Morning Lap: Racing News Links
Welcome to another edition of the Morning Lap, a daily feature here at Beyond the Flag. Along with The Hub we want to bring you not only our original content but a collection of all the best racing news.
Kevin Harvick launched from seventh place on the final restart during the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond International Raceway to get out front and take the checkered flag. The No. 29 team spoiled the good showing of Juan Pablo Montoya, who led prior to the last caution.
Fourteen current Sprint Cup drivers have won at Richmond, and now Harvick, with two prior victories, is among them, taking the green flag at the .75-mile D-shaped oval with 14 degree banking.
From bleacherreport.com
In a sport where there’s one winner and 42 losers after each race, it’s all about finding positives. While it’s obvious that everyone wants to be the person who does the burnout on the front stretch before pulling into Victory Lane, top-10s or strong runs add up over the course of a season.
But what about when that doesn’t happen? What happens when teams—good, usually consistent, talented teams—aren’t finishing the way they should? While that happens every year, the 2013 season has some surprisingly big names attached to this category.
It’s not every year that champions are in the “need to improve” category.
Luckily for these drivers, their crew chiefs and the rest of their race teams, it’s still early enough in the season that they could qualify for the Chase if they can get whipped into shape.
From bleacherreport.com
In honor of the late seven-time NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt’s April 29 birthday, here are excerpts from a small group interview with “The Intimidator” on Oct. 11, 1997 — the afternoon before the annual Talladega Superspeedway fall Cup race and four months before his one and only victory in the Daytona 500.
Earnhardt’s 13 Cup wins — including 10 at Talladega — earned him the reputation as the most proficient restrictor-plate racer of his era. He showed up in Alabama that weekend fresh off three consecutive top-three finishes — including a pair of runner-ups at Dover (Del.) and Martinsville (Va.) — hopeful that his usual fine form on the Talladega high banks would return him to Victory Lane for the first time that season.
From www.nascar.com
he company behind Formula One motor racing could be floated in Singapore at the end of this year if markets remain benign, the sport’s chief executive Bernie Ecclestone said on Monday.
Plans to raise up to $3 billion by listing the firm that runs the high-speed racing series were pulled last June amid market turmoil following the flotation of social network group Facebook, which saw its shares plunge after their debut.
Ecclestone confirmed a report in the Daily Telegraph newspaper that the Formula One company structure had been reorganised in preparation for a fresh attempt at a listing in Singapore by the end of 2013.
From www.euronews.com
Charlie Kimball’s Long Beach weekend will be featured in the first 2013 episode of INDYCAR 36. It airs at 6:30 p.m. ET this Saturday, May 4, on the NBC Sports Network.
Kimball has had the best three-race qualifying streak of his career to open his third season in IndyCar. The Novo Nordisk Chip Ganassi Racing driver has started 14th, fifth and ninth in the first three races, after starting better than 13th only once in 2012.
He finished fourth at Barber Motorsports Park in what was widely considered his best weekend in three seasons.