How is October already over? I swear we were just capping off September and remeniscing about the summer that had just concluded while enjoying the early days of autumn. I could have sworn it had only been a month since the most recent IndyCar race. Now it has been two, the sun is setting by 6:00 p.m., and soon we are turning the clocks back an hour and it will be dark by the time you finish your lunch.
The calendar is thinning out. A number of championships are over. A few more are ending this weekend. It does mean weekends are less cluttered. There is an excitement in this time of year. Much is gained even though we consider this a period of loss.
Title-Worthy
Two drivers should be champions, but there is a chance neither will win a title, and we should give those drivers their due, because Corey Heim and Connor Zilisch have been brilliant, and the fact it is a question either could lose a championship is criminal.
In a few hours, we will know whether or not Heim will win the NASCAR Truck Series championship. No one has been close to Heim this season. He broke the record for victories in a single Truck season with 11. He has led over 1,500 laps and he has led over 1,000 laps more than the next most in the Truck Series this season. In the last ten races, he has not finished worse than third. Are you kidding me? Heim has achieved the greatest Truck Series season ever, and we go to the finale with him level on points with three other drivers who have won a combined one race, and none of them have won since Good Friday.
May the best finisher take the title!
Zilisch has won ten times in NASCAR's second division, and he has done it as a rookie. He won the third race of the season at Austin, but that was a bright spot in a rather rough first third of the season. It was his only top five finish in the first 11 races. He injured his back at Talladega, which forced him to miss a race. After that, Zilisch had 18 consecutive top five finishes! He won a race, fell off his car, broken his collarbone and then won the next race though he spent about 90% of it on the pit box. He had a three-race winning streak and he had a four-race winning streak this season. Zilisch has won at Indianapolis, Watkins Glen, Daytona, Portland and the Charlotte roval. His 19 top five finishes are five more than the next closest driver.
We know NASCAR is on the verge of changing its championship format again. The seasons from Heim and Zilisch have been further proof of how flawed the current system is.
There has been no question who the best drivers have been this year in the lower two divisions. We don't need a playoff to prove that. We don't need to reset the points. No one has been all that close to these two drivers. No one has kept pace with either of these drivers on any track discipline. As dramatic as the finales could be, there is only one satisfying result in each series.
Carson Kvapil has yet to win a race in NASCAR's second division. Kvapil has fewer than half of Zilisch's top five finish total. At no point has anyone considered him close to the best driver this season. Justin Allgaier is one of four drivers with at least three victories this season. He hasn't won since May. Jesse Love won the season opener at Daytona, and he hasn't had a top five finish in the playoffs! Kvapil has finished 15th more times this playoffs (three times) than he has finished in the top five (twice).
Tyler Ankrum won the Truck race at Rockingham, but he hasn't led a lap since Texas, the following race. That was May 2! Ty Majeski and Kaden Honeycutt enter this finale winless. Majeski or Honeycutt will at best have won 91% fewer races than Heim this season, and Majeski will at best have about 45% fewer top five finishes. Honeycutt has three top five finishes this season. He has led only 51 laps.
Are we kidding ourselves?
Everyone else has been a distant challenger this season, thoroughly outclassed. Awarding them a championship because this is how the format works is a hollow reason. It would be a pretty meaningless award. The name would be in the record book, but history will forget who was the champion because it was not an honorable title.
It is a one-race finale. Anything can happen. It is agonizing to think Heim and/or Zilisch could lose a championship this weekend when both should have been mathematically wrapped up weeks ago. The disappointing thing is if either win, the prevailing emotion will be relief, not awe over what we witnessed.
Farewells
With the end of any season comes a few farewells as drivers retire. A few names should be recognized and we will remain in the NASCAR Truck Series.
Phoenix marks the final race of Matt Crafton's career. Crafton debuted on October 28, 2000 at Fontana. He hasn't missed a Truck race since. That is over 25 years of Truck races! It is 591 races to be specific with the Phoenix finale being 592. No driver has started more Truck races than Crafton. No one else has made more than 360 Truck starts. I don't think anyone is coming close to Crafton's record.
Crafton is the last of his kind, a Truck Series original, a talented short track racer who found a living on the national stage in the Truck Series. That is what the Truck Series was for its first decade or so of existence. It brought together talent drivers from the West, East, South, and Midwest who weren't getting noticed or didn't have the budget for other national rides. These drivers were able to making a comfortable living. Career truck drivers are few to come by. Ty Majeski is fitting that mold, as is Ben Rhodes, but the series has not been meant for these kind of drivers for quite some time.
As good as Crafton was, he didn't re-write the record book. He only won 15 times in 25 full seasons. While he won six races in 2015, that was his only time he won more than two races in a season. It took him 178 races to get his first career victory. He was a three-time champion, one of those was in a winless season (thanks playoffs!). Only Ron Hornaday and Jack Sprague won at least three Truck titles. In its current form, the Truck Series is not meant for a driver to become a three-time champion.
The last few years have been tough to watch as Crafton has become the series grouch, picking fights for the sake of picking fights. He hasn't won since the middle of 2020. He likely will not end with a victory. Crafton doesn't have a top five finish this season, and he has only one in the last 52 races. There is something to appreciate in the longevity of a career. We will not see many other drivers like Crafton again.
Another semi-NASCAR-related retirement is Brad Sweet, who announced he would step away from full-time sprint car racing at the end of this year. A five-time World of Outlaw champion and winner of the 2018 Knoxville Nationals, Sweet came up through USAC while racing against Bryan Clauson, Kody Swanson, Cole Whitt, Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell, a time when all those drivers were NASCAR prospects with big futures.
Sweet had a cup of coffee in the NASCAR ranks, only starting 18 Truck races over three seasons and 36 race in NASCAR's second division in the same timespan. He had decent support with Kasey Kahne, who Sweet had driven for in dirt racing, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. at JR Motorsports. The results were promising but he never took the full plunge into NASCAR and went on to become one of the best dirt racers in the last decade. It is curious to think how different Sweet's career could have been if there had been more backing for him to try NASCAR. He was plenty capable.
Finally, jumping from dirt racing to Japan, Tsugio Matsuda announced he would retire after the Super GT finale from Motegi this weekend, ending a 28-year career dating back to Japanese Formula Three. Matsuda has not missed a Super GT race since Sportsland SUGO on July 27, 2008. That is the only race he has missed since making his debut on September 10, 2000 at Okayama.
Racing for Nissan since 2006, Matsuda was twice Super GT's GT500 champion, and his 25 victories are the all-time record in the series.
Beyond Super GT, Matsuda was rather successful in Super Formula, winning consecutive championships in 2007 and 2008, one of four drivers to win consecutive titles in the series. Outside of Japan, Matsuda dabbled in sports car racing, and was a driver in the infamous Nissan GT-R LM Nismo LMP1 program, competing in the cars only race at the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans. Matsuda did win in the LMP2 class at the 2014 Austin round in the World Endurance Championship.
Like many of the Japanese drivers of the early 21st century, my first exposure to them would have been through Gran Turismo and the Super GT cars included in the games, which then led to further exploration of their careers and the domestic racing series in the country. Matsuda stands out as a talent in the highest forms of single-seater racing and sports car racing, even if he predominantly competed on the other side of the world.
November Preview
Let's stay in Japan because the Super Formula championship will be decided over the weekend of November 22-23 at Suzuka, but the final weekend was in the news this week. On Monday, Super Formula announced Suzuka would host a third race to make up for the cancelled second race from the previous round at Fuji.
Fog prevented the second race of the Fuji weekend from taking place on October 12. In an unprecedented move, Super Formula has rescheduled a previously cancelled race, and it will have a triple-header weekend. The standard races will be held at their usual times on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. The makeup race will be on Sunday morning, and it will be 19 laps or a 50-minute race with no mandatory pit stop. The grid will be set based on the qualifying results from Fuji.
This means the final weekend will have 66 points on the table, 20 points for the three races victories, and three points for each pole position in the other two races. This means six drivers are still mathematically alive for the championship.
Sho Tsuboi leads with 104.5 points, 14.5 points clear of Kakunoshin Ohta and Ayuma Iwasa. Tadasuke Makino is 23.5 points back while Tomoi Nojiri is 41 points off Tsuboi. Sacha Fenestraz remains alive, but Fenestraz is 57.5 points back.
Tsuboi is looking for his second consecutive championship, and he has won two races this season. Ohta has won the most races this season with three but he has finished seventh or worse in five of nine races contested. Iwasa has the most podium finishes with six, but only one of those has been a victory. Makino had three podium finishes in the first four races, two of which were victories, but he has not been on the podium since. Nojiri has yet to win, but he has three podium finishes and he has won four pole positions. Fenestraz remained alive with a victory in the only Fuji round contested last month, though only half points were awarded for that race.
Nojiri is going for his third championship after he won in 2021 and 2022. He has finished in the top three of the championship in four consecutive seasons. The other four championship challengers have never won a Super Formula championship. Fenestraz has a slim chance of being the first international champion since Nick Cassidy won the 2019 title. Cassidy is the only non-Japanese champion in the last 13 seasons. The only other South American champion was João Paulo de Oliveira in 2010.
Other events of note in November:
NASCAR ends this weekend in Phoenix.
The FIA World Endurance Championship ends next week at Bahrain.
The World Rally Championship has two rounds remaining, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
Supercars has two rounds remaining, Sandown and Adelaide.
MotoGP will be on the Iberian peninsula.
Formula One has races in Brazil, Las Vegas and Qatar.
