for the lead is “something he does all the time.  He runs into your left side constantly at other tracks….Did it to me in Darlington a few weeks ago because he was racing me…I don’t care who he is or how long he’s been doing it, I’m going to stand up for myself and my team and we’re going down the road.”

Bristol was the final race in the first three-race round of the playoffs. Both Elliott and Harvick will be in the second round.  But Aric Almirola, Tyler Reddick, Kurt Busch, and Michael McDowell have been eliminated. Reddick was 12^th in the race; Almirola 18^th,Busch 19^th,  and McDowell 24^th.

Harvick is seeded twelfth for the second three-race elimination round. Larson retains his lead but Martin Truex Jr., takes over the second seed because he has four wins for the year, ahead of Denny Hamlin, with only one.  Ryan Blaney, Kyle Busch, and Elliott fill slots 4-6.  Then it’s Alex Bowman, William Byron, and Joey Logano, with Brad Keselowski, Christopher Bell and Harvick filling out the rest of the bracket.

The major teams in NASCAR dominate the remaining competitors. Four of the twelve drivers are from Hendrick Motorsports. Four are with Joe Gibbs Racing. Three represent Team Penske. Harvick, who drivers for Stewart-Haas, is the only other driver still in the hunt.

Unlike other major sports, dropping out of playoff contention in NASCAR does not mean leaving the weekly competition.  The twelve remaining playoff competitors still have to compete against two dozen other drivers in every race.

The field will be cut to eight after the next three races, then to four after three more, and those four will be the only drivers in a field of about 38 cars in the year’s final race who can compete for the Cup. Whoever has the best finish in the final race, even if not winning, will be the 2021 NASCAR Cup champion.

Harvick and Elliott, who continued their discussion behind closed doors after the race, will be back on track along with all the other drivers next Sunday at Las Vegas.

(INDYCAR)—-Alex Palou’s second place finish at Laguna Seca has expanded his points lead over challenger Pato O’Ward and Josef Newgarden, the only two drivers with any reasonable hopes of catching him in the series’ last race.

Colton Herta dominated from the pole, giving up the lead to Romain Grosjean for four laps of the 72-lap race, and those during pit stops. Palou chased him for the last part of the race but came up almost two seconds short.  It’s Herta’s second win at Laguna Seca, his fifth in his three-year INDYCAR career, one more than his father, Bryan, accumulated in thirteen years on the circuit.  His father, Bryan, is now his race manager.

Palou now leads O’Ward by 35 points and two-time champion Josef Newgarden by 48 heading into next weekend’s finale on the streets of Long Beach.  He will clinch his first championship if he finishes 11^th or better.

The contest for INDYCAR Rookie of the year between Grosjean and Scott McLaughlin remains tight with only twenty points separating the two. Grosjean, who started 13^th, ran a scintillating last segment of the race, cutting his separation from Herta by a second or more (sometimes two), lap after lap.  He was down ten seconds with nine laps to go but he could get no closer than 3.7-seconds when Herta took the checkered flag.

This will be the sixteenth straight year the INDYCAR championship will be decided at the season’s last race.  INDYCAR does not have a playoff system, as NASCAR does.

(SCHEDULES)—Missourians who like big-time auto racing will have no races in the state next year, as usual, but will have plenty of races within day-trip distance (depending on where they live, of course).  INDYCAR’s 2022 schedule, just announced, has two races at the Indianapolis Speedway in May including the 500, a double-header return to Iowa June 23-24, and at Nashville and Gateway (World Wide Technology Raceway) across the river from St. Louis in August.

NASCAR will run at the Kansas Speedway, across the line from Kansas City, on May 15 and September 11, and will have its first Cup race ever at Gateway on June 5.  Nashville comes up on June 26. The second race on the Indianapolis Speedway Road Course will be July 31.

By the way—-

Before promoters built the Kansas Speedway, an effort was made to gain state support for a major track near Kansas City International Airport, the Missouri legislature thought the idea wasn’t worth state financial incentives and passed.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 returns for the Grand Prix of Russia at the Sochi circuit next Sunday, the first race since the Monza dustup between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.  Verstappen has been slapped with a three-place grid penalty for the start of the race.

(Photo credits: NASCAR/Jared C. Tilton-Getty Images,  and Bob Priddy)

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet contributing editor

(NASCAR)—Martin Truex Jr., has become the second driver to lock in a position for the second round of NASCAR’s playoffs by Beating last week’s winner, Denny Hamlin, to the finish line at Richmond.  He let a 1-2-3 finish for Joe Gibbs racing.  Christopher Bell was third.

Truex had to come back from a penalty on the race start when he Hamlin, the pole-sitter, to the start line.  NASCAR ordered him to the back of the 37-car field for a restart.  He got to the lead on the 132^nd of the race’s 400 laps and led the last fifty.  Hamlin led almost half of the laps but couldn’t catch Truex at the end. Larson, who started the race from the back because of pre-race inspection failures, raced past Truex for his first lead on the 133^rd lap but finished sixth.  The finish gave him enough points to make him the third driver assured of a spot in the round of 12 that will go forward for the championship after next Sunday’s night race at Bristol.

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou came from 16^th place early in the Grand Prix of Portland to get his third win of the season and vault him back into the points lead with just two races left in the INDYCAR season.  He finished 1.3 seconds up on alexander Rossi with teammate and defending series champion Scott Dixon getting the last podium slot.

The win vaults Palou past Pato O’Ward, who led early but faded to 14^th at the end.  A handful of drivers are still given a chance to win the championship—Palou, O’Ward, two-time champion Josef Newgarden, who is 34 points back. Dixon, in fourth, trails by 49 and Marcus Ericsson has a distant hope from 75 points behind.

A total of 108 points are available in the concluding two INDYCAR races: Laguna Seca next weekend and the finale on the streets of Long Beach on the 26^th.

(FORMULA 1)—The world’s major open-wheel racing series have created cockpit safety systems designed to protect drivers from flying debris or in other cars landing on top of other cars.

INDYCAR’s system is enclosed except for the top for driver access.  Formula One has a similar system but it does not include a windshield.  It’s called a “halo” in F1.  And seven-time F1 champion  Lewis Hamilton is convinced he isn’t wearing a halo today because his car had one for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Hamilton and Max Verstappen, who have an intense competition for this year’s championship going, tangled in the first chicane on the race’s 26^th lap, with Verstappen trying to pass on the outside. His car rode over the track curb, pitching it onto the top of Hamilton’s car, the right rear wheel of Verstappen’s car rolling over the halo protecting Hamilton. The tire slightly penetrated the top of the halo.

Hamilton said in the paddock after the race that he was reminded of his own mortality and the risks he takes:  “It’s a big shock. It’s only when you experience something like that that you  look at life and realize how fragile we are.” He is convinced the halo saved his life.  There was no sign of concussion but he will see a specialist after complaining that his neck was sore.  “

“Honestly, I feel very fortunate today,” he continued. “Thank God for the halo, that ultimately, I think, saved me, and saved my neck… I don’t think I’ve ever been hit on the head by a car before and it’s quite a shock for me, because I don’t know if you’ve seen the image but my head really is quite far forward. And I’ve been racing a long, long time, so I’m so, so grateful that I’m still here.”

F1 officials consider Verstappen’s actions the main cause of the crash and have announced a three-grid place drop at the next race, and the loss of two standings points. The two drivers have had other incidents this year as they have fought for the top spot in the series.

Neither driver scored any points in the race, leaving Verstappen five points ahead of Hamilton, with eight races left on the schedule.

The winner of the race was McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo, his first victory on the circuit in three years and McLaren’s first GP victory since Jenson Button won at Brazil in 2012. Making the event even sweeter for McLaren was Lando Norris’ second-place finish.  Third went to Valtteri Bottas, Hamilton’s Mercedes teammate.

(Photo credits: Truex: NASCAR/Sean Gardner/Getty Images; Palou and Pagenaud and Rossi at Gateway 2019: Bob Priddy; Verstappen-Hamilton crash: Formula 1)

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.

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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 16^th in the standings after the first 12 races with only one top-ten finish. He had climbed to 11^th 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)

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.

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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.

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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.

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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 15^th 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)

(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 37^th 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 8^th. 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 99^th 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)

(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 21^st.

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.

(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 (12^th) 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 9^th—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)