NASCAR's championship weekend shrouded in off-track drama from lawsuit to alleged race manipulation

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NASCAR's championship weekend shrouded in off-track drama from lawsuit to alleged race manipulation

2024-11-08 07:28 Last Updated At：07:31

AVONDALE, Ariz. (AP) — NASCAR heads into its championship weekend locked into a federal antitrust lawsuit with NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan. Its officiating has been under months-long scrutiny, and this week it issued a wave of hefty fines for alleged race manipulation in the final playoff qualifier.

And Truck Series championship contender Ty Majeski was fined $12,500 for skipping media obligations in North Carolina on Tuesday so he could vote in person in his home state of Wisconsin.

Other than that? Three champions will be crowned starting Friday at Phoenix Raceway.

But those national series races have become a sideshow to the off-track drama that has engulfed NASCAR the last several months. The four drivers who are competing in Sunday's winner-take-all finale have tuned out the distractions, starting with Tyler Reddick, who made the final four for the first time in his career and is trying to give Jordan his first championship since Jordan became a team owner in 2021.

“No, for me, and for our group, it is championship weekend and everything else is not in our focus,” Reddick said Thursday.

A federal judge in North Carolina is due to rule Friday — the same day of the Truck Series championship and the first practice for the Cup Series — on a preliminary injunction filed by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports. The two teams refused to sign NASCAR's take-it-or-leave-it offer in September on a new revenue sharing agreement and instead have sued both NASCAR and chairman Jim France.

Now the teams want to be recognized under the charter agreements as they proceed with a lawsuit that accuses NASCAR of being “monopolistic bullies.” The ruling is due the same day NASCAR is slated to give its annual “State of the Sport” address.

Ryan Blaney, the reigning NASCAR champion who is seeking to become the first driver to go back-to-back since Jimmie Johnson won five Cup titles in a row from 2006 through 2010, said the off-track issues have nothing at all to do with him or Team Penske. Blaney and teammate Joey Logano give Ford and Roger Penske a 50% chance to win a third consecutive Cup title.

“For me it feels normal because I am not a part of any of it,” Blaney said. “I am part of what I am doing, the championship, so it's nice to not be a part of any of the things going on outside sheer competition. For me, it's a great week, championship week and we've got a chance to do it. To me, it's normal.”

NBC Sports does not think the off-track drama will spill into coverage of the three national series races at Phoenix.

“I think during the race, we are here to crown a champion and I can't imagine us talking about anything other than that,” said analyst Jeff Burton, who said play-by-play announcer Leigh Diffey is unlikely to declare Reddick the winner in the same breath as “but there's a lawsuit!”

But there are other issues pending.

NASCAR on Tuesday levied $600,000 in fines and suspended nine members of three different Cup teams for alleged manipulation at Martinsville Speedway last weekend. NASCAR ruled Bubba Wallace of 23XI helped fellow Toyota driver Christopher Bell by allegedly faking a flat tire. That allowed Bell to hit the wall to avoid Wallace and ride it for momentum to claim the final spot in the playoffs over William Byron.

But that move had been ruled illegal after Ross Chastain did it in 2022, and it took NASCAR officials nearly 30 minutes post-race Sunday to decide if Bell was disqualified or not. He was, and Byron of Hendrick Motorsports got the final spot.

“It was excruciating,” Byron admitted Thursday. “It was so long. I was honestly numb to it. I was just preparing for not being in and thinking we had done all we needed to do to get in.”

NASCAR also ruled Tuesday that fellow Chevrolet drivers Chastain and Austin Dillon acted as blockers for Byron over the final few laps to prevent anyone from taking position from him.

Trackhouse Racing and Richard Childress Racing appealed the penalties; 23XI withdrew its initial appeal while denying it manipulated the race for Bell, and RCR withdrew the appeal before the hearing. The appeal panel late Thursday ruled Trackhouse violated the rules.

And then there's just the scrutiny over NASCAR officiating in general.

NASCAR for the entire playoffs has flip-flopped on its damaged vehicle policy, which was completely botched during the playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway.

Confusion over the DVP rule began early in the playoffs when Blaney and Josh Berry were in first-lap incidents and although the damage appeared minimal, the way the DVP rule had been previously officiated, both were deemed out of the race and ineligible to be towed to the pit stall because they were unable to continue after contact.

But at Talladega, after a 28-car crash brought out the red flag, NASCAR struggled to control the cleanup. Numerous damaged cars were stranded with flat tires and then-playoff contenders Chase Elliott and Briscoe were towed back to their stalls to allow for repairs.

Under previous implementation of the rule, the cars should have been ruled out of the race because they had four flat tires and were not able to drive back to pit road.

Drivers were incensed over the change in officiating. NASCAR officials later told teams they’ll operate the DVP policy the rest of the playoffs the way they did at Talladega.

“The DVP policy could spill into the live event,” NBC analyst Steve Letarte said. “So when it affects on-track clearly to us, we have to cover that, that's our job. But there's no chance I'm going to pull an off-track story and connect it to an on-track performance. I think it's a slap in the face to whatever teams wins the championship trophy.”

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

FBI says driver in New Orleans rampage acted alone, was '100%' inspired by Islamic State group

2025-01-03 07:37 Last Updated At：07:42

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans acted alone, the FBI said Thursday, reversing its position from a day earlier that he likely worked with others in the deadly attack that officials said was inspired by the Islamic State group.

The FBI also revealed that the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, an American citizen from Texas, posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack in which he proclaimed his support for the militant group and previewed the violence that he would soon unleash in the famed French Quarter district.

“This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act,” said Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, calling Jabbar “100% inspired” by the Islamic State.

The attack along Bourbon Street killed 14 revelers, along with Jabbar, who was fatally shot in a firefight with police after steering his speeding truck around a barricade and plowing into the crowd.

It was the deadliest IS-inspired assault on U.S. soil in years, laying bare what federal officials have warned is a resurgent international terrorism threat. It also comes as the FBI and other agencies brace for dramatic leadership upheaval — and likely policy changes — after President-elect Donald Trump's administration takes office.

Seeking to assuage concerns about any broader plots, Raia stressed that there was no indication of a connection between the New Orleans attack and the explosion Wednesday of a Tesla Cybertruck filled with explosives outside Trump’s Las Vegas hotel. The person inside that truck, a decorated U.S. Army Green Beret, sustained a gunshot wound to the head before the explosion, and a handgun was found at his feet inside the charred vehicle, authorities said.

The FBI continued to hunt for clues about the 42-year-old Jabbar, but said that a day into its investigation, it was now confident he was not aided by anyone else in the attack, which killed an 18-year-old aspiring nurse, a single mother, a father of two and a former Princeton University football star, among others.

The attack plans also included the placement of crude bombs in the neighborhood in an apparent attempt to cause more carnage, officials said. Two improvised explosive devices left in coolers several blocks apart were rendered safe at the scene. Other devices were determined to be nonfunctional.

Officials examined the possibility that individuals seen in surveillance video standing near one of the coolers may have been somehow involved in the attack. But authorities concluded that they were not connected “in any way,” though investigators still want to speak with them as witnesses, Raia said.

Investigators were also trying to understand more about Jabbar's path to radicalization, which they say culminated with him picking up a rented truck in Houston on Dec. 30 and driving it to New Orleans the following night.

The FBI recovered a black Islamic State flag from his rented pickup and reviewed five videos posted to Facebook, including one in which he said he originally planned to harm his family and friends, but he was concerned that news headlines would not focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers,” Raia said. He also left a last will and testament, the FBI said.

Jabbar joined the Army in 2007, serving on active duty in human resources and information technology and deploying to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, the service said. He transferred to the Army Reserve in 2015 and left in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.

A U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly, said Jabbar traveled to Egypt in 2023, staying in Cairo for a week, before returning to the U.S. and then traveling to Toronto for three days. It was not immediately clear what he did during those travels.

Abdur-Rahim Jabbar, Jabbar's younger brother, told The Associated Press on Thursday that it “doesn’t feel real” that his brother could have done this.

“I never would have thought it’d be him,” he said. “It’s completely unlike him.”

He said that his brother had been isolated in the last few years, but that he had also been in touch with him recently and did not see any signs of radicalization.

“It’s completely contradictory to who he was and how his family and his friends know him,” he said.

Chris Pousson, 42, of Beaumont, Texas, said he became friends with Shamsud-Din Jabbar in middle school, describing him as someone who was quiet and reserved and did not get into trouble.

After high school, he said, they reconnected on Facebook around 2008 or 2009 and would message back and forth throughout the next decade.

“If any red flags would have popped off, I would have caught them, and I would have contacted the proper authorities,” he said. “But he didn’t give anything to me that would have suggested that he is capable of doing what happened.”

In New Orleans on Thursday, a still-reeling city inched back toward normal operations.

Authorities finished processing the scene early in the morning, removing the last of the bodies, and Bourbon Street — famous worldwide for music, open-air drinking and festive vibes — reopened for business by early afternoon.

The Sugar Bowl college football game between Notre Dame and Georgia, initially set for Wednesday night and postponed by a day in the interest of national security, was still on for Thursday. The city also planned to host the Super Bowl next month.

New Orleans "is not only ready for game day today, but we’re ready to continue to host large-scale events in our city because we are built to host at every single turn,” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.

Tucker reported from Washington, and Mustian reported from Black Mountain, North Carolina. Associated Press reporters Stephen Smith, Chevel Johnson and Brett Martel in New Orleans; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Rebecca Santana, Alanna Durkin Richer, Tara Copp and Zeke Miller in Washington; Kristie Rieken in Beaumont, Texas; Darlene Superville in New Castle, Delaware; Colleen Long in West Palm Beach, Florida; and Michael R. Sisak in New York contributed to this report.