Diez: U-M’s Harbaugh has a motorsports connection

The 2024 Chili Bowl Nationals kicked off on Monday with the O’Reilly Auto Parts Invitational Race of Champions. 2016 and 2019 winner Tanner Thorson of Minden finished sixth in this year’s edition. 2023 Chili Bowl champion Logan Seavey took the win. Thorson is scheduled for Thursday’s Victory Fuel Qualifying Night, along with NASCAR star and two-time Chili Bowl winner Kyle Larson. Tyler Carrick won Monday’s Cummins A feature and will transfer to Saturday’s final along with second-place Shane Golobic. Tuesday night’s winner of the Warren CAT A qualifier was Michael “Buddy” Kofoid. I first encountered Buddy at Fernley 95A Speedway when he was 10, driving a sprint car. He and second-place finisher Hank Davis also clinched a spot in Saturday’s championship race. Wednesday’s York Plumbing Qualifying Night saw a pair of California drivers transfer to Saturday’s final. Corey Day of Clovis took the win, with Anaheim’s Jake Swanson second.

Thursday and Friday’s qualifying races took place after press deadline. I’ll have full results next week.

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If you watched the college football championship game Monday night, you probably didn’t realize that head coach Jim Harbaugh was once heavily involved in racing. Harbaugh was invited to the Indy 500 when he was quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts in the mid-1990s. He was immediately hooked and became a part owner of the Panther Racing Indy car team in 1998. Harbaugh was a very hands-on owner, suiting up in a Pennzoil firesuit on race days and coaching the team to a pit stop competition win at the team’s first Indy 500. Two seasons later, the team won the series championship with Sam Hornish, a Harbaugh hire. So, I guess those skills learned in racing kind of led to Monday’s big win for the coach.

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The entry list for the upcoming Rolex 24 at Daytona features 60 cars. There are 10 cars in the GTP class, 13 in the LMP 2 category, 12 GT Daytona Pro entries, and 25 GT Daytona teams. Current and former IndyCar drivers will populate the field. In the GTP class, the Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac will have Scott Dixon and Alex Palou joining Sebastien Bourdais. 2023 Indy 500 champion Josef Newgarden will drive the Porsche Penske 963 and 2022 Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson is aboard the Wayne Taylor with Andretti Acura ARX-06, with Colton Herta and Formula 1 champion Jensen Button in the team car. Pato O’Ward will drive an LMP2 entry, James Hinchcliff and Alexander Rossi are in a GT Daytona Pro McLaren, Jack Hawksworth and Kyle Kirkwood share a GT Pro Lexus. Romain Grosjean and Devlin DeFrancesco will each drive a GT Daytona Lamborghini Huracan. The two GT Daytona divisions feature several manufacturers, including Corvette, Mustang, BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes, Porsche, Lexus, Lamborghini, Aston-Martin, Acura, and McLaren. The green flag will wave at 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 27.

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Finally, we bid farewell to one of NASCAR’s giants, Cale Yarborough. Known as NASCAR’s toughest driver, he won three consecutive championships in NASCAR’s top division from 1976 to 1978. His 83 wins included four in the Daytona 500. He would have won Daytona five times except for the last-lap wreck with Donnie Allison in 1979 that led to a televised fistfight between Cale and the Allison brothers. Yarborough drove for some storied teams in his career, including the Wood Brothers, Banjo Matthews, and Junior Johnson. He also raced Indy Cars, competing four times in the Indianapolis 500 and driving mostly in USAC events in 1971 and 1972 after Ford withdrew factory support from its NASCAR teams. His final achievement was his induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2012. Cale Yarborough was 84.