FORT WORTH, Texas — Sam Mayer made a last-lap pass and held on to win by a matter of inches ahead of Ryan Sieg at Texas Motor Speedway in one of the closest finishes in NASCAR Xfinity Series history on Saturday.
Mayer was high against the outside wall after the two cars banged side-by-side on the way to the checkered flag. The final margin was .002, matching the second-closest finish in series history.
“That’s unreal. I mean I was like a second and a half back probably at one point. So to make up that much time in that little amount of time is certainly unreal,” Mayer said. “We led the most important lap. … We didn’t dominate by any means, but we certainly worked our tails off to get to that point to win like that.”
Justin Allgaier finished third after leading 117 of the race’s 200 laps.
Sieg went from 10th place to first in a span of four laps just before the race’s final caution. After the restart with 11 to go, Sieg stayed in front until the final lap when Mayer was able to get the No. 1 JR Motorsports Chevrolet under and by him on the backstretch.
Off the final turn, Sieg got back to the inside of Mayer but came up just short in the No. 39 Ford of getting his first win in 342 career starts for the RSS Racing team owned by his family.
“The first emotion is definitely disappointment. We had it. We were leading at the end,” Sieg said. “We got up front but we just got too tight. I was doing all I could do. I was changing lines, changing brakes, changing everything. It was just that close. I saw him coming. I was doing all I could do. In the end I was just trying to run him into the wall to win the race. We were just so close.”
It was the fifth career win for Mayer, and his first this season. He led four different times for a total of only five laps.
AJ Allmendinger was fourth, followed by Cole Custer, Austin Hill, Ryan Truex, Sammy Smith, Jesse Love and Anthony Alfredo.
While Allgaier dominated the race without getting the win, he still finished in the top 10 for the 266th time in his career. That matched Kyle Busch’s record for the most in Xfinity Series history.
Allgaier made his 446th career start, and has won 23 times.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Sovereignty outdueled 3-1 favorite Journalism down the stretch to win the 151st Kentucky Derby in the slop on Saturday.
Trainer Bill Mott won his first Derby in 2019, also run on a sloppy track, when Country House was elevated to first after Maximum Security crossed the finish line first and was disqualified after a 22-minute delay.
This time, he knew right away.
Sovereignty won by 1½ lengths and snapped an 0-for-13 Derby skid for owner Godolphin, the racing stable of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
It was quite a weekend for the sheikh. His filly, Good Cheer, won the Kentucky Oaks on Friday and earlier Saturday, Ruling Court won the 2,000 Guineas in Britain.
Sovereignty covered 1¼ miles in 2:02.31 and paid $17.96 to win at 7-1 odds.
Journalism found trouble in the first turn and jockey Umberto Rispoli moved him to the outside. He and Sovereignty hooked up at the eighth pole before Sovereignty and jockey Junior Alvarado pulled away.
Baeza was third, Final Gambit was fourth and Owen Almighty finished fifth.
Rain made for a soggy day, with the Churchill Downs dirt strip listed as sloppy and horse racing fans protecting their fancy hats and clothing with clear plastic ponchos.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Connor Zilisch, the 18-year-old driver already with two NASCAR Xfinity Series race wins, will miss Saturday’s race at Texas because of lower back injuries sustained in a last-lap wreck at Talladega.
Trackhouse Racing said Wednesday that its development driver will return as soon as possible to the No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet. The team didn’t provide any additional details about Zilisch’s injuries.
Cup Series regular Kyle Larson will drive the No. 88 in Texas. After that, the Xfinity Series has a two-week break before racing again May 24 at Charlotte.
Zilisch, sixth in points through the first 11 races, was driving for the win at Talladega Superspeedway when contact on the backstretch sent his car spinning, and head-on into inside wall.
Zilisch won in his Xfinity debut at Watkins Glen last Sept. 14. He added another win this year at Austin, the same weekend that he made his Cup Series debut. He has six top-10 finishes in his 15 Xfinity races.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The two teams suing NASCAR asked a judge to dismiss the sanctioning body’s counterclaim in court Wednesday.
In a 20-page filing in district court in North Carolina, 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports opposed NASCAR’s motion to amend its original counterclaim. The teams argued that the need to amend the counterclaim further demonstrates the weakness of NASCAR’s arguments, calling them an attempt by NASCAR to distract and shift attention away from its own unlawful, monopolistic actions.
NASCAR’s counterclaim singled out Michael Jordan’s longtime business manager, Curtis Polk. Jordan is co-owner of 23XI Racing.
The legal battle began after more than two years of negotiations on new charter agreements — NASCAR’s equivalent of a franchise model — and the 30-page filing contends that Polk “willfully” violated antitrust laws by orchestrating anticompetitive collective conduct in connection with the most recent charter agreements.
23XI and Front Row were the only two organizations out of 15 that refused to sign the new agreements, which were presented to the teams last September in a take-it-or-leave-it offer a mere 48 hours before the start of NASCAR’s playoffs.
The charters were fought for by the teams ahead of the 2016 season and twice have been extended. The latest extension is for seven years to match the current media rights deal and guarantee 36 of the 40 spots in each week’s field to the teams that hold the charters, as well as other financial incentives. 23XI and Front Row refused to sign and sued, alleging NASCAR and the France family that owns the stock car series are a monopoly.
NASCAR already has lost one round in court in which the two teams have been recognized as chartered organizations for the 2025 season as the legal dispute winds through the courts. NASCAR has also appealed a judge’s rejection of its motion to dismiss the case.
