NASCAR Cup:
Denny Hamlin won the Gander RV 400 at Pocono Raceway on Sunday. It was his third win of the season and fifth at the Pennsylvania track.
Erik Jones finished second and Martin Truex Jr. third. Click here to see a full-length column about the race.
Xfinity:
Christopher Bell led all but 16 laps at Iowa Speedway on Saturday, but Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe won the U.S. Cellular 250.
Briscoe passed the Joe Gibbs Racing protege with seven to go at the short-track, giving him his first win of the season. He last won at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval nearly 10 months ago.
Bell finished second while John Hunter Nemechek came home third. Noah Gragson recovered to a P4 result after getting caught up in an Austin Cindric accident early in the race. Defending series champion Tyler Reddick rounded out the top-five.
The “Big Three” (Bell, Reddick and Cole Custer) all remain within 100 points of each other. The next closest driver is Justin Allgaier, who is 153 points behind championship leader Reddick.
The Xfinity Series will compete at three road courses over the next four weeks. It will be a support event for the NASCAR Cup Series at Watkins Glen International next weekend.
Trucks:
Ross Chastain dominated the 60-lap truck race at Pocono to earn his third win of the season. The next three finishers were Tyler Ankrum, Harrison Burton, and Christian Eckes, who all drive for Toyota.
Grant Enfinger maintains the point lead by 34 points over fifth-place finisher Brett Moffitt, but it’s clear that Chastain is the favorite for the title. Although he’s 18th in the standings, he leads the playoff grid with two races until the first postseason event at Bristol.
The series’ next stop is at the famous Eldora Speedway for the always entertaining Eldora Dirt Derby.
IndyCar:
Scott Dixon held off Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Felix Rosenqvist to win the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio. It was Dixon’s second win of 2019 and Rosenqvist’s first career IndyCar podium.
Ryan Hunter-Reay finished third while Will Power and Alexander Rossi were fourth and fifth, respectively. Championship leader Josef Newgarden ran off course and finished 14th.
Newgarden’s lead has shrunk to 16 points over Rossi, who has officially re-signed with Andretti Autosport for at least 2020. Four races remain with a 500-miler at Pocono next on the schedule.
F1:
Sunday’s German Grand Prix was a race of missed opportunities for several drivers at the rainy Hockenheimring.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc crashed on Lap 29 while running P2 behind Lewis Hamilton. The second-year F1 driver is still searching for the elusive first win of his career. One lap later, Hamilton went off-course from the lead and damaged his front wing. He finished ninth after the two Alfa Romeos were issued 30-second penalties.
Nico Hulkenberg looked like he was primed to get his first career F1 podium, but he crashed as well. He was running as high as second behind Max Verstappen before he lost control and beached his car in the gravel.
And Valtteri Bottas could have cut the deficit to Hamilton by at least 13 points if he didn’t retire. The Mercedes driver was running third before spinning out of control and hitting the barrier. Had he maintained the position to the finish, he’d be 26 points behind his teammate in the standings after entering the race 39 marks fewer. But the difference is now two points greater.
Verstappen won the race, and Sebastian Vettel finished P2 after not qualifying on Saturday. The Ferrari had an intercooler problem which forced the four-time champion to start dead-last.
Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat rounded out the podium. It was the Russian’s first since the 2016 Chinese Grand Prix. Also of note was Lance Stroll’s P4, which was the second-best result of his young F1 career and Robert Kubica earning Williams’ first point of the season with a P10 finish.
Photo: Chris Jones / INDYCAR Media
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