Johnson will miss NASCAR playoffs
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Jimmie Johnson’s final season as a fulltime NASCAR Cup Series driver will end without another title. Johson, whose seven season championships are tied with Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty for the all-time record, missed the playoffs in the Cup Series regular-season finale Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway after being involved in a multicar crash with five laps to go. Johnson’s young teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, William Byron, won the race in overtime and locked up one of the three postseason berths available going into the finale. Matt DiBenedetto finished 12th and secured the final spot. Clint Bowyer wrapped up a berth at the end of the opening stage. Johnson got caught up in a mess with five laps remaining, one started when Denny Hamlin made contact with Joey Logano. Byron squeezed between the two, took the lead and held on after a green-white-checkered finish. It was Byron’s first Cup Series win.
› MADISON, Ill. — Scott Dixon and Takuma Sato repeated their 20-lap shootout from last weekend’s Indianapolis 500, with Dixon reversing the finishing order Saturday by winning at World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis. Sato held off Dixon last Sunday for his second Indy 500 victory in four years. Dixon had 20 laps to chase Sato down, but a late caution ended the race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway under yellow. On Saturday, Dixon took the lead by first beating Pato O’Ward out of the pits and then cycling to the front when Sato made a stop with 25 laps remaining. Sato returned to the track in third, passed O’Ward with a bold outside move, then set his sights on Dixon, who had 20 laps to navigate lapped traffic while holding off Sato. Dixon beat Sato by 0.1404 second for his fourth win of the season and 50th overall, and he praised his Chip Ganassi Racing team afterward. The New Zealander, who had led 111 of 200 laps at Indy, moved within two victories of Mario Andretti on IndyCar’s victory list. Andretti is second with 52; A.J. Foyt is the leader at 67. Dixon holds a 117-point lead in the series championship standings as he chases a fifth season title. IndyCar races again today at the same track.
GOLF
› OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. — Dustin Johnson said his game feels similar to last weekend, when he strolled to the easiest of his 23 career victories. It just doesn’t look that way at the BMW Championship. Every par at Olympia Fields Country Club is hard work, and Johnson played the final 13 holes Saturday with nothing worse than that. It’s what carried him to a 1-under-par 69 and a share of the lead with Hideki Matsuyama, leaving them as the only players under par going into the final round. Matsuyama, who had a three-shot lead early when he holed a bunker shot for eagle at the start and stuffed a wedge in tight for birdie on No. 4, fell back with a string of bogeys and held it together for a 69. Johnson and Matsuyama were at 1-under 209. Everyone else was over par going into the final round. Today is one last chance for some players to be among the top 30 who advance to the FedEx Cup finale, and one last round for others — including Tiger Woods — to prepare for next month’s U.S. Open on a course that will play every bit as tough. Patrick Cantlay only hit five fairways and didn’t make a birdie as he tumbled out of a tie for the lead with a round with a 75 that left him five shots behind and might cost him a spot in the Tour Championship. Baylor School graduate Harris English (69) was tied for 21st at 5 over.
› ROGERS, Ark. — Anna Nordqvist shot a 9-under 62 on Saturday to take a three-stroke lead over Sei Young Kim into the final round of the LPGA Tour’s Walmart NW Arkansas Championship. Tied for the firstround lead after a 64, Nordqvist hit all 18 greens in regulation at Pinnacle Country Club in her second straight bogey-free round. The 33-year-old Swede birdied five of the first six holes and seven of the first 11 in the round interrupted by an afternoon thunderstorm. She added two more on the par-3 15th and par-5 18th to get to 16-under 126. Nordqvist has two major titles and six other LPGA Tour victories. She most recently won in 2017 at the Founders Cup in Phoenix and the major Evian Championship in France. Kim followed an opening 65 with a 64. She eagled the 18th and closed with a birdie on the par-4 ninth.
CYCLING
› NICE, France — Delayed but alive again and out on French roads, the strangest Tour de France ever set off Saturday in a bubble of COVID-19 protocols to try to keep the 176 riders free of the coronavirus for three weeks of racing through the country’s worsening epidemic. Only after riders peeled off their face masks and pedaled off from the start in the Mediterranean city of Nice, serenaded by a uniformed band playing “La Marseillaise,” did the Tour begin to look like its old self, immediately delivering thrills and spills as storms made the roads as slippy as ice. But with fans kept firmly at arm’s length, told by the government that it was best to stay home and watch the racing on television, the event lost much of its festive atmosphere. There was very little of the usual up-close communing between athletes and their adoring public that made the venerable 117-year-old rolling roadshow unique among sports events in more carefree times. Powering past thin crowds on the finishing straight in Nice that would usually have been crammed with spectators rows deep, Norwegian rider Alexander Kristoff won the first stage with a fearsome final sprint. He celebrated by giving a fist bump to a teammate. Kristoff will wear the race leader’s yellow jersey for today’s second stage, which loops into the mountains behind Nice.
SOCCER
› ATLANTA — Júnior Urso scored the first goal of his Major League Soccer career and assisted on
Luís Carlos Almeida da Cunha’s score, and Chris Mueller — whose corner kick set up Urso’s score — added a goal with an assist from
Daryl Dike as Orlando City beat Atlanta United FC 3-1 on Saturday. Orlando (4-2-2) has won back-toback games, beating Atlanta for the first time in nine all-time meetings.
Brooks Lennon slipped a header, off a cross by Jürgen Damm, from the center of the area just inside the right post for Atlanta (3-4-0) in the 83rd minute to cut Orlando’s lead to 2-1.