SPEEDWAY, Ind., and CONCORD, N.C. — Kyle Larson fears no race car, racetrack or racing rival.
He is widely considered to be the most versatile racer of his generation, a modern day A.J. Foyt or Mario Andretti. That’s why the idea of taking on arguably the most daunting challenge that American motorsports has to offer, attempting to complete the planet’s biggest race (the Indianapolis 500) and NASCAR‘s most grueling race (the Coca-Cola 600) on the same day was so attractive. Because Kyle Larson fears nothing and loses to few.
On Sunday, though, Mother Nature kicked Kyle Larson’s ass.
His reaction? To figure out a way to do it all over again.
“Don’t try to question it, because, no offense, you don’t really understand it,” Andretti himself said on Sunday, admittedly jealous of the 31-year-old’s carefully planned and ultimately doomed Double attempt. “Anyone [in Indianapolis] or in Charlotte or over in Monaco this morning, anyone with a racing helmet in their hand today, they get it. It makes sense to them. To us. Racers. It’s why we root for Kyle, because we want to do it as well.”
Even if it fails?
“If it fails, that’s just lessons learned for the next time. And the next. Until you get those trophies,” expounded the man with so many trophies, from IndyCar, Formula One and NASCAR, too.
On Sunday, Larson completed only 200 laps and 500 miles of what was supposed to be a 600-lap/1,100-mile day. He also sprinted through 619 miles of travel, carried over that distance by way of two golf carts, two Chevy Suburbans, two helicopters and a Dassault Falcon 2000LXS. To make all of that happen took more than a year of planning by dozens of people working for two legendary race teams, NASCAR’s Hendrick Motorsports and Arrow McLaren of IndyCar. The meetings were endless. The logistics were exhausting. It was all going to work. Until it didn’t.
“There were so many scenarios that could have played out so many different ways,” Larson said Sunday just before midnight, in the rain-soaked Charlotte Motor Speedway garage, the Coca-Cola 600 having just been called by NASCAR, with Christopher Belldeclared the winner with 151 of 400 laps remaining. “But the worst-case scenario happened, and that’s a bummer.”
Larson’s day began 19 hours earlier, awakened in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway infield as the old racetrack was rattled to life by the traditional 6 a.m. cannon shot that signals the opening of the gates. He immediately peeked out of his motorhome and into the sky. The silhouette of the nearby tree line was lined in soft pink and orange, glowing on the eastern horizon over the backstretch. Dawn was breaking with nary a cloud to be seen in any direction. The man who hoped to become only the fifth racer to complete the so-called Double, only the second to successfully run the entire 1,110 miles on the same day and perhaps the first to win one or even both, had only one thought.
“I wished we could have started the race right then.”
Alas, the green flag for the 108th Indianapolis 500 was scheduled for 12:45 p.m. ET, almost the exact moment of arrival for a band of vicious thunderstorms that bulldozed the nation all weekend. It rolled through Speedway, Indiana, at precisely the worst time. Unless you like dominoes.
“I don’t know if I can ever remember a time when a room full of racers were rooting for rain before a race started, but we certainly were,” confessed Jeff Gordon, the four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion-turned-Hendrick Motorsports chairman.
Added his boss, team owner Rick Hendrick, who also had his auto sales business on both cars as primary sponsor: “If I don’t have to look at another weather radar map again for a while, that will be fine with me.”
As soon as the extended Indy forecasts began showing the possibility of showers within the green flag window, Gordon, Hendrick, Hendrick Motorsports general manager Jeff Andrews, Arrow McLaren CEO Zak Brown and Larson started a series of daily meetings to discuss weather scenarios. By Sunday, those meetings were happening multiple times per hour. As late as 2 p.m., while Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials were scrambling 250,000 fans in and out of the grandstands due to lightning concerns and also working to dry the racing surface to avoid just the fourth outright race postponement in 108 editions of the Indy 500, Team Larson was in their Gasoline Alley garage stall, hoping for the complete opposite.
The long, thin line of storms was moving quickly and on a northern route. They wanted it to slow down and take more of a turn to the east. Once they knew the rain was inevitable, then the longer the gullywasher, the better.
“Our window was always going to be tight to get to Charlotte for a six o’clock start time,” Larson explained. “So instead of making that stress any worse, we were pulling for a rainout. Let us go to Charlotte and then come back to Indy on Monday. I know the fans wanted to get it in, but they weren’t experiencing the same stress we were.”
Not so fast, ye who makes his living going fast. During that long, wet pause that ended up being a full four hours, a stroll among the tens of thousands seeking shelter beneath the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s frontstretch grandstand revealed plenty of nail-biting among the plenty of people who were dressed in Larson apparel.
“He is the only reason we are here,” explained Dot Smith, who made the trip from dirt-track hotbed Springfield, Missouri, along with her husband Dan, both dressed in too-wet matching “Larson 1100” T-shirts. “We didn’t watch NASCAR or IndyCar because we like short-track racing, but he’s a short-track racer who is running both, so we are here. We just hope he can run both today.”
By the time Indy’s ritualistic pre-race ceremonies finally started amid the suddenly bright Indiana sunshine, Team Larson knew that making it to Charlotte in time for the start of the 600 was impossible. Larson never hesitated. He was staying. Justin Allgaier would start the NASCAR race in his place, and whenever Larson arrived in North Carolina, he would take back the wheel of his stock car.
“Kyle’s priority is this race first and then whatever he can get in Charlotte,” explained his coach for the month, 2015 Indy 500 champion Tony Kanaan, who was still coaching up his pupil on the finer points of restarts and pit stops as the world waited out the rain Sunday. “I know NASCAR is his day job and he is the points leader there, hoping to win another championship [to go with his 2021 Cup Series title], but his focus is here and now. Tonight, it will be there and then.”
The roar of the crowd for Larson during driver introductions was easily the loudest of the day. And the crowd around his car on the grid was the largest anyone could ever remember seeing, certainly for a rookie.
I’ve been doing this for a while. Never seen a crowd around a car on the #Indy500 prerace grid like the one around Kyle Larson’s car just now. pic.twitter.com/i5oLI3ndmx
“Look at that,” Larson’s teammate and 2016 Indy 500 champ Alexander Rossi said, pointing to the mob as he pressed himself against the pit lane wall to stay out of the way. “My rookie year [also 2016] I think I had my crew and no one else standing with me. This is great for IndyCar racing. And he could win today. Trust me.”
Rossi was not wrong. Larson started on the second row, dropped back into the pack early, and indeed made a couple of small mistakes on pit stops and restarts that kept him from dashing back toward the front. But by midrace he was a fixture in the top 10, then the top six, and was threatening to fight for the lead. Until …
“I smoked the right front tire or something on a green flag pit stop,” Larson recalled of a trip down pit road when he had to slow from 230 mph to 60 mph entering the pits with fewer than 70 laps remaining. When the tell-tale smoke blasted off the locked-up tires, the crowd groaned. He was slapped with a pit road speeding penalty by IndyCar officials and after a drive-through penalty was a full lap behind the leaders. On the verge of tears after finishing 18th, Larson said, “If I just could have executed a better race, you never know what could happen. Yeah, just bummed with myself.”
“This is the part that we had planned and replanned and planned again,” Brown explained Sunday. “But I think maybe this is the part that people didn’t think about that we certainly had been thinking about for a while. Weather didn’t just affect what we were doing at the track, but everything in between the tracks. It was never just about rain delays. It was about airport closures and helicopters grounded and even Donald Trump being at Charlotte. What does that mean for security and transportation?”
Only 17 minutes after the checkered flag fell, Larson, his brow still crossed over an Indy 500 opportunity he felt that he had blown, was out of the helicopter and walking to the Hendrick Motorsports jet, its engines already running. Five minutes later, he was airborne, changed into a fresh K1 firesuit and with an IV bag of fluids in his arm.
17 minutes after the #Indy500 checkered flag, Kyle Larson’s chopper landed and he boarded his plane for Charlotte. pic.twitter.com/5WMPy1yGih
The good news? Flying at 540 mph, he would be landing at Concord Regional Airport, only four miles from Charlotte Motor Speedway, in less than an hour. The better news? Allgaier was smoking his way around the track, running 13th and keeping up with the leaders so well that rival Brad Keselowski asked over the radio, “Is Larson already here?”
But the bad news? His plane was also streaking its way over and through the same storm front that had ruined the midday schedule at Indy. He landed at 9:20 p.m. ET. His second chopper ride, less than five minutes long, was with the double backdrop of Charlotte Motor Speedway’s lights and also flashes of lightning bearing down on the racetrack.
Larson’s last golf cart ride of this longest day rocketed through a cheering infield crowd and carried him to the Hendrick Motorsports pit stall, where he climbed atop the box to sit with crew chief Cliff Daniels and waited for the first opportunity to swap out with Allgaier and finally get back into the cockpit of his No. 5 Chevy.
“We know that Justin gets the driver points for this race since he started it and we knew that when Kyle was going to miss the start of this race, that we would have to file a waiver with NASCAR,” Hendrick explained as he waited on Larson to arrive at the Indianapolis airport.
He was speaking of NASCAR’s rule that a driver must start every race in order to be eligible for the 10-race series championship postseason field, for which an exception can be made by filing for a waiver if they have a good reason for why they missed the race. Such as an injury, a family emergency, or perhaps attempting to run the Indy 500 and do the Memorial Day Double and provide NASCAR with an immeasurable amount of publicity in the process.
“If Justin can keep the car near the front and Kyle can get it into Victory Lane, then they both get to celebrate,” Hendrick said. “There’s only one trophy, but I’ll figure that out. That’s a good problem to have.”
The problem with that problem is that it was never a problem in the first place. Because the very moment that Larson climbed atop that pit box in Charlotte, the night skies opened up and rain fell like no one had seen since … well, 11 hours earlier at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Another two hours of waiting and the race was called. Bell was the winner. Allgaier was credited with a 13th-place finish.
Larson never ran a lap at Charlotte.
“I am very, very thankful for the experience that was so great until today, when everything that could have gone wrong did,” Larson said before vanishing into the damp night, lightning still sparking the clouds overhead as Sunday turned into Monday. “Maybe we get to do it again. I hope so. I want to. There’s no way it goes like this again, right?”
There’s only way to find out. And no matter how many races Kyle Larson wins between now and then, the excruciating pain of the missed opportunities of May 26, 2024, will take up a much larger portion of his brain than those victories will. As Richard Petty has always said, “I won 200 races, but I can tell you a lot more about the 900 I lost.”
“Yeah, I’m not ready to have that conversation yet,” Hendrick said with a tired laugh, sitting in the terminal of the Hendrick Motorsports hangar, slumped into a chair as he debriefed with his management team. “But Kyle will be ready, sooner than later. That’s how racers are built. That’s what makes them great. And even when they drive me crazy and wear me out, I love them for that.”
Or, as Dan Smith put it, four states and a whole day earlier, in the Indianapolis rain: “There’s a reason they make T-shirts with these guys’ faces on them and not of the rest of us. Their brains work different, don’t they?”
“Honestly, when we lose, I don’t even get in the shower until early this morning. I’ll just be mad. I just brush my teeth. It’s like, I don’t deserve soap.” — Syracuse head coach Fran Brown
Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located behind the “sorry, not sorry” bouquet of water hemlocks sent to the Big 12 officiating office from Utah athletic director Mark Harlan, we know all too well the sting of losing football games. We see it every week in every game we watch.
Yeah, yeah, we know what you’re thinking. “Come on, dummy, someone loses every game that anyone watches.” That’s true. At least now it is. We are also old enough to remember when games ended in ties. That was way worse.
But here in the Bottom 10 Cinematic Universe, losses are worse because that’s all you experience. You’d think we’d get used to it, numb from the pain like when you keep accidentally biting that same spot on your tongue to the point that it just becomes sensory free. But instead, it’s like Bruce Banner explained about being the Hulk: “You see, I don’t get a suit of armor. I’m exposed. Like a nerve. It’s a nightmare.”
However, as we learned in “Age of Ultron,” even after one of his worst losses, Bruce Banner does take a shower. So, Coach Brown, take it from us, in a world where every team has a helluva lot more losses than Syracuse … dude, wash up. Seriously. We can smell you from here. And we’re in Kent, Ohio.
With apologies to Mr. Clean, former Miami (Ohio) quarterback Mike Bath, former Southern Illinois running back Wash Henry and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 11 Bottom 10 rankings.
The Golden(plated) Flashes are still America’s last winless FBS team, losing their 18th straight game when they were edged by Ohio 41-0. Now they travel to My Hammy of Ohio, where they are given a 2.8% chance to win by the ESPN Analytics Ouija board, er, I mean Matchup Predictor. But honestly, that game will only be the appetizer ahead of the, yes, Week 13 main course that is the Wagon Wheel showdown with Akronmonious. And by appetizer we mean way-past-the-expiration-date freezer-burned mini-pizza bagels.
The New Owls not only used their talons to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at UTEP, losing in double overtime, they earned Bottom 10 Bonus Points for firing their head coach — and during their first year as an FBS team, no less. Though the AD issued a statement that Brian Bohannon had “stepped down,” Bohannon himself responded on social media: “Contrary to what’s been reported, I want to be clear that I did not step down.” But there is no confusion as to whether the Owls have stepped up or down in these rankings, where every move up is also a move down.
Brett Favre Funding U. lost to We Are Marshall 37-3, meaning all eight of their defeats this season have been by double digits. In related news, I also received double digit political texts on Election Day — and one of those was from Favre. No, for real. I wonder, did he cover the data charges himself or did he steal change from the donation jar at his grocery store checkout?
Sometimes in this life we are asked to do things that go against the fiber of our being. Like taking your daughter to the concert of an artist you’ve never heard of. Or me having to use Earth’s most annoying instrument, the leaf blower. This weekend this team of Minutemen will be asked to try to defeat Liberty.
5. The Sunshine State
The Coveted Fifth Spot has never been more crowded. The FBS, FCS and NFL teams of Florida posted a 1-11 record over the weekend, salvaged only by the Miami Dolphins’ win over the Los Angeles Rams on “Monday Night Football.” UC(not S)F, US(not C)F, FA(not I)U, Stetson, Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman all lost, led in misery by the Wildcats’ five-overtime loss to Southern. The Flori-duh Gate Doors celebrated the announced retaining of coach Billy Napier by losing to Texas in a squeaker 49-17. And My Hammy of Florida finally spotted an opponent a lead too large for a Cam Ward comeback and took its first loss of the season, falling to unranked Georgia Tech. If only someone else in the state could relate to that …
The Semi-No’s are continuing to work around the Coveted Fifth Spot by earning their Bottom 10 keep the old-fashioned way, not only losing to semi/sorta/kinda ACC member Notre Dame by a scant 52-3, but also earning a pile of their own Bottom 10 Bonus Points not by firing head coach Mike Norvell, but because Norvell fired both his offensive and defensive coordinators and a wide receivers coach. In related news, over the weekend a friend of mine steered his bass boat into a giant pile of sharp rocks and reacted by throwing his shirt and hat overboard.
It was three weekends ago that the Buttermakers lost to then-second-ranked Oregon 35-0. On Saturday, they lost to then-second-ranked Ohio State 45-0. Now they play sixth-ranked Penn State, and in two weeks end their season playing currently eighth-ranked Indiana. We have to assume that a team of professors from Purdue’s legendary mechanical engineering department is studying this experience as a way to assess the stress put on a school bus that is attempting to drive over a lava field covered in landmines.
The Minors have a weekend off to continue their post-Kennesaw victory party. And what’s the best way to snap yourself out of a two-week hangover? Hair of the dog? A cold bucket of water over the head? How about the hair of a coontick hound and a bucket of water from the river during a Week 13 trip to Neyland Stadium to play Tennessee?
Whatever is left of UTEP after Knoxville will then play whatever is left of the Other Aggies after their Week 12 trip to face the OG Aggies of Texas A&M. If there’s any justice in this world, then the loser and/or winner of that Aggie Bowl would go on to play …
The Other Other Aggies lost to the one-loss team the nation forgot about, Warshington State. But if you consider the week before that, we find a Bottom 10 conundrum. Utah State beat WhyOMGing? but the week before that lost to Whew Mexico by five points. Meanwhile, Wyoming, who lost to Utah State two weeks ago, spent last weekend beating New Mexico by five points. Perhaps we will be given some clarity when Wyoming ends the year at Washington State. Or perhaps we will have already given up. As so many here in the Bottom 10 seem to do.
Waiting list: Miss Sus Hippie State, Georgia State Not Southern, FA(not I)U, Akronmonious, Meh-dle Tennessee, WhyOMGing?, Temple of Doom, Living on Tulsa Time, You A Bee?, Standfird, people who put all those election signs up but now won’t take them down.
NEW YORK — An arbitrator upheld five-year suspensions of the chief executives of Bad Bunny’s sports representation firm for making improper inducements to players and cut the ban of the company’s only certified baseball agent to three years.
Ruth M. Moscovitch issued the ruling Oct. 30 in a case involving Noah Assad, Jonathan Miranda and William Arroyo of Rimas Sports. The ruling become public Tuesday when the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a petition to confirm the 80-page decision in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan.
The union issued a notice of discipline on April 10 revoking Arroyo’s agent certification and denying certification to Assad and Miranda, citing a $200,000 interest-free loan and a $19,500 gift. It barred them from reapplying for five years and prohibited certified agents from associating with any of the three of their affiliated companies. Assad, Miranda and Arroyo then appealed the decision, and Moscovitch was jointly appointed as the arbitrator on June 17.
Moscovitch said the union presented unchallenged evidence of “use of non-certified personnel to talk with and recruit players; use of uncertified staff to negotiate terms of players’ employment; giving things of value – concert tickets, gifts, money – to non-client players; providing loans, money, or other things of value to non-clients as inducements; providing or facilitating loans without seeking prior approval or reporting the loans.”
“I find MLBPA has met its burden to prove the alleged violations of regulations with substantial evidence on the record as a whole,” she wrote. “There can be no doubt that these are serious violations, both in the number of violations and the range of misconduct. As MLBPA executive director Anthony Clark testified, he has never seen so many violations of so many different regulations over a significant period of time.”
María de Lourdes Martínez, a spokeswoman for Rimas Sports, said she was checking to see whether the company had any comment on the decision. Arroyo did not immediately respond to a text message seeking comment.
Moscovitch held four in-person hearings from Sept. 30 to Oct. 7 and three on video from Oct. 10-16.
“While these kinds of gifts are standard in the entertainment business, under the MLBPA regulations, agents and agencies simply are not permitted to give them to non-clients,” she said.
“While it is true, as MLBPA alleges, that Mr. Arroyo violated the rules by not supervising uncertified personnel as they recruited players, he was put in that position by his employers,” Moscovitch wrote. “The regulations hold him vicariously liable for the actions of uncertified personnel at the agency. The reality is that he was put in an impossible position: the regulations impose on him supervisory authority over all of the uncertified operatives at Rimas, but in reality, he was their underling, with no authority over anyone.”
Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Wander Franco on Wednesday was assigned monthly court-mandated check-ins while he awaits a court date to face charges of illegal use and possession of a firearm related to his arrest on Sunday after an armed altercation in the Dominican Republic countryside.
Franco, 23, was arrested in San Juan de la Maguana, 116 miles west of Santo Domingo, after what police said was an altercation in the parking lot of an apartment complex in which guns were drawn. Franco was held for questioning by police and granted provisional release.
He was brought by military police to court on Wednesday for his arraignment wearing a light grey hoodie covering his head and most of his face and kept his head bowed as he was led into the courtroom. He did not speak to reporters.
Prosecutors said a Glock with its magazine and 15 rounds of ammunition registered to Franco’s uncle was found in Franco’s black Mercedes-Benz at the time of the altercation.
The confrontation occurred Sunday between Franco, another man and the father of that man over Franco’s relationship with a woman prosecutors said lived in the apartment complex.
There were no injuries, and the involved parties agreed they will not press charges.
The use and possession of illegal firearms carries a maximum sentence of three to five years plus a fine. As part of Franco’s supervised release he will be responsible for checking in at the San Juan de la Maguana court on the 30th of each month. No court date has yet been assigned to hear the weapons charge.
Franco, who was placed on indefinite administrative leave from Major League Baseball on Aug. 22, 2023, is due to stand trial in the Dominican Republic on Dec. 12 in a separate case involving charges of sexual abuse, sexual exploitation against a minor and human trafficking that could result in a sentence of up to 20 years.
Franco was placed on MLB’s restricted list in July, sources had told ESPN, after prosecutors in the Dominican Republic accused him of having a sexual relationship with a then-14-year-old girl.
He is also under an MLB investigation under its domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy until the case is resolved.
The court summoned Franco and the mother of the girl for the trial after an investigation that opened in 2022. The case will be heard by a panel of three or five judges.
The Rays gave Franco an 11-year, $182 million extension in 2021, just 70 games into his major league career.
He made the All-Star team for the first time in 2023.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.