Last Sunday saw a change in the Formula 1 leaderboard and a first-time 2021 NASCAR Cup winner, who will advance to the next playoff round. This weekend is one of the busiest of the year for race fans, with NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, NHRA, and IMSA all in action.
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Red Bull’s Max Verstappen took an easy home win in front of an adoring Dutch crowd at the Netherlands Grand Prix last Sunday. The win put him back on top of the season standings with rival Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton three points in arrears after his second-place finish. Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas was third. In what was the worst-kept secret in the F1 paddock, Briton George Russell will join Mercedes for 2022 with Bottas replacing the retiring Kimi Raikkonen at Alfa Romeo. The series will move to Monza this weekend for the Italian Grand Prix, the second of three races in a row. Saturday will be the second time F1 uses the sprint qualifying format, which airs at 7:25 a.m. with the race Sunday at 5:55 a.m. Both are on ESPN2.
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Denny Hamlin held off a charging Kyle Larson in the final lap of the Southern 500 to take his first win of the season and lock himself into the Round of 12. Hamlin said in his post-race interview that Larson would have had to drive through him to win, and Larson almost did. Kyle Busch crashed out early and was fined $50,000 for a dangerously aggressive drive into the garage area. Busch is now below the cut line for transfer to the next round, but the next two tracks are among his best. He leads all active drivers with six wins at Richmond, where the NASCAR Cup series races Saturday. Nine of the 16 playoff contenders have scored Richmond victories including Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick with three apiece, Martin Truex Jr., Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, and Kurt Busch with two each, and Kyle Larson and Alex Bowman with one. The Xfinity race airs Saturday at 11:30 a.m. and Cup at 4:30 p.m. both on NBCSN.
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There are two major races on the west coast this weekend. The NTT IndyCar series will race at Portland on Sunday, and the IMSA WeatherTech series is at their namesake track, Laguna Seca. It’s the first weekend of a three-race season finale concluding at Long Beach two weeks from now. The IndyCar race airs on NBC at noon and the IMSA race airs from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on NBCSN. Two-time champion Josef Newgarden has closed to within 22 points of leader Pato O’Ward and 12 behind second-place Alex Palou in a season that has been a battle between the veterans and the young guns. There are nine drivers with a mathematical chance of taking this year’s championship, but it will take some serious luck for most of them.
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The Mopar Express Lane NHRA Nationals will run in Mohnton, Pennsylvania this weekend. With just seven races to go in the 2021 season Steve Torrence leads the Top Fuel standings ahead of Brittany Force and Antron Brown. Ron Capps is ahead of John Force and Bob Tasca III in Funny Car, while Greg Anderson leads the Pro Stock points with Erica Enders second and Aaron Stanfield third. Qualifying airs on FS2 at 6 a.m. today with finals at 11 a.m. Sunday on FS1.
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Finally, I want to take a moment to recognize the significance of Saturday’s date. It is the 20th anniversary of a devastating attack on our country, an event that brought Americans together as one nation. God forbid it takes another horrendous act to unite us again.
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