Monday Motorsports: A Week of Triumph, Tragedy and Controversy

Jimmie Johnson clinched his sixth Nascar Sprint Cup championship with a ninth place finish in the season finale on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Matt Kenseth finished the season in the runner-up position, 19 points behind Johnson, with a second-place finish in the race, behind the winner, Denny Hamlin. Dale Earnhardt Jr. took third in the race.

Johnson avoided disaster on a restart late in the race when he and Kenseth collided. Johnson’s car sustained some damage and dropped well back in the field. But he was slowly able to recover and race his way back into an unassailable position in the season points battle.

Johnson, 38, has won the championship in six of the last eight seasons; he now has his sights set on tying the record of seven championships in Nascar’s elite series, held by Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.

In other racing news from the weekend:

¦ Kurt Caselli, a champion motorcycle racer, was killed Friday while leading the Baja 1000 desert race with less than 100 miles to go, near Ensenada on Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.

Caselli, 30, was a factory rider for the KTM team, which issued a statement Saturday saying that its investigation indicated that Caselli had struck an animal. He was taken to an Ensenada hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Caselli, of Palmdale, Calif., was a champion many times over in trials competition, motocross and other forms of two-wheeled racing.

The Honda teammates Colton Udall, Tim Weigand, David Kamo and Mark Samuels were the overall motorcycle winners with a time of 18 hours, 29 minutes and 14 seconds. B.J. Baldwin won the four-wheel category.

¦ Sebastian Vettel scored an easy victory Sunday in the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas near Austin, Tex. It was a record-setting eighth consecutive victory in a single season for the 26-year-old German driver – his 12th of the season – on the Formula One circuit.

Vettel, a four-time Formula One champion, has a chance to tie the all-time series record of 13 victories in a single season – held by Michael Schumacher – in the season finale in Brazil this month.

Romain Grosjean of Lotus came in second in the race, followed by Vettel’s Red Bull Infiniti teammate, Mark Webber, who is scheduled to retire from Formula One racing at the end of the season.

¦ Dario Franchitti, the three-time Indianapolis 500 champion, announced he would end the driving part of his career after being injured in an IndyCar crash in Houston last month. Franchitti, 40, sustained leg, back and head injuries when his car flipped into a fence on the final lap of a race after coming into contact with another car. A four-time IndyCar series champion, Franchitti returned to his native Scotland recently to continue his recovery.

“One month removed from the crash and based upon the expert advice of the doctors who have treated and assessed my head and spinal injuries post-accident, it is their best medical opinion that I must stop racing,” Franchitti said in a statement. “They have made it very clear that the risks involved in further racing are too great and could be detrimental to my long-term well-being. Based on this medical advice, I have no choice but to stop.”

Friends noted that Franchitti refused to use the word “retire.”

¦ Sébastien Ogier won the Wales Rally of Great Britain on Sunday, capping off a title-winning season in the World Rally Championship. Ogier won nine events in the series this season and finished comfortably ahead of Thierry Neuville in the points tally. Neuville, driving a Ford, came home third in Wales, behind Ogier’s Volkswagen teammate, Jari-Matti Latvala.

¦ Austin Dillon narrowly defeated Sam Hornish Jr. for Nascar’s Nationwide series championship title, with a 12th-place finish in the season finale Saturday night at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Hornish, who came up just three points shy of the title, finished the event in eighth place.

The finish was not without controversy. Nascar officials were criticized for taking an unusually long time to clean up after a wreck late in the race – a development that seemed to preserve the chances of Dillon, whose ill-handling car was fading from contention. The ensuing 12-lap caution period tied a record for laps under a yellow flag, leaving only five green flag laps in the race. It wasn’t enough time for Hornish, who had an early race lead, to regain his advantage in points. Roger Penske, who owns Hornish’s car, said Nascar’s handling of the situation was “very disappointing.”

Dillon, who along with his brother Ty, were publicly criticized last month by their departing teammate Kevin Harvick as “rich kids” who have “had everything handed to them with a spoon,” clinched the title without having won a race on the 33-event schedule.