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FORT WORTH, Texas — Chase Elliott had to get through a few extra laps after 18 months since last winning a race.

Elliott pulled ahead and cleared Ross Chastain on the first lap after the second restart in overtime Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway, ending a 42-race winless streak for NASCAR’s most popular driver.

“A lot of things went on our way today. I’m not naive to that,” Elliott said. “You have to be in the mix and you’ve got to be up front to even have things go your way. And we were close enough to do that.”

The race ended on the 16th caution after Elliott had taken the white flag for the 276th lap in a race scheduled for 267 laps. Chastain got bumped from behind by defending race winner William Byron, who finished third and was just behind Brad Keselowski when the final yellow flag came out.

It was the fifth win this season for Hendrick Motorsports, the 306th for NASCAR’s winningest team, but the first for Elliott in the No. 9 Chevrolet since Talladega in October 2022.

“The longer it goes and the more ways you find to either not run good or lose races, you know it can make it tougher,” Elliott said. “It’s been an extremely important thing to me … to try to climb this mountain again together and try to get back to where we need to be as a group.”

Elliott and Denny Hamlin were at the front of the field after a restart with two laps left in regulation, and they were racing all-out when Hamlin got loose on the outside going into Turn 4 and went hard into the wall, bringing out the 14th caution and sending the race to overtime.

“Trying go for the win … got loose and spun out,” said Hamlin, the only driver to lead laps in all nine races this season.

That was the second restart in the last 10 laps of regulation, with Hamlin leading on the previous one before Elliott edged ahead about the same time that another caution came out when polesitter Kyle Larson wrecked after a crowded four-wide jumble back in the field.

On the first restart in overtime, Elliott was on the inside and took a hard shove from Keselowski, but Harrison Burton was wrecked within a half lap.

In NASCAR’s only stop this season at the 1½-mile Texas Motor Speedway, which for the first time in 20 years won’t host a fall playoff race, there were 13 different leaders.

Keselowski has now gone 107 races since his last win at Talladega in April 2021, and still looking for his first win with RFK Racing, a team he co-owns.

“The driver in me is frustrated because I feel like these are races I am good enough to win but don’t have the speed enough to do it,” Keselowski said. “The owner in me is mad as hell because it is my fault for not making the cars faster.”

Hamlin was the third driver to wreck when running second in the race, and all of those came in the same area of the track. Chastain became the fourth to crash from the No. 2 spot.

Michael McDowell was racing for the lead when he went through bumps in Turn 4 while on the outside of Chastain while racing for the lead on lap 142. The No. 34 Ford spun and slammed hard into the wall, and Chastain went on to win the second stage.

“It’s my fault that I spun. It’s not the track’s fault,” McDowell said.

Burton had taken the lead after going inside on lap 173 and getting three-wide off the backstretch with Bubba Wallace and Chase Briscoe, who were running up front after not pitting during the caution at the end of the second stage. Wallace got loose, moved up and made contact with Briscoe.

LARSON’S LOST WHEEL

Larson won the first stage and led 77 laps before a lugnut came loose and the right rear wheel came off the No. 5 Chevrolet on lap 116. He had to serve a two-lap penalty after getting the wheel replaced, and went on to finish 21st. He led 99 laps at Texas last fall before spinning into the wall with 85 laps left.

FORD STILL WINLESS

Ford had the last two Cup champions, but still doesn’t have a win in its new Mustang this season. Reigning champion Ryan Blaney got the last race win for Ford last October at Martinsville.

JJ SPINS

Jimmie Johnson’s spin out of the fourth turn onto the frontstretch on lap 50 brought out the first caution. The seven-time Cup champion, who now runs a very limited schedule, holds TMS records with seven wins and 1,152 laps. His 36th start at Texas was his first there in the No. 84 Toyota for the Legacy Motor Club team for which he is a co-owner.

UP NEXT

Off to Talladega, where Kyle Busch won last April and Blaney won a playoff race in October, the week after leaving Texas. The last driver with back-to-back wins at Talladega was Blaney, in the 2019 fall race and the following June in a race pushed back by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Giants sell 10% stake to private equity firm

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Giants sell 10% stake to private equity firm

The San Francisco Giants have sold a reported 10% stake in the team to private equity firm Sixth Street.

The team confirmed the deal Tuesday but not the amount of the investment, which was first reported Monday by the New York Times.

Sportico places the value of the franchise and its team-related holdings at $4.2 billion.

Sixth Street’s investment, reportedly approved by Major League Baseball on Monday, will go toward upgrades to Oracle Park and the Giants’ training facilities in Scottsdale, Arizona, as well as Mission Rock, the team’s real estate development project located across McCovey Cove from the ballpark.

Giants president and CEO Larry Baer called it the “first significant investment in three decades” and said the money would not be spent on players.

“This is not about a stockpile for the next Aaron Judge,” Baer told the New York Times. “This is about improvements to the ballpark, making big bets on San Francisco and the community around us, and having the firepower to take us into the next generation.”

Sixth Street is the primary owner of National Women’s Soccer League franchise Bay FC. It also has investments in the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs and Spanish soccer powers Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.

“We believe in the future of San Francisco, and our sports franchises like the Giants are critical ambassadors for our city of innovation, showcasing to the world what’s only made possible here,” Sixth Street co-founder and CEO Alan Waxman said in the news release. “We believe in Larry and the leadership team’s vision for this exciting new era, and we’re proud to be partnering with them as they execute the next chapter of San Francisco Giants success.”

Founded in 2009 and based in San Francisco, Sixth Street has assets totaling $75 billion, according to Front Office Sports.

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Ohtani ‘nervous’ in Tokyo but gets 2 hits, runs

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Ohtani 'nervous' in Tokyo but gets 2 hits, runs

TOKYO — Shohei Ohtani seems impervious to a variety of conditions that afflict most humans — nerves, anxiety, distraction — but it took playing a regular-season big-league game in his home country to change all of that.

After the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ Opening Day 4-1 win over the Chicago Cubs in the Tokyo Dome, Ohtani made a surprising admission. “It’s been a while since I felt this nervous playing a game,” he said. “It took me four or five innings.”

Ohtani had two hits and scored twice, and one of his outs was a hard liner that left his bat at more than 96 mph, so the nerves weren’t obvious from the outside. But clearly the moment, and its weeklong buildup, altered his usually stoic demeanor.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Shohei nervous,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But one thing I did notice was how emotional he got during the Japanese national anthem. I thought that was telling.”

As the Dodgers began the defense of last year’s World Series win, it became a night to showcase the five Japanese players on the two teams. For the first time in league history, two Japanese pitchers — the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga — faced each other on Opening Day. Both pitched well, with Imanaga throwing four hitless innings before being removed after 69 pitches.

“Seventy was kind of the number we had for Shota,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “It was the right time to take him out.”

The Dodgers agreed, scoring three in the fifth inning off reliever Ben Brown. Imanaga kept the Dodgers off balance, but his career-high four walks created two stressful innings that ran up his pitch count.

Yamamoto rode the adrenaline of pitching in his home country, routinely hitting 98 with his fastball and vexing the Cubs with a diving splitter over the course of five three-hit innings. He threw with a kind of abandon, finding a freedom that often eluded him last year in his first year in America.

“I think last year to this year, the confidence and conviction he has throwing the fastball in the strike zone is night and day,” Roberts said. “If he can continue to do that, I see no reason he won’t be in the Cy Young conversation this season.”

Cubs right fielder Seiya Suzuki went hitless in four at bats — the Cubs had only three hits, none in the final four innings against four relievers out of the Dodgers’ loaded bullpen — and rookie Roki Sasaki will make his first start of his Dodger career in the second and final game of the series Wednesday.

“I don’t think there was a Japanese baseball player in this country who wasn’t watching tonight,” Roberts said.

The Dodgers were without Mookie Betts, who left Japan on Monday after it was decided his illness would not allow him to play in this series. And less than an hour before game time, first baseman Freddie Freeman was scratched with what the team termed “left rib discomfort,” a recurrence of an injury he first sustained during last year’s playoffs.

The night started with a pregame celebration that felt like an Olympic opening ceremony in a lesser key. There were Pikachus on the field and a vaguely threatening video depicting the Dodgers and Cubs as Monster vs. Monster. World home-run king Saduharu Oh was on the field before the game, and Roberts called meeting Oh “a dream come true.”

For the most part, the crowd was subdued, as if it couldn’t decide who or what to root for, other than Ohtani. It was admittedly confounding: throughout the first five innings, if fans rooted for the Dodgers they were rooting against Imanaga, but rooting for the Cubs meant rooting against Yamamoto. Ohtani, whose every movement is treated with a rare sense of wonder, presented no such conflict.

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Cardinals shortstop Winn out with wrist soreness

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Cardinals shortstop Winn out with wrist soreness

JUPITER, Fla. — St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn was scratched from the lineup for their exhibition game on Tuesday because of soreness in his right wrist.

Winn was replaced by Jose Barrero in the Grapefruit League matchup with the Miami Marlins, with the regular-season opener nine days away. Winn, who was a 2020 second-round draft pick by the Cardinals, emerged as a productive everyday player during his rookie year in 2024. He batted .267 with 15 home runs, 11 stolen bases and 57 RBIs in 150 games and was named as one of three finalists for the National League Gold Glove Award that went to Ezequiel Tovar of the Colorado Rockies.

Winn had minor surgery after the season to remove a cyst from his hand. In 14 spring training games, he’s batting .098 (4 for 41) with 12 strikeouts.

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