Denny Hamlin seeks historic 3rd straight Daytona 500 victory
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Denny Hamlin, considered perhaps the best NASCAR driver without a Cup Series championship, can look past that hole on his record. He instead points to a pair of Southern 500 trophies, a Bristol night race victory, three road course wins, six at Pocono and the big daddy of them all, the Daytona 500.
Hamlin has won NASCAR’s crown jewel, the one race that can define a driver’s career, three different times and the last two years. On Sunday, he will attempt to become the first to win three consecutive Daytona 500s, a feat that would forever dull the disappointment of his championship failures.
“This is something that no one’s ever done before,” Hamlin said. “Other guys have won championships, obviously. I would want to do something no one else has done.”
Hamlin is the 8-1 betting favorite but the Daytona 500 can be a crapshoot, particularly in NASCAR’s condensed new schedule forced by the pandemic. Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway for decades spanned nearly two weeks but this year was cut to just six days.
With only three practice sessions and the 150-mile Duel qualifying races, there is no clear indication who has cars capable of winning the Daytona 500.
Hendrick Motorsports swept the front row in qualifying with Alex Bowman and William Byron, but Byron crashed in the qualifying race and will fall to the back in a backup car at the start of the 500. Bowman had an engine problem that will cost him the pole if the motor needs to be replaced.
Chase Elliott is the reigning series champion but hasn’t had enough time to show if he’s a contender for his first Daytona 500 victory. It’s also unclear how Kyle Larson, new to the Hendrick stable this season after last year’s NASCAR suspension for using a racial slur, is adapting to his new team.
Kevin Harvick is looking to rebound after falling short of the series title in last year’s nine-win season. He tweeted “She’s bad fast” about his Ford, though it was Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Aric Almirola who won the first qualifying race and said his car is strong for Sunday.
Fellow Ford drivers and Team Penske teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney both seemed able to run with Almirola.
Austin Dillon won the second duel, setting him up for a possible second Daytona 500 victory on the 20th anniversary of Dale Earnhardt’s death. Dillon drives Earnhardt’s famed No. 3 on grandfather Richard Childress’ team and understands how emotional a victory would be in that Chevrolet.
“It would be amazing and huge for the company, RCR and all the 3 fans out there,” Dillon said.
Dillon beat Bubba Wallace to win his qualifying race in a dramatic finish that showed Wallace might finally have the equipment he needs to be competitive. Wallace is the only Black racer at NASCAR’s top level and gained a national platform last season for his outspokenness on social justice issues.
He landed multiple sponsors through his activism and Wallace brought that funding to Michael Jordan and Hamlin for the launch of 23XI Racing. Jordan and Wallace are the only Black majority owner and driver combination in the sport, and this team has the sponsorship and support that could finally give Wallace a chance at his first Cup Series victory.
Wallace expects Jordan to demand results.
“He wants winning race cars, he wants a winning race driver and he took an opportunity to invest in me and he has seen something that sparked his interest,” Wallace said. “We’re just going to go out and do what I know how to do, not change up anything, not try too hard because of MJ or because of Denny or because of the opportunity.”
Pitbull is another celebrity new to NASCAR team ownership. The entertainer signed on with Justin Marks to field Trackhouse Racing this year for Daniel Suarez, the only full-time Mexican driver in NASCAR.
Pitbull views his newest endeavor as an opportunity to promote multiple initiatives, most importantly his message of unity.
“If there’s anything we need in these times right now it is something that unites people, not divides people,” Pitbull said. “It’s about utilizing the culture, creating the culture through NASCAR to bring people together.”
Live Fast Racing, the third new team and one co-owned by former driver Matt Tifft and B.J. McLeod, will make its debut in the 500 with McLeod as the driver. Derrike Cope, the 1990 Daytona 500 winner, is back for what he says will be his final race and even at 62 — the oldest driver in the field — Cope believes he’s got a shot.
The race will have a noticeably empty feeling because pandemic restrictions have limited attendance to roughly 30,000 spectators in the grandstands. Daytona was at capacity with 101,000 in the grandstands a year ago, several thousand more camping in the infield.
ATLANTA — The district attorney investigating whether former President Donald Trump should face charges for attempting to pressure Georgia’s elections chief into changing the results of the presidential race in his favor has a reputation as a tough courtroom veteran, not only as a prosecutor but also as a defense lawyer and judge.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was sworn in last month after winning a resounding 2020 election victory over her former boss, entered the national spotlight Wednesday when letters to top state officials revealed her office is investigating whether illegal attempts were made to influence the state’s 2020 elections. That includes the Jan. 2 phone call in which Trump was recorded asking Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn his defeat.
Prosecuting Trump would likely prove a career-defining move for Willis — and one fraught with risk, said Atlanta attorney Robert James, a former district attorney in neighboring DeKalb County. Constituents in heavily Democratic Atlanta would demand an aggressive prosecution. The Republican ex-president would likely unleash an army of lawyers to defend him. And news coverage would scrutinize every step, or misstep.
“Nobody should be confused about the fact that you’re going into a whirlwind,” James said. “If this is what she chooses to do based on the facts and the evidence, from what I know about her as a prosecutor, she’s smart enough and tough enough to handle it.”
In her first weeks on the job, Willis has already faced criticism for trying to hand off two high-profile cases against police officers, including a fatal shooting. But fellow lawyers who have faced her in court say she’s a skilled litigator who isn’t afraid of tough cases.
“She is a hard-charging, tough trial lawyer,” Atlanta defense attorney Page Pate
said. “I would never question her ethics. I would never question her diligence or her intelligence. She is a bulldog when she thinks she’s on the right side.”
Willis worked 17 years as an assistant district attorney under Paul Howard, who was Georgia’s first Black DA when he took office in 1997. Before challenging Howard for his job in 2020, Willis spent short stints as a criminal defense lawyer and a municipal court judge.
Running an aggressive campaign in which she accused Howard of mismanagement, Willis trounced him in an August runoff election for the Democratic nomination, winning nearly 72% of the vote. With no Republican on the ballot, Willis cruised to victory in November.
In her most high-profile case under Howard, Willis served as the lead prosecutor bringing charges against nearly three dozen Atlanta public
school educators accused in a cheating scandal. In April 2015, after an unwieldy trial that spanned months, a jury convicted 11 former educators of racketeering for their role in a scheme to inflate students’ scores on standardized exams.
Pate, who defended one of the accused educators, said Howard bungled the case and should have lost. But Willis and her co-counsel, he said, “pieced that thing together, worked day and night to make it what it was.”
The new district attorney has come under fire for seeking to offload a pair of cases against Atlanta police. One involves officers charged with dragging two Black college students from a car during May protests over racial injustice. The other deals with two officers charged in the July 12 shooting death of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man killed as he tried to flee arrest for drunken driving.
In a video posted Saturday on YouTube, Mary Wilson — the singer and style icon whose work as a founding member of the Supremes helped set the template for the modern pop girl group — looks like her excitement might lift her right out of her seat next to a fireplace in her home near Las Vegas.
“This month is Black History Month,” she says, “and just so much is happening.”
Smiling broadly, her eyes aglow as she peers into a camera held only inches from her face, Wilson tells viewers that she’s struck a deal to release a long-shelved solo record she made in the late 1970s with Elton John’s producer, Gus Dudgeon; she adds that she’s recorded some “surprising new songs” that she hopes to have out by her birthday on March 6.
Then, with no less enthusiasm, she runs through a series of significant Supremes moments in February’s past, including the release of “Run, Run, Run” on Feb. 7, 1964.
“We really thought that was gonna be a hit, but it wasn’t,” she recalls, grin still beaming. “But anyway …”
On Monday night, Feb. 8, just two days after this video appeared, Wilson
died suddenly of an unspecified cause, cutting short a career that the singer at age 76 clearly regarded as unfinished.
Her dedication to the Supremes until the very end of her life says plenty about Wilson’s role as the group’s linchpin: the essential element that held together the glamorous Diana Ross and the earthy Florence Ballard during the Motown trio’s mid’60s heyday, and the woman who kept the Supremes alive for nearly a decade after both her original bandmates had departed.
In a statement, Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. called Wilson “a trailblazer” and said that “over the years [she] continued to work hard to boost the legacy of the Supremes.”
How could she not? Beginning with their first No. 1 single, 1964’s “Where Did Our Love Go” — which according to legend was devised with Wilson in mind as lead vocalist — the Supremes quickly set out on one of the most impressive runs in pop history, racking up 11 more chart-toppers by the end of 1969, shortly before Ross quit to become a solo act. (Among groups, only the Beatles have more No. 1s.)
Of Wilson, Patti LaBelle said on Twitter that “what she contributed to the world cannot be overstated,” while Dionne Warwick said she’ll miss her “radiant smile and energy she possessed.”
Today the Supremes’ hits — most written and produced by the peerless three-man team known as HollandDozier-Holland — have become an indelible part of American history, with plink-plonking rhythms that conjure the forward-march optimism of an era when youth felt like a new discovery.
Full of crisp harmonies and intricate vocal counterpoint, tunes like “Baby Love,” “Come See About Me” and “Stop! In the Name of Love” handled themes of young romance with a sophistication to match the women’s signature tailored gowns; the songs (and the look) challenged white listeners’ ideas about Black music, blurring cultural lines in a way that softened the ground for long-awaited political change.
Yet the music also throbbed with pure emotion: “My world is empty without you, babe,” Ross sang, backed by Wilson and Ballard’s ghostly ooohs, with haunting dejection. “You don’t really need me, but you keep me hanging on,” went another.
In “I Hear a Symphony,” which Wilson said was one of her favorite Supremes songs, the women describe the “tender melody” they hear whenever a lover is near — and the trick of the song, of course, is that the tune sounds just like this.