Hornish Jr. cruises to IRL victory
Sam Hornish Jr. said he’s only been this good once before.
Hornish blew by teammate Helio Castroneves early in the race Saturday night and had no trouble with anybody else as he dominated the SunTrust Indy Challenge in Richmond, Va.
“The only other place I can think of that I felt like we had that dominant of a car was Miami in 2002,” said Hornish, who was hardly challenged in the final 212 laps.
In Miami, he had every car in the field a lap down at one point; on Saturday night, only five others finished on the lead lap in a race that took just 1 hour, 28 minutes. His average speed of 129.5 mph was an IRL record at Richmond.
Hornish won for the first time since he took his first Indianapolis 500 on May 28.
NASCAR Busch
Paul Menard took advantage of a mistake by Jason Leffler, then held on through mayhem in the closing laps to win the NASCAR Busch Series AT&T 250 at the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wis.
Kevin Harvick challenged Menard for the lead immediately after a restart with three laps to go, shoving the nose of his car under Menard’s rear bumper as they ran through Turn 2.
But Menard managed to keep his Chevrolet pointed in a straight line – and Harvick was booted from behind by J.J. Yeley, touching off a massive pileup.
The accident forced the race into NASCAR’s version of overtime, as officials added a two-lap green-flag sprint to the finish. Menard got a clean restart and held on for the victory.
NASCAR Nextel Cup
Kurt Busch is finding his comfort zone at Penske Racing South, and that could be bad news for the rest of NASCAR’s Nextel Cup competitors.
The 2004 Nextel Cup champion heads into today’s Dodge/Save Mart 350 in Sonoma, Calif., on the road course at Infineon Raceway 16th in the standings and 187 points away from the 10th-place cutoff for the 10-race stock car postseason run.
“We like to think we’re in kind of the same position as Matt Kenseth was last year when he made a great run and got into the Chase after a not-so-great start,” said Busch, who got the weekend off to a strong start by winning his first road course pole.
After the first 15 races last year, Kenseth, Busch’s former Roush Racing teammate, was 21st and trailing 10th-place Kevin Harvick by 281 points.
Formula One
Fernando Alonso won his fifth consecutive Formula One pole, setting himself up for a strong run in today’s Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal that could widen his lead in the world championship standings.
Alonso’s Renault had a time of 1 minute, 14.942 seconds. Giancarlo Fisichella, his teammate, qualified second.
Champ Car
A.J. Allmendinger, the only American driver in the Champ Car series, helped celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Grand Prix of Cleveland by setting a track record.
Allmendinger won the pole for today’s race with a lap of 56.283 seconds at a speed of 134.705 mph. Jimmy Vasser had held the qualifying record of 56.417 seconds and 134.385 mph since 1998.
Sebastien Bourdais will start alongside Allmendinger.