By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

It’s the autumn of baseball season, the spring of football season, and racing heads toward its last turns.  We begin with stick and ball sports today because, well, they’re more important right now.

(BASEBALL)—Next up for Albert Pujols: The Babe.  Albert’s dramatic homer in the ninth gave the Cardinals the lead  that held up against the Pirates. Home run number 697 broke a tie with Alex Rodriguez for fourth place on the all-time homer list. Next up: Babe Ruth with 714, realistically out of reach even with Pujols’ remarkable surge in the closing weeks of the season.

The ball was retrieved by Matt Brown in the right-center field grandstand.  Pujols let Brown and his wife, Samantha, keep it and even gave them two signed balls when they offered to give him homer 697.  “It’s just a baseball,” he said. “They deserve to have it. It went out of the ballpark. We play this game for the fans. So whether they want to give it back or they want to keep it, I don’t have any problem with that.”

The Kansas City Royals won their 57^th game with a 4-0 shutout of the Tigers Sunday.  And that sets up our first question:

Will the Royals win more games than the Cardinals lose this year? The Cardinals’ win on Sunday ran their record to 83-58. 

(FOOTBALL)—The rebuilt Kansas City Chiefs seem to have eliminated a lot of the concerns fans might have had about the players they lost in the off-season and the number of rookies they kept after training camp.

Although the Arizona Cardinals blitzed quarterback Patrck Mahomes 54 percent of the time, he threw four touchdown passes against the blitz and added a fifth when the defense stayed back. Clyde Edwards Hillaire showed signs last year’s injuries are in the past with 74 yards rushing and receiving and two touchdowns.  Travis Kelce got a good start on his 7^th straight 1,000 yard year with 121 yards. The Cardinals had little to offer offensively or defensively as the Chiefs rolled to a 44-21 win on the road to open the season.

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The real world came calling on the Missouri Tigers during the weekend.  Missouri got an early field goal for its only lead in the game and left Manhattan after absorbing a 40-12 drubbing. The Tigers won convincingly 52-24 in their first game of the year, against Louisiana

The Tigers have a chance to feel better next week against Abilene Christian University, a school with about 4,600 students that plays football in a stadium holding 12,000. It completed its move to NCAA Division 1 five years ago.

The Tigers won convincingly 44-21 in their first game of the year, against Louisiana Tech, a school of 12,600 students.  So the second question:

How good will Missouri be this year against big-time competition?

RACING:

(INDYCAR)—It’s all over for INDYCAR in 2022 with two winners in the last race—the race-winner and the series champion.

Defending series champion Alex Palou ran away from the field to win the race.  Will Power, who finished third, racked up enough points to win his second INDYCAR championship.

Power broke Mario Andretti’s record for most career poles by starting from P1 for the 68^th time.  Although he won only one race this year, he was in the top five in twelve of the seventeen races. He finished twenty points ahead of Penske teammate Josef Newgarden, who had five victories this year.  Six-time champion Scott Dixon was never a threat in the race but finished third in the standings.

Power and Dixon were the only drivers to complete every lap in every race this year. Power also won the series championship in 2014. He said after the race he had driven “on the edge” all day because his car was “very loose.”  He credited his championship to a mental adjustment early in the season to play the long game by not overdriving his car’s capabilities and forcing mistakes.

Palou’s last race of the year might be his last with Chip Ganassi Racing but he made it a memorable finish. He finished more than half-a-minute ahead of Newgarden.  He started eleventh after a six-position starting penalty for an unapproved engine change. But he was in the lead on the 16^th lap and finished by leading 67 of the 95 laps on the Laguna Seca road course near Monterey, California.

His future in the series is uncertain. He, Ganassi, and McLaren Racing are in court because he appears to have contracts to run with both teams next year.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s playoff applecart has been fully upset by Bubba Wallace’s win at Kansas Speedway.  It’s the first time two non-playoff drivers have won the first two races of the ten-race playoff series. His win leaves fifteen of the sixteen driver to fight for twelve positions in the next round at the next race—on the “world’s fastest half mile” at Bristol, Tennessee.

Wallace dominated the closing stage of the race at Kansas, leading the last 43 laps and beating his car owner, Denny Hamlin, to the finish line by a second. It’s his first win this year, his second career Cup win.

Although Wallace is not one of the playoff drivers, his car is one of eight still in the running for the owner’s championship.  It’s the car that Kurt Busch had been driving before a crash at Pocono left him with a concussion that he couldn’t shake in time to be one of the 16 playoff drivers. The car is owned by the 23XI team owned by basketball legend Michael Jordan (who wore number 23 most of his career) and Hamlin (who drives the 11-car for Joe Gibbs Racing).

He led Hamlin by almost 2.1 seconds with ten laps to go but Hamlin couldn’t catch him. Hamlin admitted mixed feelings about finishing second to a car he owns but commented, “Bubba has just really worked hard on his craft and we’ve just given him fast race cars and now he’s showing what he has got”

Christopher Bell is the only one of sixteen competitors with enough points to be locked into the second round of playoff races. Former Cup Champion Kevin Harvick, who finished last, is 35 points out of 12^th, the cutoff line, and needs to win at Bristol to advance.  But the fight for that 12^th position is a fierce one with only thirteen points separating tenth from fifteenth.

Tyler Reddick, who started on pole at Kansas, blew a tire and hit the wall early and finished one slot ahead of Harvick, 35^th.  He will start at Bristol eleventh in the standings. Rookie Austin Cindric is clinging to the last playoff slot with Kyle Busch, Austin Dillon, and Chase Briscoe within two to nine points.

(Formula 1)—Six races are left and only a miracle can give somebody other than Max Verstappen his second straight Formula 1 championship.  Verstappen won his fifth race in a row at the Grand Prix of Italy on the Monza course. It’s his eleventh win this year, one more than he had in last year’s championship season.

The race finished under caution after Daniel Ricciardo crashed with five laps left and stewards could not get his car’s transmission into neutral so it could be moved to an off-track area. Officials said the situation was not serious enough to warrant stopping the race so it could be finished under the green flag.

Verstappen has a shot at equaling, or breaking, Michael Schumacher’s record of 13 grands prix wins in a season, out of eighteen races in 2004, the year he won his seventh and last championship. That’s 72 percent, also a record.  This year there are 22 races.

The next F1 race is in two weeks, at Singapore.

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s ten-race runoff for the championship has become a race of crumpled and burned cars, bruised hopes, and a historic win.

The historic win of the Southern 500 at Darlington is by Erik Jones, driving for Richard Petty’s team, now rebranded as Petty GMS racing, who took the lead with 22 laps left when Kyle Busch’s car’s engine blew up while the field was running under caution and he was leading. Busch, who led 155 of the race’s 307 laps, had taken the lead when teammate Martin Truex Jr., also lost an engine a few laps earlier.

The on-track chaos almost obscured the historic nature of Jones’ victory. It was number 200 for car number 43, a number usually associated with “The King,” Richard Petty.  It’s the first time that number has been in Victory Lane at Darlington since Petty won with it in 1967.  The number hasn’t been in victory lane anywhere since Aric Almirola won the July race at Daytona eight years ago.

Jones is not one of the sixteen drivers competing for the NASCAR Cup Championship and is the first driver not in the running to win the first race of the runoff series.

Denny Hamlin, who is in the competition, finished second. He was able to get to Jones’ back bumper in the closing laps but couldn’t get past and finished a quarter of a second behind. Playoff drivers Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano and Christopher Bell rounded out the top five.

Chase Elliott, who started the race as the number one seed in the playoffs hit the wall and collided with the car of 12-seeded Chase Briscoe early in the race. Elliott finished last. Briscoe went three laps down but was able to continue but finished 27^th. Elliott has fallen to ninth in the seedings.

Former champion Kevin Harvick, who started as the sixth seed, bailed out of his burning car on the 274^th lap and finished 33^rd. Defending series champion Kyle Larson had engine problems early, went four laps down but climbed back to the leader’s lap and wound up 12^th. Busch remains seeded 12^th despite his early exit after finishing 30^th.

The field of sixteen will be cut to twelve after the next two races. Rookie Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Briscoe, and Harvick are outside that group heading into next weekend’s race at Kansas.

(INDYCAR)—The INDYCAR championship is Will Power’s to lose next weekend at Laguna Seca.  Power finished second in the Grand Prix of Portland to teammate Scott McLaughlin and enters the series’ final race of the year with a twenty-point lead over Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon.

The race at Portland, however, belonged entirely to McLaughlin, who led 104 of the 110 laps and at one tinme was 7.5 seconds ahead of Power, who closed to about 1.2 seconds at the checkered flag. His win makes him a long-shot possibility for the championship, along with Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson.  “I don’t care,” he said about being a long shot. “We’re a shot and I’m looking forward to it.”

Power, the 2014 INDYCAR champion says he wants to win the title “for the guys that have been with me for more than a decade. It’s a lot less selfish for me this time around because they deserve it.”  He can claim the title if he finishes third or better next weekend. Newgarden won the championship in 2017 and again in 2019. Dixon, who drove to third from a 16^th starting position, is looking for his seventh championship, tying him with A. J. Foyt.

This is the seventeenth straight season that the INDYCAR championship will be decided in the final race of the year. It’s the first time in five years that five drivers have a mathematical shot at winning it in the last race.

(Formula 1)—It’s not quite time to engrave Max Verstappen’s name on the Formula 1 trophy for 2022 but it’s close. His win at the Dutch Grand Prix gives him a lead of 109 points over Charles LeClerc with seven races left that will generate 190 points to the winners.  F1 veteran observers say the championship could be decided during the next three races at Monza, Singapore, or Japan.

Mercedes’ George Russell was second and LeClerc was third with Lewis Hamilton a disappointed fourth.  He was critical of his team’s tire strategy late in the races that took away his lead and dropped him off the podium.  But the Dutch Grand Prix appeared to be the first race of the season when his Mercedes worked well enough to give him a shot at winning.

Hamilton has recorded at least one grand prix victory every year since his debut season of 2007. Although he was gravely disappointed at the results of this weekend’s race, he commented, “If the car feels like this at other races we’re going to be fighting for a win.”

(BASEBALL)—Albert Pujols’ farewell tour is turning into a series of dramatic memories as the Cardinals plunge toward a post-season extension of his career.  Pujols, called to pinch hit late in a scoreless game with the Cubs Sunday, responded with a two-run homer that gave the Redbirds a 2-0 win. It’s his 695th career home run, one short of Alex Rodriguez, who is fourth on the all-time list, and gives him 27 more games to reach 700.

(Photo credits: NASCAR, Bob Priddy at WWTR)

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—Austin Dillon has emerged from the rain and the wrecks at Daytona to claim the last NASCAR Cup playoff spot by becoming the sixteenth winner of a race this year.  Dillon survived unscathed a multi-car crash with fifteen laps to go when rain suddenly struck the Daytona Speedway Sunday afternoon.  After the restart, he bumped Austin Cindric out of the way with three laps left and was protected from a last-lap surge by the few other surviving cars by teammate Tyler Reddick, who finished second.

Because Kurt Busch, one of the other winners this year, has withdrawn from the qualified finalists for the ten-race championship runoff, non-winner Ryan Blaney (right) will join the playoff field.  Blaney finished third in the regular season points chase. But Dillon’s victory kept fourth-place regular season points-finisher Martin Truex Jr., from a run for the title.

The sixteen-driver field is made up of drivers who won races. If there are fewer than sixteen drivers eligible with victories, remaining playoff slots are filled on the basis of regular season points.  Dillon finished nineteenth in regular season points  but made the field of sixteen with his win. Dillon will start the first runoff race next week at Darlington seeded 16^th.  Blaney is seeded seventh because he got bonus points for winning stages of five races.

Rain Saturday night caused the race to be postponed until Sunday. The rainstorm that winnowed the field with the big crash late in the race Sunday caused a three-hour, 20-minute delay until the track was dry enough to finish the race.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR President Jay Frye is watching a heated battle for the championship play out as the season moves toward its last two races.

Frye, who played tight end and offensive tackle for the Missouri Tigers, 1983-86, under coaches Warren Powers and Woody Widenhofer, has been with INDYCAR since 2013 and has been the series President since 2018. He posted this picture from those days on Twitter recently. (There are some folks who think the uniforms of those times are much preferable to today’s outfits).

We talked with him in his mobile INDYCAR office while he was at World Wide Technology Raceway a little more than a week ago, just before the INDYCAR race won by Josef Newgarden.

AUDIO jay frye 2022  17:51  mp3

Frye and other INDYCAR officials enjoy being out of the office on race day, often being seen mingling with fans and often on the starting grid during pre-race ceremonies coordinating events and, in the case of the race at WWTR, checking the weather.  The start of the race that night was moved up by half an hour in an effort to avoid approaching rain.  It almost worked.  The race was stopped with about 40 laps left and resumed more than two hours later after the storms had moved on and the track had been dried.

INDYCAR races at Portland next Sunday then finishes its season with the Grand Prix of Monterey on the Laguna Seca road course a week later. Will Power clings to a three-point lead over Newgarden heading into these last two races. Six-time champion Scott Dixon is just 14 points back as he tries to equal A. J. Foyt’s record of six series championships. Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson is fourth, trailing Power by only 17 points.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has started the second half of the F1 season with a statement victory at the Grand Prix of Belgium at Spa-Francorchamps. He started 14^th, took the lead on the 12^th lap, and finished a full 17 seconds in front of his nearest challenger, Sergio Perez.

Verstappen’s qualifying speed would have put him on the pole but he was set back in the field because his team put a new engine in his car.

Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, a pair of former F1 multiple champions, tangled on the first lap, the impact sending Hamilton’s Mercedes into the air.  Alonso was able to continue but Hamilton’s car was too badly damaged to go on. Hamilton said Alonso was in his blind spot. Alonso had far less charitable remarks about Hamilton.  Alonso recovered to finish fifth.

(Photo credits; Jay Frye Twitter, Rick Gevers, Bob Priddy)

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet contributing editor

(CANTON, OHIO)—-Dick Vermeil, the only man to serve as head coach of both of Missouri’s NFL teams, couldn’t thank enough people enough in his NFL Hall of Fame Speech. Given eight minutes to speak, Vermeil took twenty-three.

Along the way he saluted several people who made his enshrinement possible.

One of those was St. Louis Rams linebacker Mike Jones, who tackled Tennessee Titans wide receiver Kevin Dyson one yard short of a game-tying touchdown when the Rams won the 2000 Super Bowl “If he doesn’t make the tackle on the last play of Super Bowl 34, I’m not here today,” Vermeil said.

His bust was unveiled by John Shira (L) and Carl Peterson. Shira was the quarterback for Vermeil’s UCLA Bruins that defeated unbeaten Ohio State in the 1976 Rose Bowl. Peterson was an executive with the Philadelphia Eagles when Vermeil led the Eagles to four straight playoff appearances and to their first Super Bowl. Later, during his twenty-year tenure with the Kansas City Chiefs, he hired Vermeil two years after he had led the Rams to their Super Bowl Victory and then retiring.

He recalled UCLA’s win over Ohio State as the win that made him an NFL Coach. “If you don’t do that, the ownership form Philadelphia doesn’t get on a plane right after the game—so help me God it’s the truth—fly to Southern California…and recruiting me to come and coach your football team in Philadelphia.”

The Eagles were the first of three teams he led into the NFL playoffs.

But it was a basketball coach who taught him about coaching.  He took every chance he had to watch John Wooden.  “When you watch him practice, the intensity and the discipline and the structure was there of a great football practice.”  Wooden counseled him not to worry about the players he failed to recruit to UCLA. “Just make sure you do a great job of making those who you have the best that they can possibly be,” he quoted Wooden, “And I’ve operated under that simple philosophy the rest of my coaching career. It is so true. So true.”

Vermeil told the audience, many of them former players or fellow coaches, “Players win games. It’s our job to prepare them to win games.”

Kansas City Chiefs Coach Andy Reid, one of those who succeeded Vermeil with the Eagles, left Chiefs training camp in St. Joseph, Missouri to fly to Canton for a Saturday night reception for the Hall of Fame Class of 2022. “I have never had in my coaching career a better display of respect from someone else in the profession than what Andy Reid did for me last night. It will always touch me…That was unbelieveable.”

(BASEBALL)—The longest game in the short history of the current Busch Stadium has brought the St. Louis Cardinals a sweep of a three-game series against the New York Yankees.  It’s only the second time in Cardinals history they’ve won three straight against them.

Playing the Yankees is still rare for the Cardinals despite interleague play. The last time they won three straight against the New Yorkers was in the 1942 World Series when they won the last four games of a five-game series.

The Yankees have the second-best record in the American League but the Cardinals showed they could win tight games as well as slugging contests.  Sunday’s game finished 12-9. The twenty-one runs were generated by 27 hits (only three of which were home runs). The Yankees left a dozen runners on base. The Cardinals stranded eight.

The Cardinals have now surged to a two game lead over Milwaukee in their division and are on a seven-game winning streak. The Yankees lost their first three-game series this year and are on a five-game losing streak.

Yadiar Molina singled in the third inning for his 1,000^th career hit at home.  The only catcher in baseball history with more is St. Louis native Yogi Berra with 1,042.

Across the state, the Royals hammered the Boston Red Sox 13-5 with rookie M. J. Melendez driving in six runs, three of them on a home run. The Royals have on four of their last five home series. It’s been nine years since they last won a four-game series against the Red Sox.

However they are not in any danger of playing in the post season. They’re 44-65. But they are not last in their division.

(NOW THE CARS)—Kevin Harvick, facing a win-or-else scenario for getting into the NASCAR playoffs, has made it in. Scott Dixon, running out of time to challenge for his seventh INDYCAR title, is knocking on the door with three races left.

Harvick, now 46 years old and 65 straight races without a win, is the fifteenth winner this year.  He went into the race at Michigan as the first man out of the playoffs, based on the points standings although in ninth place.  Playoff positions are based on wins and hadn’t had one in two years.

His victory is his 59^th in Cup competition, 10^th best all-time. It means Martin Truex Jr., is the odd man out.  He’s fourth overall in points but doesn’t have a win this year.  The only winless driver still in playoff contention is Ryan Blaney, who is second in overall points but also has yet to win a race this year.

There are three Cup races remaining before the field is set for the playoffs.  If both Blaney and Truex win one of those races, Kurt Bush would be eliminated. Although he has a win this year, he is 20^th in points. Busch has missed three races since suffering a concussion in a pre-race crash last month. Ty Gibbs, the grandson of team owner Joe Gibbs, has filled in for him and had his first career top ten finish \

In INDYCAR—Scott Dixon went from last to first in the last 51 laps on the Nashville street circuit to close within six points of the INDYCAR points lead. He’s looking to equal A. J. Foyt’s seven series championships, the record.

Dixon (with his family at last week’s Indianapolis road course race) was in last place after a penalty for pitting when the pits were closed. The win is the 53^rd of his career, breaking a tie with Mario Andretti for second-most INDYCAR victories. Foyt had 67 career wins.

A late-race collision brought out a red flag that set up a two-lap shootout between Dixon and Scott McLaughlin.  Dixon never made the high-pressure mistake during those two las and eat McLaughlin to the line by .1067 of a second, the closest finish of the year in INDYCAR racing.

Defending points champion Alex Palou was third. Last week’s winner at Indianapolis, Alexander Rossi, went a lap down after an early race shunt required repairs in his pit and then rallied to fourth.  Teammate Colton Herta, also the victim of a too-close encounter with a competitor, also rallied from a lap down (also for repairs) to finish fifth.

The top five drivers in the INDYCAR point standings now are separated by just 33 points. Their next chance to shake up the standings will be at World Wide Technology Raceway, across the river from St. Louis, in two weeks.

(photo credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers, NFL)

by Bob Priddy, Missourinet contributing editor

(Indianapolis)—–Whether you prefer them with or without fenders, you had your choice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the weekend.  INDYCAR’s Alexander Rossi broke a three-year, 49-race winless streak and Tyler Reddick won for the second time this year in the NASCAR Cup series.  A.J. Almendinger caught the checkers in the Xfinity race, NASCAR’s  Cup feeder series.

Rossi, who called his INDYCAR win “a relief,” had been so frustrated by his long victory drought, announced earlier this year that he was leaving Andretti Autosport for Arrows McLaren in 2023.  He started P2 next to possible future teammate Felix Rosenqvist, and was running second to Colton Herta when Herta had a major mechanical failure after running over one of the course’s curbs near the halfway point.

The win is number eight for Rossi (right) in INDYCAR since joining Andretti Autosports in 2016 after a five-race mediocre career in Formula 1, and winning the 100^th running of the Indianapolis 500 as a rookie.

He said his lack of victories in the last two-plus seasons caused him to push “reset” on his career—the reason he has signed to drive for Arrows McLaren next year.

Rookie Christian Lundgaard finished 3.5 seconds back. Will Power’s third-place finish gave him the series points lead over Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, who rallied from his dead-last starting position 11^th in the 25-car field.  Power now leads Ericsson by nine points.

Power’s Penske teammates Scott McLaughlin and Josef Newgarden finished fourth and fifth.  Newgarden’s participation in the race had been in doubt until practice on Friday because of his crash the weekend before in Iowa and his later collapse in the hauler area after that race. He was tentatively cleared to practice and after the practice session was cleared to drive in Saturday’s race.

INDYCAR races next week on the streets of Nashville.

(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick had the NASCAR race at the Brickyard under control before a series of last-segment incidents added drama to a race already marked by on-track bumping and off-track adventures.

The race was forced into overtime when several cars tangled on the first turn of the next-to-last scheduled lap, with one car mired in the gravel and unable to continue.  On the restart, Ross Chastain challenged Reddick for the lead on the first turn, found the track too crowded, and took an access road instead of the regular course turn. He briefly led Reddick, who regained the top spot before completing the lap.

The move backfired on Chastain, who crossed the finish second but was hit by NASCAR with a 30-second penalty that left him 27^th in the final standings.  The wild scramble at the end left rookie Austin Cindric as the runner-up.  Harrison Burton came home third, followed by Todd Gilliland and Bubba Wallace. The results were career bests for Burton and Gilliland, and with Cindric, it marked the first time in 28 years that three rookies have been in the top five at the end of a Cup race (one of the three rookies that finished in the top five at Pocono in 1994 was Ward Burton, Harrison’s father. His uncle Jeff, now a NASCAR television analyst, was one of the others, joined by Joe Nemechek.

NASCAR  takes its show to Brooklyn, Michigan next weekend.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen survived a spin and won the Grand Prix of Hungary. In the process he built his points lead to 98 over Charles Leclerc, who started from pole and thought he had a shot at the win until a poor tire choice during a pit stop left him unable to keep up. He finished sixth.

Pole-sitter George Russell of Mercedes finished third with Russell’s teammate, Lewis Hamilton, between the two.

Formula 1 takes its summer break this month and won’t resume racing until the Belgian Grand Prix on August 28.

(Photo credits: Rick Gevers and Bob Priddy)

(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin’s weekend win at Pocono was historic and so was Kyle Busch’s second-place finish.  Historically bad, that is.  Or potentially historically bad.

As this is written, Hamlin and Busch join a part of NASCAR history that includes Joe Weatherly, Jim Reed, and Emanuel Zervakis and dates back to 1955.

The cars of Hamlin and Busch failed post-race inspections, causing NASCAR to disqualify them and give third-place finisher Chase Elliott his fourth win of the season.  NASCAR says their cars had some improper material on the front fascia that affected the aerodynamics of their cars. Both cars were taken to the NASCAR tech center for additional examination.

The last time a victory was taken away from a NASCAR winner was the spring of 1960 when the car of Emanuel Zervakis had a gas tank that was too big.  The last time the top two finishers were disqualified was 1955 when Joe Weatherly and Jim Reed finished 1-2 but were disqualified, Weatherly for an illegal camshaft and reed for illegal valves.  The win was given to Herb Thomas, who finished third.

Elliott thus joins Thomas in the history books as a third-place race winner and appears to be the first driver to win a NASCAR race without leading a lap.

Hamlin and Busch both drive for Joe Gibbs Racing.

NASCAR races on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course next Sunday as part of the NACAR/INDYCAR doubleheader weekend.

(INDYCAR)—Josef Newgarden’s status for next Saturday’s road course race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is unknown as this is written.  He was taken to a hospital in Des Moines Sunday evening after collapsing in the motorhome parking lot at the Iowa Speedway.  Newgarden, who won Saturday’s race, dominated the race on Sunday until a broken suspension sent his car hard into the wall. He cleared all tests at the infield care center but was taken by helicopter to De Moines after he fell in the parking lot and suffered a cut to the back of his head.

Team Penske later said all scans at the hospital were negative and Newgarden would be released Monday morning.

INDYCAR medical personnel will re-evaluate him in Indianapolis on Thursday to determine if he can race next weekend.

Newgarden led 208 of the 250-lap race on Saturday, finishing six seconds in front of Pato O’Ward.  He led 148 of the first 235 laps on Sunday before crashing. O’Ward won the race over Will Power.

Former NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson had the best finish of his two-year INDYCAR career.  He came home fifth in the Sunday race.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen picked up his seventh win of the year, thanks somewhat to Ferrari driver Charles LeClerc’s crash while leading.  Lewis Hamilton finished second in his Mercedes, followed by teammate George Russell.

(SRX)—Marco Andretti at last has won another championship.  Andretti, whose father and grandfather had won INDYCAR titles in their careers (and grandfather Mario won the 1969 Indianapolis 500), won the title in this summer’s Superstar Racing Experience—-and did it with a broken wrist.

His last championship was the Skip Barber Racing School championship in 2004, when he was 17 and learning to compete in big-time racing..

Andretti and former NASCAR Cup driver Ryan Newman went into the race leading the six-race series in points. They started the final race in mid-pack, collided on a restart but Newman wasn’t able to finish far enough ahead of Andretti to take the championship. Newman finished 8^th and Andretti 9^th.

Andretti said after the race he had broken his wrist when he got his thumb caught in the steering wheel during a collision. But he said it was painful for just “a couple of laps.”

The last race of the year was won by Chase Elliott, who became the first driver other than series co-founder Tony Stewart to win an SRX race on dirt.  The final race was held at the Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(SRX at PEVELY)—Tony Stewart has finally won a race at Ken Schrader’s track in Pevely, Missouri.  Stewart won the main second heat and the main event to become the first driver to win twice this year on the Superstar Racing Experience (SRX) circuit.

The race was the first of the season or a dirt oval after four races on pavement.

Behind Stewart, several competitors finished with major parts of their cars in twisted piles in the pits, the result of ten cautions for track incidents in the 70-lap final.  Marco Andretti finished second for the third straight race.

Ryan Newman, who said his most recent experience on dirt was with his tractor on his farm, was fourth followed by track co-owner and NASCAR veteran Ken Schrader. Greg Biffle wrapped up the top five. Michael Waltrip, Ernie Francis Jr., Paul Tracy, Tony Kanaan, Hailie Deegan (the only woman driver in the series), Matt Kenseth, Bobby Labonte and Ryan Hunter-Reay finished out the field. Hunter-Reay, the winner of the 2014 Indianapolis 500, had never raced on a dirt track before.

The series finale will be on dirt next Saturday at Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio, featuring the father-son duo of Dave and Ryan Blaney. Dave Blaney, who had a long career in dirt-track racing, is the cow-owner of the track. His son, Ryan, is a rising star in NASCAR for Penske Racing.

The championship points race has boiled down to a contest between Stewart, Labonte, Andretti, and Newman.

(INDYCAR)—Now only one driver has more INDYCAR wins than Scott Dixon.  Dixon climbed into a tie with Mario Andretti for second-most career victories with 52. It’s unlikely he’ll get to A. J. Foyt’s 67 wins in the series but he has moved closer to the points lead as he looks for his seventh series championship, which would tie Foyt.

Dixon pulled away from pole-winner Colton Herta on the last restart twenty laps left and crossed the line eight-tenths of a second ahead, ending a 23-race winless streak, the second-longest of his career.  Felix Rosenqvist, Graham Rahal, this year’s Indianapolis 500 winner, Marcus Ericsson, rounded out the top five.

The win extends Dixon’s record of eighteen seasons with at least one victory. He now has won at least once in 20 seasons, also a record.

Next up for INDYCAR are two races within driving distance of many Missourians.  INDYCAR will have a doubleheader weekend at the Iowa Speedway, a .875-mile high banked oval near Newton, Iowa.  The track was designed by former Missouri NASCAR champion Rusty Wallace. The races will be Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m., and Sunday afternoon at 3.

(NASCAR)—Christopher Bell has upped the stakes for winless NASCAR Cup drivers hoping to make the 16-driver playoff field with his weekend win at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.  Bell became the 14^th driver to win a race this year, staying in front for the last 42 laps and pulling away to an almost-six second win over last week’s winner, Chase Elliott.

Bell, who might not be mistaken for someone 27 years old, had to outrun Elliott, the hottest driver in the series in the last four weeks. Elliott has won twice and has finished twice. He had come into the race ranked last among the top 16 drivers but is now guaranteed a playoff slot.

If the race was big for Bell, it was a bitter pill for teammate Martin Truex Jr., to swallow. Truex started from the pole, led 172 of the 301 laps, and won the first two stages. But a two-tire stop with 100 laps left didn’t work out. He dropped to fourth and has replaced Bell as the last driver in the playoff hunt.

Truex is still waiting for his first win of the year, as is Kevin Harvick who is the first driver outside the playoffs. Both former Cup champions have six races left to get a win that could put them into the round of sixteen for a ten-race runoff for the title.  They’ll get their next shot next Sunday at Pocono.

For now, Ryan Blaney, who is third in overall points, has the fifteenth playoff position.  Truex is 37 points behind him for the last slot. Harvick trails Truex by 68 points and appears to need a win to make the top 16.  Harvick is ninth in overall points.

A fifteenth winner who is not one of those three would knock Truex below the cut line with Harvick.

Fourteen different winners in a year is far from the record.  Nineteen different drivers posted victories in 2001.  Eighteen did it in 2002 and 2011.  Seventeen did it in 2013.

(FORMULA 1)—F1 races next in the Grand Prix of France. It’s race 12 of 22 on this year’s schedule.   On the Circuit Paul Ricard, near Marseilles.

(Photo credits:  Stewart—SRX Racing/CBS; Dixon—Rick Gevers at WWTR 2021;Bell—Bob Priddy at WWTR, 2022)

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(SRX)—Next up for the Superstar Racing Experience drivers: Ken Schrader’s I-55 Speedway at Pevely, Missouri, the first dirt track they’ll drive on this year.  And Schrader finally gets to race in a series  he helped create.

Former NASCAR champion Bobby Labonte will be going to Pevely after winning the last pavement race in the short-track series at Nashville.  Labonte, who is 58, is the oldest driver to win an SRX race. He started from the pole and led every lap in the final heat, holding off a serious challenge from INDYCAR driver Marco Andretti. Another former NASCAR champion, Matt Kenseth, was third and former INDYCAR driver Paul Tracy came home fourth. Four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves was fifth.

Two-time INDYCAR series champion Josef Newgarden, a native of nearby Henderson, won the first heat while driving his first race in a car with fenders. Local track favorite Cole Williams won the second heat but was only 12^th in the 13-car field in the final.

Newgarden spun on the 49^th lap of the 75-lap final heat but rallied back to finish seventh. He called the race “a big learning session…just how these guys drive. They’re very rough.”  But he wants to do it again.

Labonte’s win has moved him ahead of Ryan Newman in the SRX points standings. Andretti’s runner-up also moves him ahead of Newman.

The series finishes up with two dirt-track races, the first being next Saturday night at Pevely, a track owned by veteran NASCAR driver Ken Schrader.  Schrader, who helped develop the cars used in the series, will compete in an SRX race for the first time—as the home track “guest” racer.

Pevely is about a half-hour south of St. Louis on I-55.

(NASCAR)—Chase Elliott is the first driver to pick up three wins this year, and number three has come at Atlanta Motor Speedway, his home track.  Elliott is from Dawsonville, about an hour’s drive south of Atlanta.

The win was in doubt as Elliott and Corey Lajoie battled for the lead through the first two turns of the last lap. But Lajoie hit the wall trying to pass Elliott on the backstretch as Elliott moved to block him and the race ended under caution with Elliott in front. Lajoie took his injured car home in 21^st place.

Lajoie’s crash produced the last of thirteen caution flags.  A dozen drivers contributed 27 lead changes in the 260-lap race.

Ross Chastain, whose reputation as a driver often in the center of incidents, added to his credentials before finishing second, his fifth top-two finish of the year. He was collected in a nine car crash near the halfway point of the race then tangled, again, with Denny Hamlin when both were running in the top ten, leaving Hamlin with a badly damaged car that limped to the end 25^th.

Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric, the leading Rookie of the Year candidate, was third. Erik Jones and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five.

Elliott’s win ups his regular season points lead to 47 over Blaney. Chastain runs third, fifty points back.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR’s next race is in Toronto next Sunday.

(FORMULA 1)—Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc had to deal with throttle issues and with challenges from Max Verstappen to win the Austrian Grand Prix.  It’s LeClerc’s first win since the Australian Grand Prix in April. He’s been dogged by mechanical and strategy problems since.

He beat Verstappen to the line by about 1.5 seconds to claim his first podium finish after five failures and move to within 38 points of Verstappen’s lead in the standings.

LeClerc and teammate Carlos Sainz were headed for a 1-2 finish before an engine failure sent Sainz’s car afire with fourteen laps left.

(Photo Credits: SRX and Rick Gevers)

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(SRX)—Three races, three winners for the Superstar Racing Experience, which brings NASCAR and INDYCAR competitors together in just two weeks on the dirt track at Pevely.  Series points leader Ryan Newman picked up his first win on the pavement at Stafford, CT during the weekend.

The point standings show four INDYCAR drivers and five NASCAR drivers in the top ten. Just behind Newman is series co-creator Tony Stewart, who was an INDYCAR champion before moving to NASCAR—the only driver to record that achievement.

Newman got past pole-sitter Marco Andretti after a competition caution with ten laps to go to win the third heat. Stewart was third with Bobby Labonte fourth and Hailie Deegan—a young woman from the NASCAR truck series—fifth.

The series races at Nashville next weekend before moving to Ken Schrader’s Federated Auto Parts Raceway near Pevely on the 16^th, then wrapping up the season at Sharon Speedway in Ohio, owned by former NASCAR competitor Dave Blaney, father of current Cup driver Ryan Blaney.

(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick has won his first NASCAR Cup race in a fierce battle with Chase Elliott at Road America.  Elliott had a narrow lead after the final pit stop with 18 laps left but Reddick got past Elliott two laps later and pulled away to win by 3.3 seconds. Kyle Larson was third, 21 seconds back.

Reddick is the fifth first-time winner this year and the 13^th Cup driver to make it to victory lane.  His win means there are only three playoff spots left to fill in the next seven races. His victory pushed former champion Keven Harvick out of the top sixteen in standings, endangering Harvick’s chances of making the playoffs.  Harvick is tenth in points but fourth among non-winners.

The race is the third road course race of the year. Each has produced a first-time Cup career victory—Clay Chastain at Circuit of the Americas and Daniel Suarez at Sonoma.

(INDYCAR)—This one was for mom and dad.

Scott McLaughlin has on his second INDYCAR race of the season but it’s the first time his parents have seen him win since he moved from the Australian Supercar series two and a half years ago.  They came to the United States in May to watch him run the Indianapolis 500, the first time they had seen him since he came to the Northern Hemisphere.

McLaughlin had to hold off defending series champion Alex Palou for the last 17 laps and got to the finish line about a half-second before Palou. The best drive of the day, however, was by Will Power, who started 21^st, spun on the first lap and recovered from the end of the field to snag third place.

Pole sitter Pato O’Ward led the first 28 laps before his car started losing power and quit entirely while coming out of the pits on the 54^th of 80 laps.

The race was a disaster for the Andretti team and confrontations between teammates Romain Grosjean and Alexander Rossi resulted in a team meeting called quickly after the race.  Rossi, on the inside, ran Grosjean off the track by going wide on a turn and one lap later drove him straight off the course on another turn.  Grosjean called Rossi “an idiot” after the race before a team employee took him away from a television interview for the meeting.

Earlier in the race, Grosjean pushed teammate Colton Herta off the track and Rossi tangled with another Andretti teammate, Devlin DeFrancesco.  The four Andretti drivers finished 15^th to 21^st.

(FORMULA 1)—The Grand Prix of Britain started with a frightening crash and ended with a first-time winner.

You can see it from a grandstand view at:

Formula One salutes FIA and ‘halo’ for saving two lives at Silverstone (msn.com)

Ferrari’s Carolos Sainz got the win in his 150^th F1 start.  Lewis Hamilton, who had his best finish of the year, in third, called the race “Formula One at its best.”  Sainz is only the second Spanish driver to win in the long history of Formula One.  Two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso was the first.

The first lap was hardly racing at its best. It was, in fact, racing at its scariest.  The only Chinese driver to ever compete in F1, Guanyu Zhou, in an Alfa,  got upside down on the start after a bump from Mercedes driver George Russell as a crowded field headed to the first turn. His car skidded off the track, through a gravel area, and flipped over the SAFER barrier into a catch fence in front of dozens of fans. Several other cars were damaged in collisions in the melee and the race was stopped until rescue teams could get Zhou out of his car and onto a stretcher.

He later sent a message saying he was fine but gratified that Formula 1 had begun using a “halo” cockpit protection system that he thought saved his life. Doctors say he’s cleared to drive in the next race in the series.

The red flag at the start of the race might have prevented an even more tragic event seconds later as the cars roared down a straightaway.  Instead, they were going slowly enough to avoid a series of climate protestors reportedly from Just Stop Oil who had gotten onto the circuit and sat down on the track.  Police arrested five men and two women.

(Photo credits: Newman at Indianapolis 2019, Rick Gevers; Reddick and McLaughlin at WWTR, Bob Priddy)

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(SRX)—Drivers in the six-race made-for-TV Superstar Racing Experience Series have given Missouri racing fans an energetic preview of what to expect in three weeks when they race at a local track a few miles south of St. Louis.

Series co-founder Tony Stewart was steaming after the second heat of the weekend race at South Boston, Virginia and told his fellow drivers “Uncle Tony” was “about ready to get a dose of it that they don’t want…I know every dirty trick and got it in my bag…I’m done playing nice with everybody…Anybody who touches me, I’m touching back times five.”

Trans-Am racer Ernie Francis Jr., set off Stewart by bumping him to the inside as both were trying to avoid a spinning Paul Tracy in the second heat.  But there was plenty of other bumping and banging with INDYCAR driver Ryan Hunter-Reay and Tracy bumping each other into the wall and Michael Waltrip getting into it with RHR in another bumping incident. Waltrip and Tracy couldn’t finish the race.

In the final, Stewart bumped leader Marco Andretti several times before getting past him for the win. Andretti later spun out of contention while racing against runner-up Greg Biffle.

Stewart said after the race it’s time for a “dad talk” with the other drivers who have taken some bad habits from their regular series’ to the SRX short-track races. Among other concerns for him is the limited number of cars available for the remaining four races. About half of the cars need significant repairs before they can be shipped out Wednesday for the next race in Stafford Connecticut. The cars are identically prepared for each race.

The SRX show comes to Missouri on July 16^th with a race at the I-55 Speedway at Pevely. The track is owned by NASCAR veteran Ken Schrader who will be the “guest” driver for the night.

(NASCAR)—Chase Elliott’s long day’s journey into the Nashville night has given him his second win of the year and boosted his points lead over Ross Chastain.

Elliott had to wait out two interruptions because of lightning near the track—the second delay stretching to more than two hours because heavy rain was included—before speeding into the lead with 39 laps to go and then holding off Kurt Busch by a half-second.

He joins Ross Chastain, Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin and William Byron as two-time winners this year. Elliott stayed out on old tires during the last caution period with seven laps to go. Several challengers gambled that pitting for fresh tires would give them the grip to catch Elliott, but the strategy backfired when the race was restarted with only four laps left, not nearly enough time for them to catch him.

Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson, and Chastain took the rest of the top-five positions.

Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., and Kyle Busch led 250 of the 300 laps but were among those who gambled during the last caution while Elliott and Kurt Busch and eight other drivers stayed out. Hamlin, who led a race-high 114 laps, could only get back to sixth. Kyle Busch, who led 54 laps, made it back to 21^st and Truex, who led 62 laps, was 22^nd.

Lightning in the area stopped the race the first time for more than an hour after the 41^st lap. The checkered flag didn’t fall until after 10 p.m., because of red-flag time totaling three hours, eight minutes.

(INDYCAR and F1)—INDYCAR returns to action July 3 on the Mid-Ohio road course. Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson head into the race as the championship points leader with teammates Will Power and Josef Newgarden trailing.

Formula 1 runs the British Grand Prix at Silverstone with Max Verstappen, winner of six of the nine races so far this year well ahead in points.

(Photo credits: SRX and Bob Priddy at WWTR)