Driver tests positive
Austin Dillon tests positive for COVID-19 and will miss race at Daytona.
NASCAR driver Austin Dillon tested positive for COVID-19 and will not compete Sunday in a Cup Series race at Daytona International Speedway’s road course in Florida.
Richard Childress Racing said Dillon tested positive Saturday morning. He experienced mild symptoms and sought a test on his own. He now is self-quarantining from the team. His wife and newborn son remain healthy and symptom-free, the team added.
RCR part-time Xfinity driver Kaz Grala, 21, will replace Dillon in the No. 3 Chevy this weekend. Grala has two top-five finishes in races at Road America over the past two seasons. His best finish in the previous five oval races was 13th place at Kansas this season.
Dillon, 30, already qualified for NASCAR’s playoffs by winning in July at Texas Motor Speedway.
Return to the scene
Ryan Newman expects to get a little emotional when he drives into Daytona International Speedway this weekend. His previous race at Daytona ended with Newman exiting in the back of an ambulance as countless onlookers feared for his life.
Newman will return to the location of his most harrowing crash Sunday when NASCAR makes its debut on Daytona’s road course. It’s a 14-turn, 3.61-mile course that most drivers have only raced virtually, but
Newman did score a real victory on it once when he won a 40-lap IROC race at Daytona in 2004.
The event 16 years ago was the same configuration that uses the winding course and parts of the high-banked speedway but few remember Newman’s race that day. Few will forget Newman’s violent and scary tumble six months ago.
Newman had to be cut from his No. 6 Ford after wrecking while leading the final lap Feb. 17 of the Daytona 500. He doesn’t recall anything about his two-night hospital stay for treatment of a head injury he called a brain bruise. His first memory is walking out of a Florida hospital holding hands with his two young daughters.
“I guess after February I’m pretty emotional every day,” Newman said recently. “I’m just thankful for the opportunity to continue on. I get to hit the reset button in a roundabout way, not with my life, but the reality is just to continue to play on.
“I will probably be some sort of emotional going back to Daytona, but I don’t see it being a whole lot different than the kind of emotion I had getting in the car at Talladega or even going back to Darlington for that matter when I went and did my first test.”
Cindric’s late surge
Austin Cindric won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race on the road course Saturday at Daytona International Speedway , his fifth victory in the last six events.
Cindric looked like the guy to beat early and escaped a melee on a restart late to stay in contention. He passed leader Brandon Jones shortly after taking the green flag with five laps to go on the 14-turn, 3.61-mile layout and did what he’s done often lately — celebrate in victory lane.
Cindric opened a sevensecond lead down the stretch and cruised to his seventh Xfinity Series victory in the last two years — four of them on road courses.
Jones was second, followed by Noah Gragson and Allmendinger.
Hamilton at the front
After narrowly securing a record-extending 92nd career pole position Saturay at the Spanish Grand Prix, world champion Lewis Hamilton is ideally placed to move one step closer to Michael Schumacher’s record of 91 wins in Formula One. Championship leader Hamilton has won three of the first five races this year — taking his career tally to 87 — with only his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen beating him so far this season.