Spotter’s Stand: Carl Edwards Races Into Sprint Cup Contention

Filed under: Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Reed Sorenson, Roush Fenway Racing, Chase for the Sprint Cup, Sprint Cup, NASCAR

Carl Edwards is flying under the championship radar no more.

After a second-place finish in Sunday night’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Edwards let everyone he’s going to contend in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

“I know we don’t look like we did in 2008,” Edwards said, alluding to the most recent season he had a shot at winning the series title. “But we’re better set to go race for that championship now than we’ve ever been.”

Edwards, long a cerebral force in the garage area with an unvarnished penchant to march to his own beat, isn’t pulling anybody’s leg with that declaration.

In the last eight races, Edwards and his Roush-Fenway Racing No. 99 Ford team have turned the corner and then some in favor of being competitive again.

That span — beginning at Daytona in July — has seen Edwards finish in the top five five times. More significantly, he’s finished outside the top 10 just once, and that was at Bristol, where he crossed the finish line in 12th.

 

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Spotter’s Stand: Carl Edwards Races Into Sprint Cup Contention

Filed under: Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Reed Sorenson, Roush Fenway Racing, Chase for the Sprint Cup, Sprint Cup, NASCAR

Carl Edwards is flying under the championship radar no more.

After a second-place finish in Sunday night’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Edwards let everyone he’s going to contend in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

“I know we don’t look like we did in 2008,” Edwards said, alluding to the most recent season he had a shot at winning the series title. “But we’re better set to go race for that championship now than we’ve ever been.”

Edwards, long a cerebral force in the garage area with an unvarnished penchant to march to his own beat, isn’t pulling anybody’s leg with that declaration.

In the last eight races, Edwards and his Roush-Fenway Racing No. 99 Ford team have turned the corner and then some in favor of being competitive again.

That span — beginning at Daytona in July — has seen Edwards finish in the top five five times. More significantly, he’s finished outside the top 10 just once, and that was at Bristol, where he crossed the finish line in 12th.

 

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Tony Stewart Wins First Race of Season at Atlanta

Filed under: Carl Edwards, Jeff Burton, Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart, Sprint Cup, NASCAR

After leading the most laps in the Emory Healthcare 500, Tony Stewart survived his troubles with wheel spin on restarts at Atlanta Motor Speedway, powered into the lead on the final restart and stretched it out to a comfortable 1.316-second victory over Carl Edwards.

“Ring the bell, baby!” Stewart shouted on his radio as he scored his first victory of the 2010 season.

Jimmie Johnson finished third, followed by Jeff Burton and Kyle Busch.

Stewart showered his pit crew with praise for putting him in position to win.

Stewart led 176 laps and dominated the race after pole winner and early leader Denny Hamlin blew an engine and dropped out.

But before the final pit stops, brought on by Brad Keselowski’s spin, Stewart had fallen back to fifth because of his trouble with wheelspin on restarts and wasn’t making any progress getting back up front.

On the final stop, though, the crew’s ultra-fast stop gained him three positions on the track, vaulting him from fifth back up to second. On the restart, Stewart shot past Edwards to take the lead. And he managed to do it again on the final restart on lap 307 of the 325-lap race.

 

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Japanese Teen Shoya Tomizawa Dies in MotoGP Crash

MISANO ADRIATICO, Italy (AP) — Japanese teenager Shoya Tomizawa died after he crashed and was hit by two other riders during Sunday’s Moto2 race at the San Marino Grand Prix in the sport’s second fatality in eight days.

The 19-year-old Tomizawa lost control of his bike and hit his head on the track as his bike flipped over. While on the track, he was hit at full speed by riders Alex De Angelis and Scott Redding.

A statement on the MotoGP website said Tomizawa died of cranial, thoracic and abdominal trauma.

Tomizawa was initially put on an artificial respirator at the Misano World Circuit medical centre before he was taken to a hospital in Riccione, where he died.

“I’m truly devastated about what happened to Shoya,” De Angelis said. “I’m close to his family and all of them loved him a lot. … In moments like this nothing seems to matter.

 

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Helio Castroneves Wins at Kentucky on Fuel Gamble

Filed under: IRL

This time, Helio Castroneves was all hugs with IndyCar’s security director Charles Burns.

Castroneves won Saturday night’s Kentucky Indy 300 at Kentucky Speedway after his Penske team made a shrewd call for an extra pit stop during the race’s second and final caution period. Just weeks ago, of course, Castroneves was violently shaking Burns after being denied of a win thanks to a last-lap penalty in Edmonton.

“You shouldn’t actually interview me, you should interview (Tim Cindric),” Castroneves beamed after the race, crediting the winning call on fuel to Cindric, his race strategist. “It was kind of like rolling the dice, but this guy, he’s kind of like the gambler.”

Castroneves celebrated with his traditional frontstretch fence climb, and when he returned to the track gave Burns a hug as he walked back to his car.

 

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Jamie McMurray Wins Nationwide Race at Atlanta

Filed under: Carl Edwards, Jamie McMurray, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Nationwide Series, NASCAR

Jamie McMurray continued his spectacular season on the racetrack with a victory in the Nationwide race at Atlanta Motor Speedway Saturday night — his first in the series in six years.

McMurray jumped into the lead on the final restart and stretched his advantage to about one second before giving up most of that at the end, taking the checkered flag about five car lengths ahead of Kyle Busch.

The official margin of victory was .286 of a second.

It was McMurray’s eighth victory in the series, but his first since 2004. And it denied Busch his 11th win of the season, which will be a record if he achieves it.

Carl Edwards was third, followed by Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth.

McMurray, driving for Dale Earnhardt Jr’s JR Motorsports, led 48 laps on his way to a win in a stellar season that also includes victories in the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“It was a really good day and Dale Jr. gave me a great opportunity to drive this car,” McMurray told ESPN in victory lane. “Man, it’s cool to win one of these races. It feels really good going into the (Sprint Cup) race tomorrow.”

 

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Denny Hamlin Wins Pole for Sunday Night’s Atlanta Sprint Cup Race

Filed under: Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart, Sprint Cup, NASCAR

HAMPTON, Ga. (AP) — Denny Hamlin started chasing the championship during qualifying Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Mired in a bit of a midseason slump, Hamlin showed signs of turning things around by claiming the pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race with a speed of 187.380 mph. He edged traditionally strong qualifier Ryan Newman, who’ll start from the outside of the front row after a lap of 187.070.

The rest of the top five for the Emory Healthcare 500 was Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart.

“I’m a very bad qualifier,” Hamlin said, “so I’ll take it.”

He claimed the eighth pole of his career and the 50th for Joe Gibbs Racing, which won its first pole with Bobby Labonte at Martinsville in 1995.

Hamlin has five wins this season, but it’s been nearly three months since his last victory. He’s coming off a 34th-place finish at Bristol and is fifth in the point standings.

 

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Prison Escapee’s Love for NASCAR Lands Him Back in Jail

Filed under: NASCAR Fans, NASCAR Police Blotter, NASCAR

HAMPTON, GA. — An alleged murderer who had escaped from an Alabama prison is back in jail because of his fondness for NASCAR.

Authorities arrested Alabama fugitive Michael Lynn Sherer after they say he traded a gun for tickets to this weekend’s NASCAR event at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Hampton police Officer Eric Hayes told WSB-TV that NASCAR souvenir vendors set up outside the speedway for this weekend’s races alerted him on Wednesday to a man trying to sell a .22 caliber pistol. Hayes said the 51-year-old Sherer managed to trade the gun for two tickets to the race before the officer spotted him.

Authorities in Alabama say Hayes escaped from the Winston County jail, where he was being held on a murder charge in the killing of 52-year-old Thomas Lynn Smith on Aug. 24.

Hayes said that, when Sherer was approached by officers, he initially gave them victim Smith’s name, but they suspected something was wrong when he stumbled over his birth date.

Hampton police say a hearing will be held soon to extradite Sherer back to Alabama.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks and other supplemental copy have been inserted by AOL.

 

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John Force, 60, Leads NHRA Championship After Dance With Death

John Force has no trouble pinpointing his life-changing experience, even if he can’t remember it.

“God woke me up at 1,000-feet in Dallas, Texas, and he crushed me with a hammer,” the drag racing legend explains of a horrific 2007 accident at the Texas Motorplex.

“Nearly getting killed was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

As with most things in Force’s technicolor life, the accident was spectacularly frightening and especially cruel coming in a season where his young protege and teammate Eric Medlen had already been killed and his daughter, Ashley Force-Hood survived a terrifying accident.

Force was airlifted from Dallas that October afternoon with serious injuries and here he is less than three years later — at age 60 — leading the National Hot Rod Association’s Funny Car championship — its most competitive division — as the NHRA holds its version of the “Daytona 500″ this weekend, the U.S. Nationals.

It is the first of six races in the NHRA’s “Countdown to 1″ playoffs to crown the season champ. It would be an unprecedented 15th series title for Force completing one of the most remarkable comeback stories in auto racing and providing the exclamation point on a racing resume that will never be equaled.

But as feel-great as this feel-good story is, it’s not history Force seeks. It’s redemption.

“What hurt the most after that accident, was having people you raced, look at you and feel sorry for you,” Force said.

 

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Doubters Wonder Whether Formula One Can Make It in Austin

Filed under: Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Formula One

When the announcement came this summer that Austin, Texas, was going to host a Formula One race in 2012 there was a collective “whaaaaaat?” from the racing world. No one was more shocked than the promoter of the last U.S. Grand Prix, Joie Chitwood.

“I was as surprised as anyone,” Chitwood (pictured right) told FanHouse.com. “Everything I had heard was that it would be somewhere on the East Coast or the West Coast in some waterfront location.

“Austin is about the same size and scope as Indianapolis and there’s not even a facility built. It’s still hard to believe, and to be honest, I’m not even sure it’s really going to happen.”

Chitwood, now president of Daytona International Speedway, oversaw the USGP from 2000-2007 as Indianapolis Motor Speedway President. And he isn’t alone in his doubts about the project, even as the state of Texas has already agreed to a controversial, $25 million-a-year, kick-in for the race’s 10-year contract to help fund and sustain the event.

If a Formula One grand prix didn’t work in America’s greatest racing town Indianapolis — or in a dozen other previous locales — how’s it going to play out in a city there’s never even hosted a major auto race?

 

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