Auto racing: Johnson secures top seed in Chase
Jimmie Johnson locked up as his spot as the favorite for the Nextel Cup title, while Dale Earnhardt Jr. was locked out of NASCAR’s showcase event.
Johnson easily raced to his series-best sixth victory of the season, winning Saturday night at Richmond International Raceway in Richmond, Va., to shore up the top seed in the Chase for the championship. The defending Nextel Cup champion will start the 10-race title hunt on top of the standings and with the momentum of two consecutive wins to help him hold off 11 other challengers.
But NASCAR’s most popular driver won’t be one of them.
Earnhardt will watch the Chase from the sidelines for the second time in three years, failing to race his way into the event. He ran in the top three late in the race, but his fifth motor failure with just a few laps to go sealed his fate.
He finished 30th, and was clearly dejected as he shared a brief hug with crew chief Tony Eury Jr. The two are leaving Dale Earnhardt Inc. at the end of the season and will join Hendrick Motorsports.
Earnhardt started the race as the only driver mathematically eligible to race into the Chase, but the odds were stacked against him. Kevin Harvick, the driver on the bubble, had to finish 33rd or worse, combined with a flawless Earnhardt run, for Junior to make it.
Jeff Gordon, the four-time series champion, will be seeded second – just 20 points behind Johnson. Tony Stewart, the two-time series champion, will be 30 points back in third. He missed the Chase last season.
“After missing it last year, we are obviously excited to be back in,” Stewart said. “We never in our wildest dreams thought we would miss it last year, so we’re happy to be back in the Chase.”
Franchitti ready to battle for IRL title
Crashes in four straight races have left Dario Franchitti in a vulnerable position heading into the IndyCar Series season finale with his first open-wheel title in sight.
Franchitti goes into today’s PEAK Antifreeze Indy 300 at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., holding a tenuous three-point lead over Scott Dixon, the 2003 series champion who has come on strongly in the second half of the 17-race season.
The 34-year-old Scotsman won the pole, his third of the season and the sixth of his career, while Dixon qualified sixth at the suburban Chicago track.
Dixon has surged into this title chase with four wins in the last seven races, and with the help of Franchitti’s misfortunes, including crashes in the road races at Sonoma and Detroit the last two weeks.
Alonso takes pole for Italian GP
Fernando Alonso isn’t letting his team’s involvement in an ongoing spy scandal get in the way of his quest to win a third straight Formula One title.
The McLaren driver stayed focused, clinching the pole position in qualifying at Monza, Italy, for today’s Italian Grand Prix.
The two-time defending F1 champion circled the 3.6-mile circuit in 1 minute, 21.997 seconds for his second pole of the season – on the same day that Italian media reported that he submitted evidence relating to the Ferrari spy scandal to Formula One’s governing body.
Alonso’s rookie teammate Lewis Hamilton, who leads the Spaniard by five points atop the drivers’ standings, was second at 1:22.360, giving McLaren the top two starting spots for the fifth time in 13 races.
With five races left, Alonso, Hamilton, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen are separated by 16 points in the drivers’ standings.
Hamilton leads with 84 points, followed by Alonso with 79, Massa with 69, and Raikkonen with 68.