Archives for February 2021

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Denny Hamlin, considered perhaps the best NASCAR driver without a Cup Series championship, can look past that hole on his record. He instead points to a pair of Southern 500 trophies, a Bristol night race victory, three road course wins, six at Pocono and the big daddy of them all, the Daytona 500.

Hamlin has won NASCAR’s crown jewel, the one race that can define a driver’s career, three different times and the last two years. On Sunday, he will attempt to become the first to win three consecutive Daytona 500s, a feat that would forever dull the disappointment of his championship failures.

“This is something that no one’s ever done before,” Hamlin said. “Other guys have won championships, obviously. I would want to do something no one else has done.”

Hamlin is the 8-1 betting favorite but the Daytona 500 can be a crapshoot, particularly in NASCAR’s condensed new schedule forced by the pandemic. Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway for decades spanned nearly two weeks but this year was cut to just six days.

With only three practice sessions and the 150-mile Duel qualifying races, there is no clear indication who has cars capable of winning the Daytona 500.

Hendrick Motorsports swept the front row in qualifying with Alex Bowman and William Byron, but Byron crashed in the qualifying race and will fall to the back in a backup car at the start of the 500. Bowman had an engine problem that will cost him the pole if the motor needs to be replaced.

Chase Elliott is the reigning series champion but hasn’t had enough time to show if he’s a contender for his first Daytona 500 victory. It’s also unclear how Kyle Larson, new to the Hendrick stable this season after last year’s NASCAR suspension for using a racial slur, is adapting to his new team.

Kevin Harvick is looking to rebound after falling short of the series title in last year’s nine-win season. He tweeted “She’s bad fast” about his Ford, though it was Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Aric Almirola who won the first qualifying race and said his car is strong for Sunday.

Fellow Ford drivers and Team Penske teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney both seemed able to run with Almirola.

Austin Dillon won the second duel, setting him up for a possible second Daytona 500 victory on the 20th anniversary of Dale Earnhardt’s death. Dillon drives Earnhardt’s famed No. 3 on grandfather Richard Childress’ team and understands how emotional a victory would be in that Chevrolet.

“It would be amazing and huge for the company, RCR and all the 3 fans out there,” Dillon said.

Dillon beat Bubba Wallace to win his qualifying race in a dramatic finish that showed Wallace might finally have the equipment he needs to be competitive. Wallace is the only Black racer at NASCAR’s top level and gained a national platform last season for his outspokenness on social justice issues.

He landed multiple sponsors through his activism and Wallace brought that funding to Michael Jordan and Hamlin for the launch of 23XI Racing. Jordan and Wallace are the only Black majority owner and driver combination in the sport, and this team has the sponsorship and support that could finally give Wallace a chance at his first Cup Series victory.

Wallace expects Jordan to demand results.

“He wants winning race cars, he wants a winning race driver and he took an opportunity to invest in me and he has seen something that sparked his interest,” Wallace said. “We’re just going to go out and do what I know how to do, not change up anything, not try too hard because of MJ or because of Denny or because of the opportunity.”

Pitbull is another celebrity new to NASCAR team ownership. The entertainer signed on with Justin Marks to field Trackhouse Racing this year for Daniel Suarez, the only full-time Mexican driver in NASCAR.

Pitbull views his newest endeavor as an opportunity to promote multiple initiatives, most importantly his message of unity.

“If there’s anything we need in these times right now it is something that unites people, not divides people,” Pitbull said. “It’s about utilizing the culture, creating the culture through NASCAR to bring people together.”

Live Fast Racing, the third new team and one co-owned by former driver Matt Tifft and B.J. McLeod, will make its debut in the 500 with McLeod as the driver. Derrike Cope, the 1990 Daytona 500 winner, is back for what he says will be his final race and even at 62 — the oldest driver in the field — Cope believes he’s got a shot.

The race will have a noticeably empty feeling because pandemic restrictions have limited attendance to roughly 30,000 spectators in the grandstands. Daytona was at capacity with 101,000 in the grandstands a year ago, several thousand more camping in the infield.

But everything has been scaled down this year and there’s a heavy presence of fencing and gates to keep the competition bubble contained. Movement inside the speedway is restricted to the point Hamlin was stymied taking his usual route to victory lane.

“I felt like a mouse trying to find the cheese,” Hamlin said of trying to get to to the traditional ring ceremony for last year’s Daytona 500 victory.

Hamlin, now 40 and beginning his 16th season with Joe Gibbs Racing, has made significant strides to leave his mark on NASCAR. His 44 career victories tie him with Bill Elliott, the Hall of Fame driver and Hamlin’s childhood idol, and those statement victories have qualified him as one of the best of his generation.

Hamlin has grown off the track as well. He became a leader in improving communications between drivers and NASCAR, then helped organize the iRacing virtual series NASCAR used to remain relevant at the start of the pandemic.

He sought to solidify his future in the sport by moving into team ownership, a winding road full of obstacles that could have prevented Hamlin from earning a seat at the same table with Roger Penske, Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush, Gibbs, Childress and others. He pulled it off and spent the offseason building a race team.

When Wallace got that No. 23 on the track at Daytona, Hamlin shed tears.

“I know how much hard work it took to get to this point,” he said. “Seeing them push the car down the grid, everyone in uniform, car’s looking great, everything looks first class — that to me is just a huge, proud moment.”

Hamlin will be competing against his own race car Sunday, but 23XI is part of the Toyota group and aligned with Gibbs. Hamlin and Wallace will likely work together over the course of 500 miles, but when it’s time to go, Hamlin will be thinking only of his own spot in history.

Hamlin last November came up short in the winner-take-all season finale for the fourth time in his career — but has nothing to prove to anyone.

“Anybody sitting on the precipice of three consecutive Daytona 500 wins, that’s akin to what Tom Brady seems to do,” said David Wilson, President of Toyota Racing Development. “It’s a bigger story than just Denny. It’s a sporting story, and for NASCAR, for Toyota, it would be huge.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — Right-hander Ben Heller was released by the New York Yankees on Friday, two days after he was designated for assignment to open a roster spot for reliever Darren O’Day.

A 29-year-old right-hander, Heller had a 3.00 ERA in six innings over six relief appearances during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Heller is 2-0 with a 2.59 ERA in 31 relief appearances over four seasons.

He agreed on Dec. 2 to a contract paying $625,000 while in the the major leagues that included $225,000 in guaranteed money.

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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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The nation’s top public health agency said Friday that in-person schooling can resume safely with masks, social distancing and other strategies, and vaccination of teachers, while important, is not a prerequisite for reopening.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its long-awaited road map for getting students back to classrooms in the middle of a pandemic that has killed nearly 480,000 people in the U.S. But the agency’s guidance is just that — it cannot force schools to reopen, and CDC officials were careful to say they are not calling for a mandate that all U.S. schools be reopened.

Officials said there is strong evidence now that schools can reopen, especially at lower grade levels.

Recommended measures include hand washing, disinfection of school facilities, diagnostic testing and contact tracing to find new infections and separate infected people from others in a school. It’s also more emphatic than past guidance on the need to wear masks in school.

“We know that most clusters in the school setting have occurred when there are breaches in mask wearing,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said in a call with reporters.

The guidance was issued as President Joe Biden faces increasing pressure to deliver on his promise to get the majority of K-8 schools back to in-person teaching by the end of his first 100 days in office. He acknowledged that the goal was ambitious, but added, “It is also a goal we can meet if we follow the science.”

Biden said schools will need more money to meet the CDC’s standards and called on Congress to pass his COVID-19 package quickly to get $130 billion in aid to schools.

“We have sacrificed so much in the last year,” Biden said in a statement. “But science tells us that if we support our children, educators and communities with the resources they need, we can get kids back to school safely in more parts of the country sooner.”

The new guidance includes many of the same measures previously backed by the CDC, but it suggests them more forcefully. It emphasizes that all of the recommendations must be implemented strictly and consistently to keep school safe. It also provides more detailed suggestions about what type of schooling should be offered given different levels of virus transmission, with differing advice for elementary, middle and high schools.

“We know that most clusters in the school setting have occurred when there are breaches in mask wearing,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said in a call with reporters.

Vaccinating teachers can provide “an additional layer of protection,” she said.

Asked how the guidance differed from that offered by the Trump administration, Walensky said, “We’ve used stronger languages than prior guidance. We’ve been much more prescriptive here as to putting some guardrails on what can and should be done to get to a safe reopening.”

“And I can assure you that this is free from political meddling,” she added.

There’s wide agreement that learning in the classroom is more effective and that students can face isolation and learning setbacks at home. But teachers unions in some areas say schools have failed to make buildings safe enough to return.

The new guidance was embraced by both sides of the debate, with each saying it bolstered their position. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said it’s further evidence that schools are equipped to reopen now.

The new information “affirms what many of us, including students and parents, have known for months: It is critical for schools to open as safely and as soon as possible,” he said.

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, applauded the guidance but said schools are failing to meet it. Most still have outdated ventilation systems, she said, and few have the type of virus testing programs suggested by the CDC.

“CDC standards still aren’t being met in too many of our schools,” Pringle said. “We can and must provide students the opportunity to return to in-person learning, but we also must ensure that every school has the safety measures in place to keep students and educators safe.”

In Florida, which ordered schools to reopen in August, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran called the new guidance “informative” but warned schools not to veer from their current plans. He said the state has shown in-person teaching is safe. But the state has dealt with school-related infections, including an outbreak at a high school wrestling tournament in December in which 38 attendees tested positive.

CDC officials emphasized that in-person learning has not been identified as a substantial driver of coronavirus spread in U.S. communities, and that transmission among students is now considered relatively rare.

The CDC also stressed that the safest way to open schools is by making sure there is as little disease in a community as possible. The agency urged local officials to assess whether a bad outbreak is occurring in a community when making decisions about sending adults and children in to schools.

The guidance included a color-coded chart, from blue to red, on assessing community spread, including rates of new cases per 100,000 people and the percentage of positive tests.

That said, high community transmission does not necessarily mean schools cannot be open — especially those at the elementary level. If school mitigation measures are strictly followed, the risk of spread in the schools should still be low, the guidance suggests.

The document suggests that when things get risky, elementary schools can go hybrid, providing in-person instruction at least on some days, but that middle and high schools might go virtual.

“The older children get … the more they act like adults in terms of transmission and disease,” Walensky explained. “So when we are in areas of high transmission, we have pushed more for elementary school hybrid learning.

Government officials estimate that about 60% of K-12 schools right now have some form of in-person learning going on, though in many cases it may be part-time.

Schools also can tighten up restrictions for the in-person learning that is going on. For example, the CDC continues to recommend that children be spaced 6 feet apart in school settings. But it should be required when there’s a worrisome surge of new infections in the community, said Greta Massetti, a CDC official who led much of the work on the new guidance.

Biden has been caught between competing interests as he works to get students in the classroom without spurning the powerful teachers unions that helped get him elected. Critics say he has bowed to unions instead of taking more aggressive action on reopening.

Unlike former President Donald Trump, who pressured schools to open and blasted the CDC for issuing guidance that he said was impractical, Biden has kept his distance from the CDC as it works on recommendations. Even after the CDC’s director recently said that vaccinations are not a prerequisite for reopening, the White House declined to take a firm stance on the question.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that “no one on our senior staff” had seen the CDC guidelines ahead of their release. “I can assure you that the White House is not directing the CDC.”

Biden’s national strategy says the administration “will also work with states and local school districts to support screening testing in schools, including working with states to ensure an adequate supply of test kits.”

But the CDC guidance stops short of recommending testing, saying “Some schools may also elect to use screening testing as a strategy to identify cases and prevent secondary transmission.”

In the early days of the U.S. epidemic, some health experts worried that schools might become cauldrons of coronavirus infection, with kids infecting each other and then spreading it to family members — as seems to be the case during cold and flu season.

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