Roger Diez: NASCAR championships muted by Gibbs’ death

It was a bittersweet championship weekend at Phoenix. Joey Logano won his second NASCAR Cup championship and Ty Gibbs took the Xfinity series title. But the celebrations were dimmed by the sudden passing of Joe Gibbs Racing executive Coy Gibbs, who died in his sleep just hours after his son became a champion.

Daniel Hemric replaced Ty in the No. 23 Toyota for Sunday’s Cup race. The younger Gibbs won seven races, although not without gaining a reputation as an overly aggressive driver. The peak of that assessment came at Martinsville in the final Round of Eight race, when he wrecked teammate Brandon Jones to take the win. He’s expected to move up to Cup next season, taking over the No. 18 Toyota formerly driven by Kyle Busch.

Logano became the first Ford driver to win multiple championships since David Pearson’s back-to-back titles in 1968-69. He and Kyle Busch are currently the only active drivers to have won more than one championship. And it was Logano’s team owner Roger Penske’s first championship season in both NASCAR Cup and IndyCar, where driver Will Power took that title.

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In the offseason, NASCAR will be making some changes to the Next Gen car to fix two dangerous issues. First is the cause of concussions suffered by drivers in crashes. The second is the problem of Fords catching fire, a situation that happened again last Sunday for Brad Keselowski.

I would give the Next Gen car a B- for its first season, due to those two issues and also the fragile toe link in the independent rear suspension. The Next Gen car is superior to the old car on road courses, and I can’t wait to see how it performs on the Chicago street course, NASCAR Cup’s first venture into street racing. A number of other cities have also sent out feelers about NASCAR races on their streets. Tickets for the Chicago race are now available at NASCARChicago.com or 1-888-629-7223.

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With both the IndyCar and NASCAR seasons at an end, there’s still racing going on. Formula 1’s next-to-last race is this weekend at the Interlagos course in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Both the driver’s and constructors’ championships in F1 have been decided in favor of Max Verstappen and Red Bull, but there are still battles for places further down the order. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc is only five points below Red Bull’s Sergio Perez for second, and Lewis Hamilton in fifth is a mere four points ahead of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.

In the constructors’ chase, Alpine leads McLaren by just seven points for fourth, Alfa Romeo is in sixth, ahead of Aston Martin by four points, and Alfa Tauri trails Haas by only one point for eighth.

Saturday’s sprint qualifying race airs at 11:30 on ESPNews with the race on ABC at 10 a.m. on Sunday.

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And The NHRA finals take place this weekend at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, California. Brittany Force leads the Top Fuel field, seven points ahead of Justin Ashley, while Robert Hight has 61 points in hand over Ron Capps. Erica Enders has Pro Stock wrapped up with a 244-point margin over Aaron Stanfield, and Matt Smith is 104 points to the good over Joey Gladstone in Pro Stock Motorcycle. Qualifying airs Sunday at 11 a.m. followed by finals at 1 p.m., both on Fox Sports 1.

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And finally, Tony Stewart’s first drag racing attempt at Las Vegas two weeks ago could be considered a rousing success. Stewart advanced through the qualifying and elimination rounds in a field of 22 Top Alcohol dragsters, losing in the final round by 0.002 second to Madison Payne.