as a 94-year-old woman who, out of grief and loneliness, does a terrible thing.
“It’s pretty wild, really,” Briscoe said. “I never thought I would get to run a Truck Series race let alone lead the way at two crown jewel events.”on Friday, celebrated by turning a lap of 182.642 and will start third, followed by Chris Buescher and AJ Allmendinger. Rounding out the top 10 will be John Nemechek, Ty Gibbs, Noah Gragson, Alex Bowman and defending race champion Christopher Bell.
Briscoe knows winning the Coca-Cola 600 pole does not necessarily guarantee success, particularly in such a long race.Larson won from the pole in 2021, but prior to that the last driver to accomplish that feat was Jeff Gordon in 1998.Bell won last year’s rain-shortened 249-lap race, and is now out to prove that was no fluke.
“Certainly, I have gotten annoyed by people calling it an asterisk win, so I would love to win this race as the Coca-Cola 600 and run the full 600 miles,” Bell said. “We should be really competitive. The last couple of years this has been one of our best intermediate tracks, as far as the 20 group goes, so I really look forward to the challenge.”Last year fans booed loudly after waiting through a long rain delay, only to have NASCAR announce early in the morning hours that the race could not be completed because of the inability to dry the track.
“I want to be a 600-mile winner and not get booed going into victory lane,” Bell said with a laugh.
One thing to keep an eye on Sunday will be how the track reacts to the racecars in Turns 3 and 4, as drivers talked repeatedly about how particularly bumpy it is there.Contact AP’s global investigative team at
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Pittsburgh’s Oneil Cruz had the hardest-hit ball since Statcast started tracking in 2015, a home run off Milwaukee’s Logan Henderson on Sunday that left the bat at 122.9 mph and splashed into the Allegheny River.Cruz’s leadoff drive to right in the third inning on a 92.2 mph fastball traveled 432 feet and cut the Pirates’ deficit to 3-1 in a 6-5 loss.
“I connected really well. It feels even better just to know that it’s the hardest hit ball in the history of Statcast,” Cruz said through an interpreter. “It doesn’t matter how hard the ball was hit. I just go out and make good contact. Sometimes, I don’t even try to make the hardest contact.”Cruz had the previous hardest-hit ball, a 122.4 mph single on Aug. 24, 2022. Miami’s Giancarlo Stanton had the prior hardest-hit home run at 121.8 mph, a drive off Gio Gonzalez at Washington on Aug. 9, 2017.