Earnhardt wins Most Popular Driver award
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has set a record with his 11th consecutive win as NASCAR’s most popular driver. Earnhardt was presented with the NASCAR NMPA Most Popular Driver Award on Thursday in Las Vegas. His win broke a tie with 16- time winner Bill Elliott for the most consecutive years as winner. Earnhardt thanked his loyal fan base, which continuously votes him tops in the Sprint Cup Series. More than 1 million votes were cast for 39 drivers. Fans voted once per day, with Earnhardt collecting more than 700,000 votes. Kasey Kahne and Jeff Gordon, Earnhardt’s teammates at Hendrick Motorsports, finished second and third in voting. Fourth went to Tony Stewart, and Danica Patrick was fifth. Also picking up an award Thursday was three-time NASCAR champion Stewart, who has won the 2013 Myers Brothers Award for contributions to the sport in his role as owner of Eldora Speedway. The award from the National Motorsports Press Association is kept secret, so Stewart thought he was at Thursday’s ceremony only to support his Stewart-Haas Racing teams. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. accepted the 2013 Sprint Cup Rookie of the Year award on Thursday. The two-time Nationwide Series champion finished 19th in the Cup standings.
SWIMMING KNOXVILLE — Nick Thoman set two individual American records and was part of a record-breaking relay team Friday in the Winter National Championships. Thoman won the 100-yard backstroke with an American-record time of 44.07 seconds. He also joined Eric Knight, Tim Phillips and fellow Olympic gold medalist Cullen Jones on a 200 medley relay team that set a U.S. record with its time of 1 minute, 23.02 seconds. Thoman’s 50 backstroke time of 20.69 seconds while swimming the first leg of the 200 medley relay counted as an individual American record. Missy Franklin set a meet record in the 200 freestyle (1:41.40), won the 100 backstroke (51.59) and joined California teammates Caroline Piehl, Camille Cheng and Elizabeth Pelton on an 800 freestyle relay team that set a meet record (6:59.11). The three-day meet, sponsored by AT&T, concludes today at the University of Tennessee’s Allan Jones Aquatic Center.