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The NASCAR Cup Series‘ Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway proved that the pit crew is a driver’s biggest ally as pit gaffes resulted in contenders suffering greatly or gave others a boost. Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch were favourites for much of the night, but electing to pit before a late restart blew up in their faces as they finished outside the top twenty while their main adversary Chase Elliott ran relatively unopposed to his second win of 2022.

Busch and Truex combined to lead 136 of 300 laps, the latter also winning the first two stages in dominant fashion, but respectively finished twenty-first and twenty-second after their failed strategy. With the two out of the picture, Elliott handily led the final five laps, continuing the lead that he assumed on lap 262, with Kurt Busch unable to keep up. Although Brad Keselowski wrecked on the penultimate lap, NASCAR elected to keep the race green which enabled Elliott to pull away.

The Busch/Truex duo was not the only Toyota drivers to suffer on pit road as fellow JGR driver Denny Hamlin, who led 114 laps, lost six spots on a slow stop though he was able to salvage a top ten. Hamlin’s employee and Kurt Busch’s partner Bubba Wallace, whose strong performances have disappeared multiple times throughout the season due to pit crew struggles, helplessly watched his top ten pace be repaid with an improperly tightened wheel that forced him to pit again; after making up lost ground, he was pinned a lap down when a caution came out while pitting, forcing him to once again work his way back up before settling for twelfth.

Other victims of pit strategy or errors came in the Ford camp as Kevin Harvick also pitted prior to the last restart, though he was able to get a top ten; crew chief Rodney Childers later tweeted at a fan who said he should have stayed out, “No shit Sherlock”. Chris Buescher‘s right-rear wheel came off on track on lap 255, which will result in his crew chief Scott Graves and the  tyre changer being suspended four races.

As his opponents dropped, Elliott was in position to win. By the end, he had won his fifteenth career Cup race.

The 29th Forest County Potawatomi Brush Run was marred by rain that fell upon Crandon International Off-Road Raceway. Such conditions were favourable for the four-wheel-drive Pro 4 trucks compared to their Pro 2 counterparts, and C.J. Greaves took advantage of the slipping and sliding to win the Brush Run for the first time.

Pro 4 trucks swept the podium as Greaves was joined by Kyle LeDuc and father Johnny Greaves. Although the fifteen-truck Pro 2 grid received a head start of approximately thirty seconds, the weather allowed the five Pro 4 entries to quickly gain momentum. The younger Greaves beat his dad to the holeshot and did not take long to catch the Pro 2s. As scattered showers continued around the track, Greaves and LeDuc picked their ways through the order before the former developed a comfortable margin over his rival after LeDuc attempted an overtake on Zac Zakowski that failed.

Greaves cleared the Pro 2 of Mickey Thomas, who won his class’ Championship Off-Road race earlier in the day and beat Saturday victor Cory Winner for the holeshot, at the halfway point. Despite LeDuc and Johnny Greaves getting by Thomas and fellow Pro 4 opponent Kyle Chaney, they were too far back as Greaves won by over five seconds.

“(Family and friends) tuned in to a chaotic Cup race. I mean, it lived up to the name,” remarked LeDuc. “It wasn’t in favour of the Pro 2s with all the rain, but we fought through it. As soon as I passed Mickey Thomas, the last Pro 2, I ran out of tear-offs so I was holding my visor up.

The win completes a strong weekend for Greaves after claiming the Pro Lite race on Saturday and the Pro 4 event earlier on Sunday.

Robert Wickens is a race winner once again.

The Canadian, whose rising career came to a sudden halt when he was paralysed in a scary NTT IndyCar Series wreck at Pocono in 2018, made his racing return in the 2022 IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge TCR with Bryan Herta Autosport. In the fifth race of his IMSA rookie campaign at Watkins Glen International on Saturday, Wickens and team-mate Mark Wilkins kept the KMW Motorsports Veloce of Roy Block and Tim Lewis Jr. at bay for their first win of the season.

Wickens, who started third in the TCR class, ran the first hour before switching out with Wilkins. His fellow Canadian faced the brunt of Lewis’ charges in the closing minutes but the Herta team was ultimately successful.

“First win with hand controls, it’s an amazing experience,” said Wickens in a video posted by Watkins Glen. “Mark did a great job. Lot of pressure at the end, but it was an awesome result.

“[…] It almost feels like a home race for us.”

South Boston Speedway might be in Virginia, but one might think it was a bar in Boston, Massachusetts as the Superstar Racing Experience‘s maiden trip to the four-tenths-mile oval saw many drivers angry at each other for on-track run-ins. One of them was Tony Stewart, whose contact with Ernie Francis Jr. under caution during Heat #2 led to a confrontation profane interview before the final. Even when Stewart walked away with the trophy and his third SRX win, he still called out his peers.

In a post-race interview released by SRX, Stewart described the race as having a “lot of hurt feelings, a lot of tore-up race cars, a lot of stuff that we just can’t explain why things happen tonight. Definitely looking forward to getting to Stafford next weekend, having a family talk with all the drivers about etiquette and how we’re gonna do this better than what we’ve done the first two weeks this year. We can do better than what we’re doing.”

Stewart and Francis had engaged in a shouting and grabbing match after the second heat race following their bumping under yellow. Although the two were spotted sharing a laugh prior to the final and Stewart gave his praises for Francis’ career in his interview with CBS Sports, he added he is “way more talented than doing the stupid shit he just did out there and that’s probably what ticked me off the most. I try to race these guys all with respect and give them room, we’ve got cars we’ve got to run the next four weeks in a row, and to have guys make stupid mistakes, it just pisses you off.”

While Stewart got the last laugh as he held off fellow ex-NASCAR Cup Series opponents Greg Biffle and Bobby Labonte for his first win on pavement, the main stories continued to be the frustration between various drivers. Francis said he was “not going to take that from [Stewart]” and described his conduct as being the “kind of stuff Paul Tracy does.”

Although Francis and Tracy did not mix it up, the latter had his own feud during that heat when he was spun by Hélio Castroneves. Tracy, who controversially lost the 2002 Indianapolis 500 to Castroneves, proclaimed he would call the Brazilian “Castro” in reference to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro before adding, “This guy loves to steal wins from me. That’s about as dirty as you can ever get. I drive rough but that was dirty.”

On Saturday, Justin Allgaier put up the best performance by a #7 in Nashville since Billy Volek’s 426-yard, four-touchdown performance at the nearby Nissan Stadium on 13 December 2004 as he won both stages and led 134 of 188 laps to take the NASCAR Xfinity Series‘ Tennessee Lottery 250 at Nashville Superspeedway.

The win is Allgaier’s second of 2022 and his first at Nashville, which returned to the schedule in 2021 (where he placed runner-up to Kyle Busch) after he had made six starts between 2009 and 2011. He described his #7 JR Motorsports car on Saturday as one of the best he had driven, arguing he did not “think ever” that he had a better machine.

“What a heck of a race,” he continued. “We’ve been coming here for a long time, and I love this race track. Been trying to get a win so bad and hadn’t been able to do it.

“Today was like a dirt race. It was slick, it was hot, we were sliding around. I’ve got a guitar to take home, and we’re going to enjoy it.”

While Allgaier stomped the field, Sheldon Creed, Joe Graf Jr., and Jeb Burton got stomped in a crash on lap 124. Other incidents included Josh Berry who spun with contact from Ryan Preece and Sam Mayer and Ty Gibbs‘ beef returning as they collided, though all but Berry would finish in the top ten.

Daniel Lloyd assumed the role of ‘Prince of Croft’ as he added another BTCC race win doubling up at the only track that the Huddersfield driver has won at during his time in the championship. This in a one-two with team-mate Tom Ingram for Bristol Street Motors with EXCELR8 TradePriceCars.com.

Lloyd led from the front in Race Two including through a safety car period which saw James ‘Jiggy’ Gornall who had a good start to the weekend unravel and go into the barrier after Clervaux. It was his teammate who was doing the main attacking with Ingram dispatching Dan Rowbottom before setting his sights on Colin Turkington.

He took the scalp of his fellow Drivers’ Championship contender into second with Turkington holding the final podium spot to do as he usually does in terms of banking big points to keep the momentum up.

Finishing ahead of his teammate, Jake Hill and Rowbottom with Ash Sutton again banking good points ahead of Rory Butcher in sixth and seventh. Tom Chilton secured a second successive top ten finish behind Aiden Moffat with Stephen Jelley and Josh Cook finishing inside the top 11.

But it was the display of Gordon Shedden which gained acclaim with the Honda surging from the back to P12 and he was rewarded with reverse grid pole.

Another piece of silly-season is complete, as Pierre Gasly has been announced as a Scuderia AlphaTauri driver for a further year. The Frenchman signed a contract extension on Friday which’ll see him remain with the side for 2023.

Gasly has been with AlphaTauri for five years already, making his decision to stay with the side who he’s experienced plenty of success with as predictable. It was rumoured that Gasly was disappointed not to have been re-signed by Oracle Red Bull Racing, who extended Sergio Pérez’ contract by another two-years.

Gasly’s signature means another seat for next season is taken, as the race to make the 2023 grid intensifies. Since going back to AlphaTauri halfway through 2019, the French driver has performed magnificently. He claimed his first victory at the 2020 Italian Grand Prix with the team, and has also stepped foot on the podium multiple times.

The 26-year-old is delighted to remain with the team he knows so well, as he looks towards the future.

“I have been with this team for five years now and I am proud of the journey we’ve been through together and the progress we have made. I’m happy to remain with my Scuderia AlphaTauri team. This year’s new regulations have created new challenges for us and being able to plan our development with the team for the next 18 months is a good working basis for the future.”  

The McLaren F1 Team endured a challenging Canadian Grand Prix, where the British team left without a point after Daniel Ricciardo finished eleventh; Lando Norris finished fifteenth.

Any chance of a points finish quickly vanished during a Virtual Safety Car during the race, where the team botched up an attempt at a double-stack. This hurt both drivers races, who were struggling for pace as it was.

McLaren Team Principal, Andreas Seidl, believes the team didn’t give Norris or Ricciardo “the package they deserved” in Canada. Both struggled across the weekend, leaving the team scratching their heads ahead of the British Grand Prix.

Seidl is hopeful they can come back stronger for their home race, in order to make up for ground lost in Canada.

“A very disappointing Sunday afternoon for us here in Montréal. It’s been a tough weekend in general, with the car lacking pace, having reliability issues and suffering an operational issue in the double-shuffle pitstop during the Virtual Safety Car period. We have to acknowledge our competitors did a better job and therefore we didn’t deserve points today.

Daniel Ricciardo was top McLaren F1 Team driver at the recent Canadian Grand Prix, however, the Australian still managed to finish outside the points at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

It was a disappointing race for Ricciardo, who did well to qualify in the top ten. Unfortunately for the 32-year-old, Ricciardo struggled for pace during the race resulting in an eleventh-place finish.

Ricciardo was slightly frustrated after the Grand Prix, leaving Canada knowing that there are many areas to be improved on.

“Unfortunately, not the best Sunday for us. We simply didn’t have the pace, and then had to manage a few other things as well. That was tough, it just put us too far out of contention. So, otherwise, we’ve got to have a look, see where we can go better, and then just clean a few things up.”

“We’ve got work to do” – Lando Norris

Lando Norris had a race and a weekend to forget, after a dismal Qualifying was rounded-off with a fifteenth-place finish in Montreal. The Brit struggled to overtake during the race, resulting in Norris’ pace being lower than his potential.

Since moving up to the Pro 2 class in 2019, Cory Winner frequently came up just short as he racked up class podiums across multiple series including Lucas Oil and Championship Off-Road, but was never able to be on the top step. He finally got that monkey off his back when he dominated the COR Saturday race at Crandon International Raceway, leading all but the first two laps to score his maiden Pro 2 victory.

The opening scramble saw local Keegan Kincaid with the early advantage as he led the first lap with Winner in tow. Winner chased him down for two circuits before clearing him on the outside line as lap three commenced. Mechanical trouble forced Kincaid to pit and ended his chances of vying with Winner, leaving Jerett Brooks as the main pursuer. However, Brooks faced his own battle for second with Ryan Beat, which allowed Winner to build a cushion between them. By the end, Winner had a six-second margin over Beat.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been up here,” remarked Winner on the podium. “It’s crazy. I’m just speechless right now. We’ve been chasing guys like Jerett and Ryan for like the last two, three years in Pro Lite and Pro 2. I just had to get turn one clean, that’s all that was going through my mind, and once I got behind Keegan, I knew I couldn’t let him go because this is his hometown track and he’ll run away. Luckily, I was just trying to follow what he was doing, and I found a couple of things that worked for me and made my move, got around. Great spotting by Jesse (Heise) kept me calm, kept me consistent, telling me which lines to do like I’ve been doing and just not make any mistakes.

“I’m just so toned to get this first win here at the Big House.”

The win is also the first in COR for Winner’s engine provider Roush Performance, a name longtime associated with NASCAR and newcomer to the series who is building motors for Winner, Brooks, and Kincaid. Brooks won Roush’s maiden event in the exhibition Duel of Champions ahead of the season-opening weekend at Antigo Lions Roaring Raceway. Roush first dipped its feet into short course by sponsoring an iRacing off-road series.

Marcos Flack took his first GB3 Championship podium in Race 3 at Snetterton on Sunday, coming home second for Douglas Motorsport.

The Checkered Flag spoke to one of the team’s two Australian drivers after the podium celebrations.

“I’m very happy. To get a podium, even though it’s a Race 3 podium, I’m quite happy and hopefully we can build on this going into the next round.”

Flack is dovetailing his GB3 campaign with ADAC F4 outings and a full Italian F4 season; we asked him about the challenges of adapting to different cars so often.

“It can be quite difficult coming to some tracks,” he said.

Mikkel Grundtvig took his fifth GB3 Championship win at Snetterton on Sunday afternoon, coming out on top in yet another reverse-grid race.

Polesitter Grundtvig made a great start, while Cian Shields alongside him made a horrific one and fell way behind the field.

Branden Oxley was spun out at the Wilson hairpin and brought out the safety car, neutralising the race almost as soon as it had begun.

Cian Shields limped back to the pits with a mechanical issue, likely explaining the start where his Hitech GP car just didn’t get going.

Race 1 winner Callum Voisin set the fastest lap from the restart while in P19, while his Carlin team-mates Roberto Faria and Javier Sagrera nearly collided at Wilson just past half-distance.

Daniel Lloyd produced the goods to begin Sunday’s proceedings at Croft with Round 13 of the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) heading the way of the local hero in an emotional victory for the Bristol Street Motors with EXCELR8 Trade Price Cars.com driver.

From third on the grid, he launched past Dan Rowbottom into Clervaux and nipped past Colin Turkington before the end of the first lap before soaking up pressure from the Team BMW driver with both having a herculean effort to get back onto the grid in the first place.

After both being caught up in a horror crash at Oulton Park which saw Turkington’s BMW rebuilt and Lloyd having to attain extra sponsorship to stay on the grid after receiving a huge damage bill, they both ended up being the cream of the crop with Lloyd sealing his first win in four years.

Rowbottom completed the podium places holding off Tom Ingram for the full duration, while Jake Hill, Ash Sutton, Rory Butcher and Aiden Moffat chased down the Hyundai of Ingram throughout the race. While Car Gods with Ciceley Motorsport’s George Gamble and the third Hyundai of Tom Chilton rounded out the top ten.

2022 British Touring Car Championship – Race 1 – Croft

Javier Sagrera took his first podium of the 2022 GB3 Championship season in Race 2 at Snetterton on Sunday morning, coming home third behind Luke Browning and Joel Granfors.

The Spaniard joined Carlin from Elite Motorsport in the off-season; today’s result means all three of the Teams’ Champions’ drivers have now secured a podium this year.

Carlin also lead this season’s Teams’ Championship by 16 points from Hitech GP after 11 races.

Sagrera spoke to The Checkered Flag after collecting his first silverware of the season.

“It’s been a very tough season up until now, so I think we deserved that more than anyone,” he said.

Luke Browning withstood race-long pressure from title rival Joel Granfors to win the second GB3 Championship race at Snetterton on Sunday morning.

That pair finished where they started, with Matthew Rees, Tom Lebbon and Callum Voisin lining up third through fifth.

Everyone made it through Riches cleanly, despite Tom Lebbon having a huge lock-up into Turn 2.

Javier Sagrera made a great start and ended the second lap in third place, just behind Browning and Granfors.

Browning had to defend into Turn 2 on Lap 2 as Granfors searched for a way into the lead.