- Thursday night saw NASCAR hold their annual Awards celebration at the Music City Center in Nashville. Kyle Larson was officially crowned as NASCAR Cup Series champion and received his Goodyear Gold Car award.
The late Bob Jenkins was awarded the NMPA Myers Brothers Award for his service to stock car racing as an announcer, most notably with ESPN. Chase Elliott won the Most Popular Driver Award for the fourth straight year.
- Camping World Truck Series regular Chandler Smith executed a late bump n' run on the dominant Derek Thorn to take the lead with 13 laps to go. From there, Chandler held on to win the 54th Annual Snowball Derby presented by Hooters Sunday at Five Flags Speedway. This victory was confirmed after one of the longest teardowns in recent memory, which at
over four hours, took twice as long as the race did.
Thorn was very angry with his second-place finish, which capped off a dominant weekend where he won Saturday night's Snowflake 100, won the pole for the Snowball Derby and led 287 of the 300 laps in an attempt to sweep the weekend. Cole Butcher was third, then Ryan Preece and Sammy Smith.
- NASCAR announced Thursday that they have entered into a partnership with FLOSports to stream races from the ARCA Menards Series (in concert with MAVTV), ARCA Menards
Series East, ARCA Menards Series West, the Whelen Modified Tour and Pinty's Series, in addition to local short track racing on FLORacing starting in 2022. Coverage should start with the World Series of Asphalt at New Smyrna Speedway in February. The service will ultimately replace NBC Sports TrackPass, which will shut down along with NBCSN at the end of 2021. Our own Phil Allaway will have an article about the new setup and what it will mean for race fans later this week at
Frontstretch.
- In Australia, Walkinshaw Andretti United's Lee Holdsworth and Chaz Mostert dominated the Repco Bathurst 1000, leading 106 of 161 laps to win the Great Race despite a tire delamination early on putting the team on an alternate pit strategy. That was straightened out after the race's second safety car period on lap 106 due to an echidna wandering onto the track.
It is Mostert's second Bathurst 1000 victory, while Holdsworth claimed his first in his 18th start. They won by 3.740 seconds over Tickford Racing's Cameron Waters and James Moffat. Erebus Motorsport's Brodie Kostecki (a former K&N Pro Series East competitor) and David Russell were third, followed by Jame Whincup (in his final career start) and
Craig Lowndes. Bryce Fullwood and Warren Luff rounded out the top five.
- In St. Louis Saturday night, Tyler Carpenter led flag-to-flag to win the Gateway Dirt Nationals. He earned $30,000 for the victory, plus a seat with Niece Motorsports in June's Camping World Truck Series race at Knoxville Raceway. Bryan Keith has more about the event in Thinkin' Dirty.
- Formula 2 competition in Jeddah was...crash-filled. All three races saw first turn incidents.
Race No. 1 on Saturday saw Marcus Armstrong box out Liam Lawson at the first corner to take the lead. From there, he held on to take his first career victory. Lawson was second, then Juri Vips, Felipe Drugovich and Jehan Daruvala.
Race No. 2 saw Oscar Piastri take comprehensive control in the points with his fourth win of the year. Bent Viscaal was second, then Robert Shwartzmann, Dan Ticktum and Jack Doohan.
The race was red-flagged due to the crash, resulting in a time crunch that shortened the race to 20 minutes, plus a lap. Just as the mandatory pit stops were beginning, Olli Caldwell and Guilherme Samaia crashed to bring out the second red flag. The race was not resumed, resulting in Piastri taking another victory, but with the results taken at the end
of five of the scheduled 28 laps, half-points were awarded. Shwartzman was second, then Ralph Boschung, Guanyu Zhou and Drugovich.
With one weekend to go, Piastri has a 51.5-point lead over Shwartzman. With 55 points on the line in Abu Dhabi, Piastri can clinch the title with a sixth-place finish in either one of the sprint races, or an eighth-place finish in Sunday's feature race.
- Travis Pastrana finished fourth in the final Nitro Rallycross race of 2021 at The Firm in Florida, good enough to claim the inaugural Nitro Rallycross championship. Chase Elliott, who sneaked into the final race in his ASHOC/ZipRecruiter-sponsored Subaru, finished eighth.
