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Scott Speed completes Red Bull GRC title three-peat in L.A.

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Scott Speed has won his third consecutive Red Bull Global Rallycross championship for Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross, at the Port of Los Angeles, on a day when teammate Tanner Foust forced the issue with a perfect day of his own to win the 12th and final round of the season, and capped off a three-race win streak to end the year.

Speed is the first three-time champion in Red Bull GRC history, breaking a tie between he and Foust on two.

“The whole week leading up to the race was thinking about the what if’s. My hat’s off. I have the best team out here. It’s a team effort; I’m probably the smallest part to do with this!” Speed told NBC’s Will Christien post-race.

Speed entered the weekend with a 30-point lead over Foust and executed a clean, major drama-free day through the preliminary races before the 10-lap Supercars final.

Foust won all three heat races before the semifinals. Speed ended second, third and fourth in the three heats, which were lower results than he might have expected. In the first heat, the third driver still mathematically eligible for the title, Steve Arpin, got eliminated.

In the semifinals, Foust won semifinal one, which brought the gap down to 14 points to Speed before the second semifinal. Speed won the second semifinal, rebounding from contact with Chris Atkinson’s Subaru off the start and then using the Joker to pass Patrik Sandell and Sebastian Eriksson in one fell swoop on the fourth of six laps. That brought the gap back up to 24 points going into the final (781-757), and with Foust needing to win and have Speed end ninth or lower to overcome the gap.

Cabot Bigham had the opportunity to play spoiler for Bryan Herta Rallysport, starting on the outside of Speed and Foust on the front row going into the final. Foust, Sandell and Bigham moved into the top three positions through the opening corners with Speed falling back to fourth.

Foust controlled the race from there en route to the flag over Speed, who used the Joker to pass Sandell for second on the final lap. He ended 19 points behind, unofficially, with Arpin in third.

With his 16th career win, Foust regained the lead in all-time GRC finals wins. “The key is qualifying, so the battle was getting that done. We snuck that from Scott. There was a glimmer of hope. We made it through the heats and actually had a chance to win if Scott was eighth or less. We were hungry for it! I thought he might get caught up a bit. I’m so happy for our team on the Rockstar and Andretti tent. We had a tough Atlantic City but won everything since. Hopefully we’ll carry some of that for next year to make it even faster and better,” Foust told Christien.

Follow @TonyDiZinno