Monday Motorsport | Ed. 18
Anyone want a redo on their brackets?
Weekly Podium
3rd: Gabriel Bortoleto got his first points in Formula 1 with an eighth-place finish.
2nd: Lando Norris returned to the charge with a win over Oscar Piastri in Austria.
1st: Chase Elliott silenced the haters (like three people) with a win at his home track.
Formula 1
After a terrible weekend in Montréal, Lando Norris looked hooked up in Austria. He led Practices 2 and 3 and took pole position.
A couple of other pleasant surprises: Bortoleto qualified eighth, while Liam Lawson outqualified both Red Bulls and his Racing Bulls teammate.
When it came to the race, Max Verstappen’s P7 qualifying had him in danger off the start. He was hit by Antonelli after the Mercedes driver missed the corner, taking them both out of the race.
Piastri did his best to catch Lando, but lapped traffic played a huge part in the outcome of this race. Traffic being in the way isn’t odd, but for some reason, a bunch of the lapped drivers were racing the leaders and not paying attention to what was going on around them.
Colapinto knocked Oscar Piastri off the circuit from a lap down, which is a big no-no. In fact, Colapinto and Tsunoda had quite the race towards the back of the pack, most of which resulted in penalties between the two.
But in the end, Norris hung on, getting his first win since Monaco. Piastri came home second while Leclerc finished 13 seconds back to take home third.
Bortoleto got his first points in F1, finishing eighth, and was named driver of the day!
I also forgot that Sainz just… never started the race. He had a brake problem on the formation lap. Albon also did not finish…
Onto the British Grand Prix!
IndyCar
Not much news this week as the drivers have the week off. There was testing at the Iowa Speedway ahead of the races in a couple of weeks. Conor Daly was P1 in the test, but said there wasn’t a lot of racing on the high line yet. Hopefully, they can get that going for the weekend.
The drivers will head to Mid-Ohio this coming weekend.
NASCAR
It’s the first race of the in-season championship and well… I think this meme from Denny Hamlin’s Instagram probably sums up where we stand now.
Here’s mine, for posterity. It’s not all ruined, but we’ll get to that in a second.
Joey Logano captured pole position on Friday with a 30.979, an identical time to Josh Berry, who lined up second because of owner points.
They did have some fun walkout stuff for the in-season tournament
Joey Logano led the field until Lap 37 when the rain came and the race was eventually red flagged on Lap 43. When the race got going again, he traded the race lead with Austin Cindric until the first big wreck hit on Lap 57.
Christopher Bell spun, hitting Austin Dillon, Larson, Busch, Blaney, Allmendinger, Wallace and Zilisch. The first stage finished under caution with Austin Cindric winning.
On the restart, Nemechek checked up and Hamlin went into the back of him, causing a massive wreck, taking out nearly everyone in the field. By the end of the race, only four drivers had avoided any collisions.
Many of the big name drivers who were expected to make it through the first round of the bracket, or even get to the finals, were taken out in this crash, including Larson, Hamlin, Logano and Byron.
A red flag came out so they could clean up all of the wreckage, including towing nearly 25 drivers to the garage. Some of the cars were able to return to the track and run multiple laps down, but some just called it a night.
When they got restarted, it was Buescher who led the pack. Gibbs, Smith, and Reddick seemed to be the cars with the least damage, trading the lead back and forth. And it was Reddick who managed to pull off the Stage 2 win.
Between Stage 2 and the end of the race, Van Gisbergen, Wallace, Jones, and Haley all were involved in wrecks.
But it was Chase Elliott who managed move up through the field and towards the lead with just a few laps to go. He got around Reddick, Stenhouse and his teammate, Bowman before catching Keselowski on the last lap to take the chequered flag in his home race.
He was also driving a car with a livery designed by a cancer patient at the local children’s hospital, who joined Chase in victory lane 🥹
As for everyone’s brackets… well. It’s not looking good. I still have seven drivers in the fight but obviously, Denny Hamlin isn’t winning the whole thing 🙈.
The Chicago Street Race is up next weekend! May the odds be ever in your favour.
Backup Car
Here’s what else you missed in Motorsport!
👶 Aston Martin launched their own young driver program
👩⚖️ IndyCar filed an injunction to keep NASCAR from deposing Doug Boles in the 23XI/FRM lawsuit, stating that NASCAR is a competitor and this is unnecessary
💁🏻♀️ Overall, in this case, NASCAR is very eager to get its hands on the financials of the other teams, who are very hesitant to share, thinking NASCAR won’t be able to keep it private.
🏁 Sorry rich people, IndyCar will not return to Thermal Club in 2026
🏆 Logano, Verstappen, Piastri, and Palou are nominated for the ESPYS Best Driver Award. Palou should take it, but I assume Verstappen will actually get it.
🏈 Toyota was named the ‘Foundational Partner’ for the Arlington GP, coming next season. The Toyota GAZOO racing series will be sharing the track with the IndyCars that weekend.
⏰ Lamborghini won the 24 Hours of Spa for the first time.
👀 The F2 cars had a bit of trouble with the Red Bull Ring this weekend. Pepe Marti and Richard Verschoor took home the wins (Dunne was disqualified from winning the Feature Race).
🏁 Corey Heim took home almost a perfect victory, leading 99/100 laps at Lime Rock Park in the Trucks Series.
🥇 Nicholas Sanchez won a very delayed Xfinity race in Atlanta
Social Sprint
The best motorsports moments… on social!
Every piece of content that RFK Racing has made about the bracket challenge is genius:
Plus, their Cinnamon Toast Crunch livery roll-out:
Another great meme about the bracket challenge:
Two more great sponsor-related posts, first from 23XI:
And then from Denny’s team and JGR for the King Hawaiian partnership, jumping on the Strava trend:
Plus, the entire in-season challenge rollout from TNT, this is a great video:
And more Blaney:
Everyone’s favourite reserve driver:
And an honourable mention to Arrow McLaren for even posting about Pride, since many teams have decided they can all stop caring about the LGBTQIA+ community this Pride month:
