Jamie McMurray (Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates)
(Charlotte, NC)–The stick and ball sports have their mid-season all-star games and so does NASCAR. Neither of Missouri’s drivers, Joplin native Jamie McMurray and Columbia’s Carl Edwards, didn’t even come close to the million dollar check that went to eventually winner Denny Hamlin in Saturday night’s race in Charlotte.
McMurray finished 16th in the final after running 12th, 14th, 11th, and 15th in the four preliminary stages.
Edwards was 17th in the final ten-lap segment after starting slowly with 15th and 17th place finishes in the first two legs and improving to eighth and sixth places in the second two.
McMurray won the race last year. Edwards won the 2011 race and pocketed the biggest paycheck in event history, $1,203,000. Hamlin earned about $1.045 million Saturday nigtht.
McMurray, Edwards, and the other top NASCAR drivers will spend this week getting ready for the longest race in the series, next Sunday night’s 600-mile run.
(Indianapolis)—The field is set for the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” the Indianapolis 500, but a trio of crashes forced Indycar to make last-minute changes to the cars that ended the possibility of the fastest field in almost two decades.
Two-time pole winner Ed Carpenter crashed yesterday (Sunday) morning while preparing to qualify. His car flipped, landing on its side. He was not hurt. His crash was similar to two others last week as cars sorted out new aerodynamic features installed only a few days earlier. The cars of three-time winner Helio Castroneves and Josef Newgarden flipped during crashes last week.
The crashes forced Indycar to qualify with reduced turbocharger boost to engine power and with the same body configuration they will use during the race. The steps meant Scott Dixon’s pole-winning speed of 226.760 was well below the faster laps that had been turned earlier in the day. Castroneves had a practice lap of 233.474 mph, the fast lap at the track since Eddie Cheever ran 236-plus during one lap in the 1996 race.
The 99th Indianapolis 500 begins at 11:15 a.m. CST next Sunday.
