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The Guardian
a day ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
Bubba Wallace becomes first black winner of Brickyard 400
Bubba Wallace climbed out of the No 23 car on Sunday, pumped his fists, found his family and savored every precious moment of a historic Brickyard 400 victory. He deserved every minute of it. The 31-year-old Wallace overcame a tenuous 18-minute rain delay, two tantalizing overtimes, fears about running out of fuel late and the hard-charging defending race champ, Kyle Larson, on back-to-back restarts to become the first Black driver to win a major race on Indianapolis Motor Speedway's 2.5-mile oval. No Black driver has won the Indianapolis 500, and Formula One raced on the track's road course. 'This one's really cool,' Wallace said. 'Coming off Turn 4, I knew I was going to get there – unless we ran out of gas. I was surprised I wasn't crying like a little baby.' His third career Nascar Cup victory delivered Wallace's first victory in the series' four crown jewel events, the others being the Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600 and Southern 500. It also snapped a 100-race winless streak that dated to 2022 at Kansas and locked up a playoff spot. His only other win came at Talladega in 2021. The final gap was 0.222 seconds, but that was no measure of the consternation he faced. Larson cut a 5.057-second deficit with 14 laps to go to about three seconds with six laps left as the yellow flag came out for the rain. The cars then rolled to a stop on pit lane with four laps remaining, forcing Wallace to think and rethink his restart strategy. 'The whole time I'm thinking are we going? Are we not?' he said. 'I will say I leaned more towards 'I know we're going to go back racing. Be ready. Don't get complacent here.' Wallace made sure of it. He beat Larson through the second turn on the first restart only to have a crash behind him force a second overtime, forcing his crew to recalculate whether they had enough fuel to finish the race or whether he needed to surrender the lead and refuel. In Wallace's mind, there was no choice. 'The first thing that went through my mind was, 'Here we go again,'' he said. 'But then I said, 'I want to win this straight up. I want to go back racing.' Here we are.' He beat Larson off the restart again and pulled away, preventing Larson from becoming the race's fourth back-to-back winner. The victory also alleviated the frustration Wallace felt Saturday when he spent most of the qualifying session on the provisional pole only to see Chase Briscoe claim the No 1 starting spot with one of the last runs in the session. On Sunday, he made sure there was no repeat, providing an added boost to the 23XI Racing team co-owned by basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan and last week's race winner, Denny Hamlin, as they continue to battle Nascar in court over its charter status. 'Those last 20 laps there were ups and downs and I was telling myself 'You won't be able to do it,'' Wallace said. 'Once I'd seen it was Larson, I knew he won here last year and he's arguably the best in the field. So to beat the best, we had to be the best today.'
NZ Herald
18-07-2025
- Automotive
- NZ Herald
Kiwi Shane van Gisbergen returns to oval racing at Dover after road wins
'He's way, way, way better than us at the road course stuff and he's got his own technique, you can call it. Not his own because the rest of the world does it, right-foot braking, clutching and all that stuff. 'You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Like, there's zero chance I can learn how to do that. And even if I did, like there's zero chance that I can have it be better than what I'm probably doing left-foot braking. 'So yeah, he's just so good. And he's still new to the oval stuff, so he's going to continue to get better at that. And, yeah, I mean, if he could figure out the ovals, he's going to be dominant.' Van Gisbergen may only sit 26th in the Nascar Cup point's standing on 367 points, a fair way off leaders William Byron (668), Chaser Elliot (634) and Larson (624). However, with his three wins so far in 2025, van Gisbergen lies third in the playoff standings on 17 points behind Denny Hamlin (19) and Larson (23). The Kiwi should get through the round of 16 despite it being entirely on ovals. The round of 12 will be a challenge, but Hamlin is confident van Gisbergen could actually make it through to the round of eight. Shane van Gisbergen gets ready for a practice session at Daytona International Speedway. Photo / Photosport High praise indeed from 57-race winner Hamlin but van Gisbergen is under no illusions just how hard it will be. After Sonoma he admitted he was apprehensive heading into the round of 16. 'It's a crazy first round for me. We go to Darlington, which is my favourite oval. Then I think it's Gateway, which I've never been to. Then Bristol, I might as well be going the other way. 'Hopefully we get better at tracks like that. We'll see how Gateway is,' he said. Van Gisbergen will make his first Nascar Cup Series start at Dover Motor Speedway this weekend. Last year racing in the Xfinity Series he started 31st and crossed the line in 18th. 'I'm looking forward to getting back into some oval racing. It's been a nice break doing all these road courses, but Dover should be good. 'I struggled a bit there last year, but I still had fun. It's an epic track. Just how fast you can go into that corner, it feels like you are dropping and then all of a sudden you are loading up into the banking, just how much grip the track has is mind blowing. 'My team has a bunch of momentum heading into this weekend, so I'd like to keep that progression going and keep starting to build towards the top half of the field on the ovals.' Heading into Dover van Gisbergen leads the Sunoco Rookie of the Year standings on 367 points from Riley Herbst (238).
Otago Daily Times
11-07-2025
- Automotive
- Otago Daily Times
Winter driving often more demanding
EDITORIAL Driving mishaps seem to have been the stock-in-trade of the Otago Daily Times ' editorial and online pages in recent weeks, a phenomenon that I have noticed is invariably associated with the onset of true winter weather. Or perhaps to be more accurate, associated with the failure of ever so many Otago drivers to adjust to winter weather which, while unpredictable for sure, is still a mild version of what is experienced in some other parts of the world. I make this observation having witnessed some pretty poor driving so far this month, additional to my perennial bugbears of inattentive, distracted and discourteous driving. My particular winter gripes so far have been motorists failing to adjust their speed to slippery conditions, and far too many following far too close when conditions are wet and visibility is low. Some useful rules of thumb to keep in mind are that compared with a dry road, stopping distances are up to twice as long in the wet, and up to four times as long in the snow. As for ice, well, think in terms of five to 10 times longer, and with the attendant possibility that you are quite likely to stop only by hitting something. It might do us all good to remember that we are not engaged in a grand prix motor race, and even if racing is not your thing, perhaps take five minutes to watch the highlights of last weekend's British Grand Prix,which shows how even the most talented of drivers struggle in the wet, and how quickly and dramatically things can go wrong when a road is slippery and visibility is poor. This year's British Grand Prix was a disappointing one for New Zealand's Liam Lawson, though he was blameless in his first-lap exit from the race: rather, he was the victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time as Yuki Tsunoda put the squeeze on Esteban Ocon, who in turn rammed Lawson off the rack and into a very early retirement. While that left Kiwi race fans with little to cheer about in F1 last weekend, there was every reason to be both proud and cheerful after big wins for both Scott Dixon and Shane van Gisbergen in the United States. That van Gisbergen was in with a good shot of winning the Nascar Cup race at Chicago's Street Circuit was something I predicted in Drivesouth last weekend; no special second sight was involved in that call, just an appreciation that SVG has won there before, in both the premier Nascar Cup category, and the second-tier Xfinity category. He contested both categories and won them both last weekend, which was a great result. Much more surprising was Scott Dixon's IndyCar win at mid-Ohio. Heading to the race, Dixon had his truly remarkable tally of 58 career wins in IndyCar, including at least one win in each of the past 20 seasons. But in recent races, the old Dixon sparkle appeared to be missing, to the extent that it seemed to me he might never win in IndyCars again. Then up the old master popped, running a two-stop strategy when three stops was easily the favoured option, and pouncing late in the race when his team-mate and series leader Alex Palou ran wide exiting a bend. In winning for the first time this season, Dixon became only the third driver to win in IndyCar this season, the previous nine races having been won by either Palou (six wins) or Kyle Kirkwood (three wins). So now it's 59 Indycar wins for Dixon (second only on the all-time list to the great AJ Foyt) including wins across 21 consecutive seasons. Once again, I am reminded that Dixon's a driver whose achievements place him up there with 1967 F1 world champion Denny Hulme and the legendary Bruce McLaren as one of the three greatest race drivers New Zealand has produced.
NZ Herald
16-06-2025
- Automotive
- NZ Herald
Shane van Gisbergen secures victory in inaugural Nascar race in Mexico City
Kiwi driver Shane van Gisbergen has overcome illness to book his place in the Nascar Cup playoffs after securing a historic win in the inaugural race in Mexico City. The 36-year-old started on pole and led for 60 laps at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, to claim his second career win in
