Roger Diez: NASCAR hits road course for Round of 12

Teamwork won Sunday’s Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway as Joey Logano got a better push on the overtime restart from Penske teammate Ryan Blaney than Daniel Suarez got from Trackhouse teammate Ross Chastain.

Suarez came up one place short of repeating his spring win while Logano took the checker to advance to the Round of 12. At the other end of the potential playoff field Kyle Larson’s first stage crash dropped him well down the points ladder but his 40 playoff points kept him in 10th, 15 points above the cutoff line. Not so well off was Ryan Briscoe who was caught up in Larson’s crash and ended up 16th, 21 points below the line.

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This weekend is the Go Bowling 400 at Watkins Glen, and it could have some interesting ramifications. There are nine former winners in the field with Hendrick Motorsports drivers taking the last five races. Larson, Chase Elliott, and Kyle Busch have two victories each with single race winners William Byron, Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin, Logano, A.J. Allmendinger, and Juan Pablo Montoya. Yes, the 48-year-old Columbian with wins in NASCAR, IndyCar, and Formula 1 is in a third 23XI Toyota this weekend.

In addition, there are two more road course ringers, Allmendinger and Shane Van Gisbergen. None of the three are running for Cup points, so a win by any of them (or any non-playoff driver) will make the point standings more critical for advancing to the next playoff round.

The USA Network will broadcast all the weekend’s action with Cup practice and qualifying at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, the Xfinity Mission 200 at noon, and the Cup race at noon Sunday.

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The NTT IndyCar series’ season finale is Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway. Indy cars raced at the facility from 2001 to 2008 with Scott Dixon winning the last three races there. He is the only current driver to have won at the 1.33-mile tri-oval.

The only two drivers in contention for the season championship are points leader Alex Palou with 525 points and Will Power with 492. If Palou finishes ninth or better, he is the champion, no matter what Power does. The maximum possible points for a race are 54 – 50 for the win, one for pole, one for leading a lap, and two for leading the most laps. Of the two, Power has the better oval track win record.

Qualifying airs on Peacock at 11:50 a.m. on Saturday with the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on NBC at noon.

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And Formula 1 is racing on the streets of Baku in the Qatar Airways Azerbaijan Grand Prix. It will be the seventh race at the venue, the second longest circuit on the current calendar featuring a .62 mile long straight and speeds of 220 mph.

Red Bull has won four of the previous six races there with Sergio Perez last year’s winner. Mercedes has won the other two. But with Red Bull’s once-unassailable dominance on the wane, the door is open for another Mercedes win or a first victory for McLaren or Ferrari.

Qualifying airs at 5 a.m. on Saturday on ESPN2 with the race at 4 a.m. on ESPN on Sunday.

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In other racing news, Kyle Larson has announced that he will run the Memorial Day “double” again in 2025, again driving an Arrows-McLaren entry in the Indy 500 and his usual Hendrick Camaro in the Coke 600.

And designer/aerodynamicist Adrian Newey, perhaps the man most responsible for Red Bull’s past success, will join Aston Martin for 2025. This puts an end to the rumors of his joining Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari.