Mayfield Wins NASCAR Race

Jeremy Mayfield was happy to leave his winning car behind and walk to victory circle Sunday.

The winner of the chaotic NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Michigan International Speedway blew two tires as he celebrated his first victory in nearly a year with a burnout in front of the front-stretch grandstand.

No matter. Mayfield was still grinning widely when he stepped out of his No. 19 Evernham Motorsports Dodge.

“Every win I’ve ever won in this series is like that, full of drama,” Mayfield said. “Right up to the wire you never know.”

He came out on top of the chaotic GFS Marketplace 400 by running the last 52 laps on a single tank of fuel, but still had enough gas to do a slow victory lap and the crowd-pleasing burnout.

“I blew out the rear tires on that burnout and that was pretty cool,” Mayfield said. “I still had enough fuel to do it.”

Mayfield, whose most recent win came in September in Richmond, Va., was never close to the lead earlier in the race. But one by one, the leaders were forced to pit for fuel -- and Mayfield inherited the top spot with six laps to go in the 200-lap event.

There were seven caution flags in the race, but none in the final 51 laps.

It was Mayfield’s fifth career victory and moved him from seventh to sixth in the season points, solidifying his hold on a spot in the upcoming Chase for the Championship.

Scott Riggs, fighting to keep his ride, also stretched his gas to the end and finished a career-high second, followed by Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards, who had been battling for the lead before the late pit stops.

Series points leader Tony Stewart -- who came into the race as the hottest driver in stock car racing with five wins in seven starts -- never led Sunday but finished fifth for his eighth consecutive top-seven finish.

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Dan Wheldon took his second lead with 60 laps left and wasn’t challenged again, running away with the Honda Indy 225 at Fountain, Colo., for his record-tying fifth win of the season.

Wheldon started 11th and gradually worked his way to the front on the mile tri-oval at Pikes Peak International Raceway, taking the lead when he whipped past defending champion Dario Franchitti on Lap 153. Franchitti took the lead back on Lap 159 when Wheldon went to the pits, but the Englishman retook the lead six laps later.

Wheldon led by as much as 14 seconds after that and cruised to his first win since the Indianapolis 500 on May 29, beating Sam Hornish Jr. by 12.4763 seconds and averaging 153.79 mph for his eighth career victory.

The win increases Wheldon’s lead over Hornish to 97 points with four races left.

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Kimi Raikkonen won the inaugural Turkish Grand Prix at Istanbul from the pole to increase the pressure on Formula One points leader Fernando Alonso. The Finn’s fifth victory of the season left him 24 points behind Alonso in the season standings with five races left.

Raikkonen was followed by Alonso in a Renault on Formula One’s newest course. Juan Pablo Montoya, Raikkonen’s McLaren-Mercedes teammate, was third.

Seven-time champion Michael Schumacher, who started 19th on the 20-car grid, went off the track after 16 laps after a minor collision with Mark Webber of Williams-BMW. He sat out 19 laps but returned to the track and ran about 15 laps more before retiring again.

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Ricky Carmichael overcame an early challenge from James Stewart at Center Lisle, N.Y., to win his 25th consecutive AMA 250cc motocross championship race.

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A race car crashed into the stands at a Mount Vernon, Ill., track, killing two spectators and injuring six other people, officials said. The driver also was hurt.

State police were trying to determine what caused the car to shoot off the quarter-mile dirt oval track Saturday night at Mount Vernon Raceway. It was the only vehicle on the track at the time. The driver was doing a qualification run.

The car’s speed wasn’t known, but it flew deep into the stands, said Capt. Conan King of the Jefferson County Fire Protection District.