by Patrick Zier | Aug 12, 2025 |
It was a mistake, and Shane van Gisbergen doesn’t make mistakes, at least not on road courses. And here he was, leading the race on the last lap at Watkins Glen, hounded by Chris Buescher with only a few corners to go. No matter. He had this.
And then he didn’t. Going into one of the final turns, SVG got a bit high, allowing Buescher to close on him. Buescher tapped SVG’s bumper, causing him to wobble, then got inside him to take the lead.
SVG would close on Buescher one last time, but as he tried to go outside, Buescher came down to block, SVG fishtailed slightly, and Buescher took the checkered flag.
That was then, 2024 to be exact, and this is now. Then, SVG was running 12 races in a car prepared by Kaulig Racing, a nondescript NASCAR team which has never been competitive.
Now, he has a fulltime ride with Trackhouse Racing, a well organized tier two team just a notch below the top Toyota, Chevy and Ford organizations.
Trackhouse is led by Ross Chastain, who has won at least one race every year since NASCAR’s Next Gen car came on line in 2022, and the pairing of road course king SVG and Chastain, who has been very competitive on the ovals, has given the group some extra juice.
The team also has a third driver, Daniel Suarez, but he has been a disappointment and is being let go at the end of this season.
SVG’s rise to the top in NASCAR has been meteoric and totally unexpected. From New Zealand, the 36-year-old is a veteran of the Australian Supercar series which runs strictly on road courses.
But he was a complete unknown when he ran the Chicago street race in 2023, his first time in a stock car, and won. And he hasn’t looked back.
Last Sunday, he avenged his 2024 loss at Watkins Glen by winning there, his fourth straight road course win of the year. Although he is only 25th in points, that makes him second in the NASCAR playoff standings (SVG is sixth in the Old Guy Sport competition index) and the four wins are the most ever in NASCAR for a rookie driver.
Justin Marks, who owns Trackhouse and brought SVG to Chicago for his first race, is not surprised by his road course success. “What he’s doing right now is sort of why he’s in the car,” Marks commented on NASCAR’s media site after SVG’s win at the Glen. “We feel like he had an opportunity to do this.
“But when these wins just keep coming in the way that they are and the fact that the rest of the series, the rest of the drivers, are watching him and getting better but he’s getting better too, and it seems like they can’t do anything with him right now, is just an amazing thing to watch,” Marks said.
While it’s easy to concentrate on SVG’s success, all of it has come on road courses. It’s been entirely different for him on ovals, where his best finish so far is a 14th at Charlotte. He is simply not competitive on the tracks that host the majority of NASCAR races.
And while he intimidates the competition on road courses; mentally, the other drivers almost concede the victory to him and admit they are racing to be best in class, his performance on ovals must improve markedly before he can be considered among NASCAR’s elite.
“I’m very encouraged by his rate of learning on the ovals,” Marks remarked. “I think he has only just begun to put it together. I think the ceiling is really high for him, and he’s here for a while.”
That may be, but it hasn’t really shown up yet. SVG has consistently run around 20th on ovals this year. Still, he’s made the playoffs, he’s proven he can win and he seems to be getting more comfortable in his car.
Plus, Trackhouse has put everything it’s got behind him. “If you can catch lightning in a bottle like we have with SVG, you’ve got to really lean into it,” Marks declared. Hard.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Richmond: 1-Chase Briscoe, 2-Denny Hamlin, 3-Kyle Larson. Last year’s winners at Richmond: First race-Hamlin. Second race-Austin Dillon. Top five in first race: 1-Hamlin, 2-Joey Logano, 3-Larson, 4-Martin Truex, 5-Chase Elliott. Second race: 1-Dillon, 2-Hamlin, 3-Tyler Reddick, 4-Bubba Wallace, 5-Ross Chastain.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport competition index picks at Watkins Glen: 1-Shane van Gisbergen, 2-Elliott, 3-Reddick. Watkins Glen winner: Shane van Gisbergen. OGS season record: 10-9.
OGS competition index after 20 races: 1-Hamlin 470 points, 2-Larson 365, 3-Briscoe 328, 4-William Byron 326, Christopher Bell 326, 6-van Gisbergen 295, 7-Ryan Blaney 258, 8-Wallace 149, 9-Elliott 147, 10-Ty Gibbs 122.
OGS competition index on short tracks (tracks similar to Richmond): 1-Hamlin 211, 2-Larson 135, 3-Briscoe 112, 4-Bell 110, 5-Byron 80, 6-Elliott 50, 7-Blaney 37, Brad Keselowski 37, 9-Gibbs 40, 10-Alex Bowman 34.
by Patrick Zier | Aug 10, 2025 |
Last year, Ford’s Joey Logano won the NASCAR Cup championship. He didn’t deserve it. In 2023, Ford’s Ryan Blaney won the championship and he didn’t deserve it, either.
They won despite the fact that Ford, and it’s top team, Penske Racing, have struggled to be competitive in NASCAR’s Next Gen car, which came on line in 2022. And despite having had four years to work with it, Ford’s performance has been getting worse, not better.
In 2022, all three manufacturers, Chevy, Ford and Toyota, were new to the car and competition was close as they all tried to figure it out.
Using the Old Guy Sport competition index as a guide, which awards points based on winning races and competing in them rather than just finishing, the most important criteria in the NASCAR system, Logano won the championship but four other drivers were within 63 points of him.
All told, the three Penske drivers, Logano, Blaney and Austin Cindric, totaled 805 points. In 2023, Chevy’s Kyle Larson, who had been one of the four drivers right behind Logano in 2022 with 438 points, was first overall with 643 points.
Penske, meanwhile, started to tail off. Blaney, with 311 points, was Ford’s top finisher in eighth place. Logano added 202 and Cindric just one for a total of 514.
In an effort to help Ford, NASCAR allowed the manufacturer to redesign its body to improve aerodynamic downforce, and for a while, that seemed to be working, although the other manufacturers were doing more to make their cars better as well.
Penske’s three drivers showed definite improvement over 2023 although none of them were competitive with Larson, who collected 739 points, far more than anybody else and almost double Penske’s best driver, Blaney, who finished sixth with 392. Logano added 250 and Cindric 101 for a team total of 743.
That led to some optimism going into this year, but once again, the Penske Fords are struggling. Twenty-three races into the season and with the playoffs looming on the horizon, Blaney, with 239 points, is the team’s best in sixth place, far behind Denny Hamlin who has 470. Logano, with 91, and Cindric, with 37 follow.
Despite this; Hamlin’s total of 470 points is more than the three Penske drivers combined, all the Penske cars are once again eligible for the playoffs because all of them have won a race.
It’s conceivable, in fact, that because of the way NASCAR has this set up, Cindric could end up being the champion. And if people felt that Logano was an undeserving winner last year, wait until you hear the howls if Cindric pulls it off.
By themselves, wins alone should never be an automatic ticket to the playoffs. The driver’s entire body of work needs to be considered. Wins are important, but taken by themselves, they cheapen the championship.
Take Shane van Gisbergen. Like Cindric, van Gisbergen is in because he has won three races. That’s impressive on its face, the problem is van Gisbergen’s three wins have all come on road courses. Put him on an oval and he is, in a word, terrible.
He has no business being in the playoffs any more than Cindric does, yet there they are. The final irony to all this is that because only four drivers compete for the championship in the final race, and none of them might win it. the champion will be the playoff driver with the highest finish.
And that means Cindric could finish 37th in the final race and win the championship if the other three finish 38th, 39th and 40th, respectively. That’s unlikely but if there’s an early wreck…
Oh well. We’ve already had two undeserving champions in a row, might as well make it three. For sure, NASCAR doesn’t care.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Watkins Glen: 1-Shane van Gisbergen, 2-Chase Elliott, 3-Tyler Reddick. Last year’s winner at Watkins Glen: Chris Buescher. Top five at Watkins Glen last year: 1-Buescher, 2-van Gisbergen, 3-Carson Hocevar, 4-Ross Chastain, 5-Zane Smith.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport competition index picks at Iowa: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Kyle Larson, 3-Christopher Bell. Last week’s Iowa winner: William Byron. OGS competition index record after 19 races: 9-9.
OGS competition index top 10 after 19 races: 1-Hamlin 470, 2-Larson 365, 3-Chase Briscoe 316, 4-Byron 306, 5-Bell 286, 6-Ryan Blaney 239, 7-van Gisbergen 234, 8-Bubba Wallace 149, 9-Ellott 147, 10-Ty Gibbs 122.
OGS competition index top 10 on road courses (tracks similar to Watkins Glen): 1-van Gisbergen 224, 2-Bell 105, 3-Elliott 80, 4-Reddick 65, 5-Gibbs 51, 6-Michael McDowell 48, 7-Briscoe 47, 8-Byron 40, 9-Kyle Busch 38, 10-Hamlin 20, Alex Bowman 20.
by Patrick Zier | Aug 9, 2025 |
If South Florida is going to break out this season, then Byrum Brown can’t break down. It’s as simple as that. As Brown goes, so go the Bulls.
The 6-foot-3, 233-pound senior quarterback has the potential to take the team to new heights if he plays up to – or exceeds – the standard he set in 2023. Back then, in his first full season as a starter, Brown threw for 3,292 yards with 26 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He also led USF with 809 yards rushing and added another 11 TDs running the ball.
That put him on the national radar, and there was some thought that a Power Four conference team in need of a quarterback might snatch him up. But Brown never entered the transfer portal, preferring instead to stick with USF Coach Alex Golesh and help him get the Bulls’ football program turned around.
That proved to be a fateful decision. In USF’s fifth game of the season against Tulane, Brown went down with a broken leg, and that was it for 2024.
Bryce Archie, USF’s combo football-baseball player, stepped in and did a respectable job guiding the Bulls to a second straight bowl, but he was not Brown.
Now, Brown is back for what, if he continues to build on his 2023 year, could be his final season at USF, because he has a chance to take this team places it has never been before and could only dream about in the past. And if that happens, and the big boys come knocking again, Brown, with a possible shot at the NFL looming in the background, might find it hard to turn them down.
But this is no sure thing, even with the multi-talented Brown in control of the offense. Running backs Kelley Joiner and Nay’Quan Wright, the team’s top two rushers a year ago, gone. Sean Atkins, Brown’s go-to receiver, and tight end Payten Singletary, gone. RJ Perry, who started all 13 games at the critical left tackle position, gone.
How their replacements pan out; there are 54 new players on the USF roster vying for spots, will have a lot to do with USF’s – and Brown’s – success. After all, good as he can be, Brown can’t throw the ball to himself.
Keshaun Singleton looks to be the guy stepping into Atkins’ shoes, a diamond in the rough who can add explosiveness to the USF offense. “You put the ball in his vicinity, he’s going to come down with it,” Brown declared while meeting with the media for the first time this year. “That’s pretty much a quarterback’s best friend,” Brown continued. “You put it anywhere he can reach, he’s gonna catch it.”
While Brown is clearly in command of this team on the field, he is more reserved off it, not as outgoing or as accepting of the lime light as many quarterbacks of his stature.
It isn’t that he’s not sure of himself, he has a quiet confidence about him, it just seems that being ‘the guy’, speaking for the team, which many quarterbacks do, is not really his thing.
He understands what’s possible for this team, and he understands he is the trigger man for that, but he also understands what needs to be done to get there. Maybe his injury has something to do with that, because he also understands how quickly a season can get turned upside down.
“You don’t want to look too far ahead,” Brown said (there would seem to be little chance of that since the Bulls open with perennial Group of Five power Boise State).
“You want to be right where your feet are right now, just trying to take it one day at a time,” he added. “You don’t take anything for granted. You come to work each and every day with the same mind set.”
Still, it’s all out there for the taking. If the Bulls beat Boise State, the road to the College Football Playoffs is open. They would then have a shot at being the top-ranked conference champion from the Group of Five, which would get them an automatic bid.
Beating Boise would be no guarantee of that, there would still be a plenty of potential pot holes along the way, but it would be possible. “USF football has been huge,” Brown said, “and we’re only going to continue to do more.” But only if he stays healthy.
by Patrick Zier | Aug 3, 2025 |
The beer can came hurtling out of the stands as Bubba Wallace was about to start the final lap of his double overtime win in Sunday’s Brickyard 400, a reminder that, at its roots, NASCAR is still a southern sport and that old prejudices, while they are dying, die hard.
Wallace is NASCAR’s only Black driver at the Cup level. He doesn’t have it nearly as hard as Wendell Scott did when he became the first African-American to compete in NASCAR’s top series in the ’60s, but he is more outspoken, more visible and more competitive than Scott and so more of an irritant to the racist minority that still lingers on the fringes.
The most notable incident involving Wallace occurred at Talladega in 2020, when the pull rope on his garage door was found shaped like a noose. It caused a huge furor at the time, and in a strong show of support, all the NASCAR Cup drivers escorted Wallace’s car to its position on the grid before the start of the race.
It was later determined that the rope had been that way for more than a year, probably to make it more easy to grab when opening and closing the door, and that there was no way anyone could have known before hand what garage stall Wallace and this team would occupy.
Still, NASCAR had just banned the confederate flag from being flown at its events, and Wallace had been vocal about that.
“It’s sports, right?” Wallace commented after his Brickyard win according to NASCAR.com’s website. “You’re going to have people booing, people cheering. I had a guy call me a punk…It’s sports. Some different than others, but I definitely heard the cheers and I appreciated that.
“I know there’s a lot of Bubba Wallace fans out there and a lot of support,” Wallace continued. “They try to combat the naysayers and all of this stuff…It is what it is, but I do really appreciate the support.
“As a guy who used to struggle with the boos for sure, I’m just wondering why. Now I understand it’s just sports and people are going to have the drivers they like, the drivers they hate, the driver they want to see win, the drivers they want to see crash, and we just go out and compete.
“I will say I didn’t hear any noise (booing) today before the race. That was different. That was cool,” Wallace added.
Now in his eighth fulltime year in Cup, Wallace drives for Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin’s 23XI Toyota team. It has high profile owners and a working relationship with Joe Gibbs Racing, Toyota’s flagship Cup entry, and there is pressure to win, especially after Tyler Reddick came on board, and before he won the Brickyard, Wallace had gone 100 races without seeing a checkered flag.
Reddick, one of the top young talents in the sport, has eight cup victories including five for 23XI and has generally been much more competitive than Wallace in the new NextGen car, although both drivers and the team have struggled mightily this season.
“When I hired Bubba, and certainly when we first started out, I believed in his capability. Not necessarily the results he had shown, but I understood his potential,” Hamlin said according to NASCAR.com.
Still, Hamlin remarked, he wasn’t sure how badly Wallace wanted to succeed, how much effort the was willing to put out. “I think, when we started the second team with Kurt (Busch), that pushed him a little bit. Then when we brought in Tyler Reddick (who replaced Busch), that pushed him a little bit more,” Hamlin said.
“I think he understands that this is a performance-based business,” Hamlin went on. “Michael and I want to win. We’re not out here to see cars going around in circles.
“We put a lot of resources into doing that (winning),” Hamlin said. “He’s (Wallace) felt pressure. I think he’s felt pressure not only from me and Michael but everyone. You want to perform better than your teammates.
“We’re going to give you everything we can for you to go out there and compete,” Hamlin said. “I’m going to give you the same car I’ve got week in and week out, but it’s up to you to put in the work and up to you to want it, and then let your ability take over from there.”
It seems like, at least in Hamlin’s mind, Wallace hasn’t always fully understood that, and maybe getting married and becoming a father last year has been a wake-up call.
“Something happened mid last year where I saw a change in attitude that then changed his work ethic,” Hamlin said of Wallace. “What I’m hoping he takes from this (the Brickyard win) is that hard work pays off, it really does pay off. “Hopefully,” Hamlin added, “we see more of this.”
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Iowa: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Kyle Larson, 3-Christopher Bell. Last year’s winner at Iowa: Ryan Blaney. Top Five at Iowa last year: 1-Blaney, 2-William Byron, 3-Chase Elliott, 4-Bell, 5-Ricky Stenhouse.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Indy picks: 1-Blaney, 2-Hamlin, 3-Chase Briscoe. Indy winner: Bubba Wallace. OGS record after 18 races: 9-8.
OGS competition index top 10 after 18 races: 1-Hamlin 470 points, 2-Larson 365, 3-Bell 286, 4-Briscoe 266, 5-Byron 237, 6-Shane van Gisbergen 224, 7-Blaney 217, 8-Wallace 149, 9-Elliott 147, 10-Ty Gibbs 122.
OGS competition index top 10 on short tracks (tracks most like Iowa): 1-Hamlin 211 points, 2-Larson 135, 3-Bell 110, 4-Briscoe 62, 5-Elliott 50, 6-Gibbs 40, 7-Alex Bowman 34, 8-Wallace 30, 9-Josh Berry 24, 10=Blaney 15.
