Bristol saw a first-time NASCAR Cup winner as Ty Gibbs out-dragged veterans Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson on an overtime restart to take the win for Joe Gibbs Racing in his 130th start. Larson won both stages and dominated most of the race with 284 laps led. Blaney led 190 laps and Gibbs just 25. Tyler Reddick\u2019s fourth place, his best short-track result, kept him atop the season point standings with 386. Blaney tightened Reddick\u2019s lead and is now just 62 points in arrears. Gibbs\u2019 win advanced him to fourth in the points behind teammate Denny Hamlin, while Chase Ellott is fifth. Shane Van Gisbergen is the last above the cut line in 16th with Chase Briscoe just one point behind him.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n
Kansas City is the site of this weekend\u2019s action. One of NASCAR\u2019s many 1.5-mile ovals, it is in its 25th year as a NASCAR track. Nine active drivers have won there, with Hamlin\u2019s four wins topping the charts. Larson has three victories, including last year\u2019s spring race, which was his last win to date. Elliott, Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, and Brad Keselowski have two Kansas victories each, while Ross Chastain, Tyler Reddick, and Bubba Wallace have one win apiece.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n
Both the NTT IndyCar series and the IMSA Weathertech sports cars are on tap this weekend on the streets of Long Beach. The track is a tight street course 1.968 miles long with 11 turns. The Queen\u2019s hairpin leading onto the front straight is the tightest turn on the IndyCar schedule and the site of many traffic jams if someone gets out of shape there. And as with any street course, it is lined with concrete walls which define track limits and can reach out to grab and unwary driver.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n
Five of the 23 drivers in the field have Long Beach winner\u2019s trophies on their glory wall. Kyle Kirkwood is the defending winner with two victories. Scott Dixon, Alexander Rossi, and Will Power also have two wins apiece and Josef Newgarden won Long Beach once. Kirkwood leads the points with 156, two ahead of three-time champion Alex Palou, both driving Honda-powered cars. Christian Lundgaard is a distant third in points with 121, David Malulas has 116 in his first year with Penske, and his teammate Newgarden has 113 for fifth.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n
Also on the program is today\u2019s Grand Prix of Long Beach for IMSA Weathertech sports cars. The 28-car field will contain 11 GTP prototypes with 27 GTD (Grand Touring Daytona) production-base sports cars from Mercedes, Porsche, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Corvette and others making up the remainder of the field. The speed differential between the incredibly fast GTP cars and the slower GTD machines will make for some interesting passing solutions as the leaders thread their way through lapped cars.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n
\u00a0An interesting side note: Robert Wickens, the former IndyCar driver who was severely injured and paralyzed in a Pocono crash some years ago, will race in the GTD class, driving a Corvette Z06 GT3.R equipped with hand controls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bristol saw a first-time NASCAR Cup winner as Ty Gibbs out-dragged veterans Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-607851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}