The view down pit road as rain washes out the Quicken Loans 400 at Michigan International Speedway.
By Bob Priddy, Contributing Editor
(NASCAR)—Mother Nature won at Michigan but Kurt Busch finished in first place. Rain stopped the 400-mile Cup race at Brooklyn, Michigan before Columbia driver Carl Edwards couldn’t recover from a bad pit stop to climb higher among finishers. NASCAR declared the race official after 138 of the scheduled 200 laps when a torrential downpour brought out the red flag for the fourth time.
Edwards led 42 laps and tried to stretch his fuel until the last storm hit the speedway but had to pit shortly before the deluge began. He had consistently been in the top throughout the race.
Joplin’s Jamie McMurray put together another solid run, finishing 7th and strengthening his position in the points as the top-ranking driver without a victory this year. Ten drivers, including Edwards, have at least one win this year. The top sixteen drivers in victories or in points will qualify for the final ten-race competition for the championship.
(INDYCAR)—Josef Newgarden won his second Indycar race of the year, holding off teammate Luca Filippi on the streets of Toronto. The two finished ahead of three Penske drivers who finished 3rd, 4th, and 7th. Sebastian Bourdais, who finished fifth, and Tony Kanaan, who finished sixth, broke up the Penske train of Helio Castroneves, pole-sitter Will Power, Juan Pablo Montoya.
(INDIANAPOLIS)—Six racers named Unser have driven in the Indianapolis 500. Three of them have accounted for nine wins. But the starting fields for the Indianapolis 500 dating to 1963 had never included more than two. But this weekend, FIVE Unsers drove together at the Indianapolis MoTor Speedway.
obby Unser, his father Bobby, Al Unser sr., his son Al Jr., and Johnny Unser. Al Sr., won the 500 four times. Bobby won it three times. Al Jr., won the race twice. Bobby and Al Sr., competed against each other for several years. Johnny Unser, whose father started the 1958 Indianapolis 500 and who died in a practice crash in 1959 at the Speedway, competed against Robby in one 500. The speedway says John and Robby competed in one race together. Al Sr., and Al Jr., also competed against each other. The five Unsers drove vintage cars from the Indianapolis 500 for a couple of ceremonial laps during the weekend’s activities sponsored by the Sportscar Vintage Racing Association. Theevent drew more than 500 classic racing cars, some a century old.
Johnny, Robby, and Al Jr., were among the 33 former drivers from the 500 who competed in Sunday;s Pro-Am race on the speedway’s road course. The race was won by 500 veteran Bob Lazier (whose son, Buddy, won the 500 in 1996) and amateur Jim Caudle, who co-drove a 1969 Corvette.
(LEMANS, FRANCE)—Porsche returned to the victor’s podium for the first time since1998 with a 1-2 finish in the LeMans 24-hour endurance race. The Porsch 919 Hybrid uses a lithium-ion battery and a turbocharged V-4 engine. The win also was the first victory at LeMans for the three drivers who split the time behind the wheel: NicoHulkenberg, Earl Bamber, and Nick Tandy.
The Porsche victory ended a five-year winning streak for Audi
