Supercross: Eli Tomac, Chase Sexton win Arlington Triple Crown

By Feb 23, 2020, 12:42 AM EST
0 Comments

Eli Tomac and Ken Roczen battled handlebar-to-handlebar in what may be a preview for the remainder of the 2020 season in the 450 class of Monster Energy Supercross. Meanwhile, Chase Sexton and Shane McElrath did precisely the same thing in 250s in the second Triple Crown race of the year.

Tomac got off to a slow start. Riding well outside the top 10 on the first lap of Main 1, he worked hard to get to fifth at the checkers. He had a much better start in the second race in route to victory. In the third Main of the Triple Crown format, he split the difference and started fifth, setting up one of the most dramatic finishes of the year.

“Jason (Anderson) was in second there and the way the points were falling I was like, ‘Gosh dangit, I’m going to be third overall right now,’ ” Tomac said on NBCSN after the race. “My main focus was just going forward.”

Tomac rode down Roczen and then set his sights on the 2018 champion Jason Anderson. Neither rider would give up their positions easily and Tomac was forced to pass each of them multiple times. In the end, his 5-1-1 was enough for the overall win. It is his fourth win of the season and the second consecutive on the heels of his Tampa victory.

Roczen got off to a great start. After sweeping the Mains at Glendale in the first Triple Crown of the year, he won the first race at Dallas to go four-for-four. Roczen finished 1-7-2 for second overall. He sits second in the points, seven behind Tomac.

“I physically didn’t feel all that great,” Roczen said afterward. “I’m glad that in the last race I was able to put up a good fight. Me and Eli were going back and forth there for a while, but I made a mistake and he went back by.”

Anderson had a shot at the overall win, for his first victory since his championship season. He entered the third Main with a one point advantage, took the lead halfway through the race from Zach Osborne, but couldn’t hold Tomac at bay. With time running off the clock, he jumped wide and crashed. Finishing with 3-2-5, he was scored third overall.

“I haven’t been out front in a long time,” Anderson said. “It’s probably been since 2018. Riding out front: I feel good, but at the same time I’m a little bit hesitant there. I just need to keep doing it race after race and give myself the opportunity (to win the championship).”

Justin Barcia (4-5-4) and Osborne (7-4-3) rounded out the top five.

The championship was impacted by a pair of injuries.

Cooper Webb finished second in the first race and was running second in Main 2 when he buried his front wheel in the Dragons’ Back and was catapulted over the handlebars. He landed hard on the concrete. Webb was transported to a local hospital and failed to start Main 3. He finished 12th overall.

The news was worse for Adam Cianciarulo. He also crashed on the Dragon’s Back in practice and broke his left collarbone. Cianciarulo will be out of contention for at least a few weeks.

Overall Results | Points

The Arlington Triple Crown was a preview of what to expect for the remainder of the 250 East championship.

In the third Main of the night, Shane McElrath grabbed the hole shot and rode to a comfortable lead – beating Chase Sexton to the checkers. McElrath won the battle, but Sexton won the war.

With a 2-1-2, Sexton edged McElrath by one point. McElrath scored a 3-2-1 and on the cool down lap, the two title contenders took a moment to bump fists before heading to the podium.

“It’s always great getting a win, but I didn’t want the same thing to happen as happened last year,” Sexton said on NBCSN after the race. “I had to stop (McElrath) and put myself out there to show him I’m here to play and I think I did that tonight.”

McElrath’s win last week and Sexton’s victory at Dallas means the two riders will both head to Atlanta next week with a red plate firmly affixed to the front of their bikes.

“I tried a little too hard in the first two,” McElrath said after the race. “I had some silly mistakes and bad starts.”

Meanwhile, RJ Hampshire delivered a message to the competition. He will do what it takes to grab every position on the track. In route to winning the first Main, Hampshire cleaned out the leader Sexton. In the third Main, Hampshire rode into the side of Jordon Smith as they challenged for third. If not for a bad start in the second Main, Hampshire would have challenged for the overall win.

His aggression paid off with a third-place finish overall with a 1-6-3.

Jeremy Martin finished 5-3-4 for a fourth overall with Garrett Marchbanks (6-4-5) finishing fifth.

Overall Results | Points

450s

Main 1: Ken Roczen wants to be the 2020 champion and what better way is there to establish that than by beating the last two champions. … Roczen picked up where he left off in the last Triple Crown event; he swept all three Mains in Glendale and now has four straight. … Webb followed him across the line about three seconds back. … Jason Anderson  was another second and a half behind. … Justin Barcia finished fourth. … Eli Tomac got off to another miserable start. He crossed the finish line 13th on Lap 1 and was forced to come from the back. He climbed to ninth with 6:43 to go, was sixth with 3:20 remaining and climbed into the top five with 2:45 to go. … Justin Brayton and Martin Davalos had top-five positions in hand before they crashed. Brayton finished 15th; Davalos 11th. | Results

Main 2: Eli Tomac got a much better start in the second Main. He took the lead on Lap 1 and never looked back. … Jason Anderson grabbed second halfway through the race and kept Tomac in sight, but finished 3.3 seconds behind. He had the overall lead at the time by 1 point. … Justin Hill scored an emotional podium in third. … Zach Osborne and Justin Barcia rounded out the top five. … After a bad start when he pulled the wheel up slightly and fell to 10th, Ken Roczen recovered to finish seventh. … The story of the race was a tragedy; riding fourth when time ran off the clock, Cooper Webb landed on his front wheel on the Dragon’s Back. He was catapulted off his bike and landed hard on his back on the cement. | Results

Main 3: After getting a bad start in the first Main and a great start in the second, Eli Tomac split the difference in Main 3. He started around fifth but had the best riders in front of him. Tomac sliced through the pack and survived seesaw battles with Ken Roczen for third and then Jason Anderson for the lead. … Roczen slipped into second when Anderson went down with one lap remaining. … Zach Osborne got the holeshot before fading to third. … Justin Barcia rounded out the top five. … With two laps remaining Anderson went down the whoops; he finished fifth. | Results

250s

Main 1: The first Main was a slugfest. Chase Sexton stalked RJ Hampshire and caught him with 5:12 remaining. Sexton got around Hampshire clean, but one lap later Hampshire cleaned Sexton out. … Sexton fell a few positions, but charged back to second. … The battle shifted to Shane McElrath, who punted Jordon Smith off course with two minutes remaining. … McElrath finished fourth with Smith holding on for fourth. … Jeremy Martin rounded out the top five.  | Results

Main 2: Chase Sexton decided it was best to not allow any rider to get close to him in the second Main. He shot out to a huge start and built a more than 10 second lead with two minutes remaining on the clock. … Shane McElrath stayed out of drama in the second Main as well. He passed Joey Crown midway through the event and held onto second. … Jeremy Martin took the last spot on the podium with Garrett Marchbanks finishing fourth. … The rookie Crown had a great showing. As high as second in the opening laps, he faded at the checkers, but still had a solid fifth-place showing. … The winner of the first Main had a bad start. RJ Hampshire was 15th on Lap 1. He charged through the field and nipped Joshua Hill at the line for sixth to keep his hopes for an overall win alive. | Results

Main 3: Shane McElrath grabbed the lead early and held on to the checkers, slowly extending his lead over Chase Sexton in second. … Once gain RJ Hampshire provided the drama. After dumping Sexton in the first Main as the two battled for the lead, he rode into the side of Jordon Smith halfway through this race and stole third. … Jeremy Martin and Garrett Marchbanks rounded out the top five. | Results

Next race: February 29, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta.

Season passes can be purchased at NBC Sports Gold.

Follow Dan Beaver on Twitter

Strong rebounds for Alex Palou, Chip Ganassi amid some disappointments in the Indy 500

By May 28, 2023, 10:00 PM EDT
0 Comments

INDIANAPOLIS – Alex Palou had not turned a wheel wrong the entire Month of May at the Indy 500 until Rinus VeeKay turned a wheel into the Chip Ganassi Racing pole-sitter leaving pit road on Lap 94.

“There is nothing I could have done there,” Palou told NBC Sports. “It’s OK, when it is my fault or the team’s fault because everybody makes mistakes. But when there is nothing, you could have done differently there, it feels bad and feels bad for the team.”

Marcus Ericsson was a master at utilizing the “Tail of the Dragon” move that breaks the draft of the car behind him in the closing laps to win last year’s Indianapolis 500. On Sunday, however, the last of three red flags in the final 16 laps of the race had the popular driver from Sweden breathing fire after Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden beat him at his own game on the final lap to win the Indianapolis 500.

Despite the two disappointments, team owner Chip Ganassi was seen on pit road fist-bumping a member on his four-car team in this year’s Indianapolis 500 after his drivers finished second, fourth, sixth and seventh in the tightly contested race.

Those are pretty good results, but at the Indianapolis 500, there is just one winner and 32 losers.

“There is only one winner, but it was a hell of a show,” three-time Indianapolis 500 winner and Chip Ganassi Racing consultant Dario Franchitti told NBC Sports. “Alex was very fast, and he got absolutely caught out in somebody else’s wreck. There was nothing he could have done, but he and the 10 car, great recovery.

“Great recovery by all four cars because at half distance, we were not looking very good.”

After 92 laps, the first caution flew for Sting Ray Robb of Dale Coyne Racing hitting the Turn 1 wall.

During pit stops on Lap 94, Palou had left his stall when the second-place car driven by VeeKay ran into him, putting Palou’s Honda into the wall. The car sustained a damaged front wing, but the Chip Ganassi crew was able to get him back in the race on the lead lap but in 28th position.

Palou ultimately would fight his way to a fourth-place finish in a race the popular Spaniard could have won. His displeasure with VeeKay, whom he sarcastically called “a legend” on his team radio after the incident, was evident.

“The benefit of being on pole is you can drive straight and avoid crashes, and he was able to crash us on the side on pit lane, which is pretty tough to do, but he managed it,” Palou told NBC Sports. “Hopefully next year we are not beside him. Hopefully, next year we have a little better luck.”

Palou started on the pole and led 36 laps, just three fewer than race leader Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren Racing.

“We started really well, was managing the fuel as we wanted, our car was pretty good,” Palou said. “Our car wasn’t great, we dropped to P4 or P5, but we still had some good stuff.

“On the pit stop, the 21 (VeeKay) managed to clip us. Nothing we could have done there. It was not my team’s fault or my fault.

“We had to drop to the end. I’m happy we made it back to P4. We needed 50 more laps to make it happen, but it could have been a lot worse after that contact.

“I learned a lot, running up front at the beginning and in mid-pack and then the back. I learned a lot.

“It feels amazing when you win it and not so good when things go wrong. We were a bit lucky with so many restarts at the end to make it back to P4 so I’m happy with that.”

Palou said the front wing had to be changed and the toe-in was a bit off, but he still had a fast car.

In fact, his Honda was the best car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway all month. His pole-winning four lap average speed of 234.217 miles per hour around the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway was a record for this fabled race.

Palou looked good throughout the race, before he had to scratch and claw and race his way back to the top-five after he restarted 28th.

In the Indianapolis 500, however, the best car doesn’t always win.

“It’s two years in a row that we were leading the race at the beginning and had to drop to last,” Palou said. “Maybe next year, we will start in the middle of the field and go on to win the race.

“I know he didn’t do it on purpose. It’s better to let that pass someday.”

Palou said the wild racing at the end was because the downforce package used in Sunday’s race means the drivers have to be aggressive. The front two cars can battle for the victory, but cars back in fourth or fifth place can’t help determine the outcome of the race.

That is when the “Tail of the Dragon” comes into the play.

Franchitti helped celebrate Ericsson’s win in 2022 with his “Tail of the Dragon” zigzag move – something he never had to do in any of his three Indianapolis 500 victories because they all finished under caution.

In 2023, however, IndyCar Race Control wants to make every attempt to finish the race under green, without going past the scheduled distance like NASCAR’s overtime rule.

Instead of extra laps, they stop the race with a red flag, to create a potential green-flag finish condition.

“You do what you have to do to win within the rules, and it’s within the rules, so you do it,” Franchitti said. “The race is 200 laps and there is a balance.

“Marcus did a great job on that restart and so did Josef. It was just the timing of who was where and that was it.

“If you knew it was going to go red, you would have hung back on the lap before.

“Brilliant job by the whole Ganassi organization because it wasn’t looking very good at half-distance.

“Full marks to Josef Newgarden and Team Penske.”

Franchitti is highly impressed by how well Ericsson works with CGR engineer Brad Goldberg and how close this combination came to winning the Indianapolis 500 two-years-in-a-row.

It would have been the first back-to-back Indy 500 winner since Helio Castroneves in 2001 and 2002.

“Oh, he’s a badass,” Franchitti said Ericsson. “He proved it last year. He is so calm all day. What more do you need? As a driver, he’s fast and so calm.”

Ericsson is typically in good spirits and jovial.

He was stern and direct on pit road after the race.

“I did everything right, I did an awesome restart, caught Josef off-guard and pulled away,” Ericsson said on pit lane. “It’s hard to pull away a full lap and he got me back.

“I’m mostly disappointed with the way he ended. I don’t think it was fair and safe to do that restart straight out of the pits on cold tires for everyone.

“To me, it was not a good way to end that race.

“Congrats to Josef. He didn’t do anything wrong. He is a worthy champion, but it shouldn’t have ended like that.”

Palou also didn’t understand the last restart, which was a one-start showdown.

“I know that we want to finish under green,” Palou said. “Maybe the last restart I did, I didn’t understand. It didn’t benefit the CGR team.

“I’m not very supportive of the last one, but anyway.”

Dixon called the red flags “a bit sketchy.”

“The red flags have become a theme to the end of the race, but sometimes they can catch you out,” Dixon said. “I know Marcus is frustrated with it.

“All we ask for is consistency. I think they will do better next time.

“It’s a tough race. People will do anything they can to win it and with how these reds fall, you have to be in the right place at the right time. The problem is when they throw a Red or don’t throw a Red dictates how the race will end.

“It’s a bloody hard race to win. Congrats to Josef Newgarden and to Team Penske.”

Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500