All Nemechek
The biggest gripe about NASCAR’s new 10-man Chase for the Nextel Cup championship was that the drivers not in the title battle would be ignored.
Nobody could ignore Joe Nemechek on Sunday after he held off Ricky Rudd to win the Banquet 400 and finish off a weekend sweep at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan.
“The guys in the championship chase have more to lose than we do,” Nemechek said. “We’re on the offense, not on defense.”
This one was almost as close as his half car-length victory over Greg Biffle in the Busch Series event Saturday, with Nemechek and Rudd racing side-by-side and bumping once with a lap to go before Nemechek took control again and beat Rudd to the finish by 0.081 seconds – about 1 1/4 car-lengths.
Nemechek, who did a backward victory lap on the 1 1/2 -mile oval to honor the memory of his brother, John, killed in a truck race in Homestead, Fla., in 1997, was relieved to win after nearly getting too conservative at the end.
“There at the end I was trying to save gas and here comes Ricky Rudd out of nowhere,” Nemechek said. “I was like, ‘Holy Moley.’ I had to get back on it. He got beside me one time, but I wasn’t going to let it happen.”
Rudd raced to only his second top-10 finish of the year, both coming since being reunited with crew chief Michael “Fatback” McSwain in August.
It was Nemechek’s fourth career victory and first since May 2003 at Richmond. It is the first time since the championship battle began last month at New Hampshire that one of the title contenders has not won.
Biffle finished third, followed by Sadler, Mayfield and Kurt Busch, who came into the race with a 12-point lead over Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the Nextel Cup standings and finished leading Earnhardt, who finished ninth, by 29 points.
Formula One
Michael Schumacher asserted his authority in Formula One again with his 13th victory of the season but first since August.
The seven-time world champion captured the Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka, Japan, which was run in sunshine after days of rain and a typhoon threat.
Schumacher, with 83 career victories, clinched the drivers’ title by finishing second at the Belgian GP behind Kimi Raikkonen and had gone winless since the Hungarian Grand Prix.
He was 14 seconds ahead of brother Ralf, who finished the 53 laps on the 3.6-mile circuit in second place in a Williams-BMW.
“I had Ralf in my mirrors for quite a while,” Michael said.
BAR-Honda had Jenson Button and Takuma Sato in third and fourth to nearly clinch second in the team standings.
NHRA
Tony Schumacher clinched the Top Fuel NHRA championship at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway in Mohnton, Pa., for his second series title.
Schumacher, the 1999 champion, earned a $400,000 bonus for the season crown.
He officially claimed the championship when he defeated Brandon Bernstein in the second round of eliminations, clocking a convincing 4.467 second run at 324.36 mph. Doug Kalitta, No. 2 in the points chase, was mathematically eliminated from contention when he lost to Rhonda Hartman-Smith in the same round.