All posts by Motorsports Tribune

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DARLINGTON, S.C. – Elliott Sadler had a passenger for Saturday’s VFW Sport Clips Help a Hero 200 at Darlington Raceway—in spirit at least. After a breathtaking battle against Denny Hamlin over the closing laps, Sadler crossed the finish-line .454 seconds ahead of Hamlin to win for the first time at the Lady in Black—and immediately dedicated the victory to JR Motorsports team owner Dale Earnhardt Jr., who announced on Friday he would sit out the remainder of the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup season becauseRead More

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016) – For as much success as Scott Dixon has enjoyed at Watkins Glen International, he had never won the pole position at the iconic road course. Until today. Dixon laid down a track-record lap of 1 minute, 22.5259 seconds (147.008 mph) in the No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet during the climactic Firestone Fast Six segment of knockout qualifying to capture the Verizon P1 Award. The 25th pole position of Dixon’s Indy car career will have him starting up front for theRead More

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – The battle to win a Mazda Scholarship valued at $1M to assist the Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires champion in graduating to the Verizon IndyCar Series in 2017 intensified this afternoon during a dramatic Mazda Indy Lights Grand Prix of Watkins Glen Presented by Cooper Tires. Zach Veach, from Stockdale, Ohio, started fifth at the scenic and challenging 3.37-mile Watkins Glen International road course but quickly moved into the lead before romping to his second win of the season and the fifth for Belardi AutoRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service The odds against Sunday’s Bojangles’ Southern 500 producing another first-time winner are relatively heavy. When all track activity was washed out on Friday, the starting field for the race was set according to owner points, and the top 10 starters in the field, from pole sitter Kevin Harvick through 10th-place Matt Kenseth, all have at least one NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory this season. Why is that significant? Because in the last 14 races at Darlington, 10 of the winners have come from theRead More

Lewis Hamilton scored his seventh pole position of the 2016 and his fifth at the Italian GP with a dominant performance at Monza where he beat team-mate and title rival Nico Rosberg by almost half second. Sebastian Vettel qualified third for Ferrari ahead of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen. The first casualty of Q1 was Manor’s Esteban Ocon. With eight minutes gone in Q1, the Frenchman, who made his race debut at last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, suffered a technical problem that forced him to pull over at Turn 1. He exitedRead More

Lewis Hamilton beat Nico Rosberg to the top of the final practice timesheets in Monza, with the championship leader finishing almost four tenths of a second clear of his Mercedes team-mate. Rosberg was the first of the Mercedes pairing to show his hand in qualifying trim during the session, posting a time of 1:22.401 with 20 minutes left on the clock. His spell at the top of the order didn’t last long, however, as Hamilton was across the line moments later with a time of 1:22.008. It would remain theRead More

After being narrowly shaded by Nico Rosberg in the opening practice session for the Italian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton upped the pace in the afternoon session to eclipse his Mercedes team-mate by just under 0.2s. While Mercedes dominated in FP1, finishing well ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, the gap was closed by some margin in the afternoon as the team’s set their fastest times on supersoft-shod qualifying runs. Compared with their rivals Mercedes looked to be having a harder time getting the best out of this weekend’s softest compound andRead More

Nico Rosberg set the pace in the first practice session ahead of Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, taking top spot with 0.2s in hand over championship rival Lewis Hamilton. The winner of last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, Rosberg continued his good form at high-speed Monza finishing over a second clear of his nearest non-works Mercedes rival, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen. Ferrari are running an upgraded power unit for the team’s home race. Both Rosberg and Hamilton had been quickest on the supersoft tyre, but later in the session both men went quickerRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service JIMMIE JOHNSON ENCOURAGED DESPITE PIT ROAD SNAFU BROOKLYN, Mich. – Despite a pit road problem that ruined his winning chances, Jimmie Johnson was surprisingly chipper after his sixth-place run in Sunday’s Pure Michigan 400 at Michigan Speedway. Johnson led 37 laps, four fewer than race winner Kyle Larson, but the six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion lost 10 seconds on pit road when his second can of fuel failed to engage properly with the intake during a green-flag stop from the lead on LapRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service BROOKLYN, Mich. – In the last few laps of Sunday’s Pure Michigan 400 at Michigan International Speedway, tears began to well up in Kyle Larson’s eyes. When Larson subsequently took the checkered flag to win the first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race of his career, the emotion was all but overwhelming—and for good reason. The victory came in Larson’s 99th start in the series, long after most observers expected Larson to record his first win. It also broke a 99-race drought for Chip GanassiRead More