Denny Hamlin goes for 3 consecutive wins amid history at Bristol

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Denny Hamlin goes for 3 consecutive wins amid history at Bristol

2025-04-13 04:32 Last Updated At：04:51

At a track where he has enjoyed more success than any active NASCAR driver, history awaits Denny Hamlin at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver will make his 400th consecutive start in the Cup Series and the 36th of his career at the 0.533-mile oval in Bristol, Tennessee. Hamlin has a circuit-leading four victories at the short track nestled in an area known as “Thunder Valley” near the Tennessee-Virginia state line.

With its high-banked concrete surface ringed by 146,000 seats, Bristol bills itself as “The Last Great Colosseum,” and Hamlin has been on a gladiatorial roll with consecutive victories at Martinsville Speedway and Darlington Raceway. With his next win, he would become the winningest driver in Joe Gibbs Racing history (breaking a tie with Kyle Busch at 56 wins) and join teammate Christopher Bell by notching the second three-race winning streak this season.

“I try not to psych myself out too much about it because I think you sometimes put so much emphasis on those type of situations, and you end up making silly mistakes,” Hamlin said. “I just try to be as even keeled as I can. It is a new week. It is another great opportunity to win another race. If it just so happens that it is three in a row, that would be awesome and a very proud moment in my career, but it is not something that we set out to do each and every week.”

Hamlin also is tempering expectations because often “the stars have to align perfectly” as they did at Darlington. He seized the win by leading only 10 of 297 laps, including the last six after a swift pit stop catapulted his No. 11 Toyota into the lead and past Rusty Wallace into 11th on NASCAR’s all-time win list.

He has been more dominant at Bristol, winning by leading at least 142 laps in two of the past three races. After his Sept. 16, 2023, victory, Hamlin taunted the Bristol crowd with “I beat your favorite driver. All of them,” and he will be sure to hear some jeers raining down again Sunday when he will start fourth.

“You definitely hear the cheers and the boos,” said Joey Logano, who has recovered from a norovirus bout to take aim at a third Bristol win. “They’re much more in your face. It’s cool. It kind of brings a little bit more of the stadium environment that other sports get to enjoy a little bit more.”

Hamlin, 44, has fed off that crowd energy for 20 years in NASCAR while pursuing his elusive first title.

“My drive is still there,” he said. “Obviously, the performance is still there. I’m just going to keep trying to win all that I can in this window when it is still there.”

The mood within NASCAR has been somber after the deaths of two longtime industry members this week. Motorsports journalist Al Pearce covered 56 consecutive Daytona 500s before dying at 82, and Hendrick Motorsports director of communications Jon Edwards, 53, was a PR specialist during Jeff Gordon’s four Cup championships.

After becoming Gordon’s right-hand man, Edwards also worked with Kyle Larson since the star joined Hendrick in 2021 and won his first Cup championship. Larson, who is racing in all three national series at Bristol, is one of several drivers whose vehicles are sporting decals in honor of Edwards.

“He meant a lot to me personally,” Larson said of Edwards being his closest friend on the No. 5 Chevrolet team. “Definitely a sad week for the industry, but we’re going to mourn his loss and try to win some races for him this weekend. He would want us to not be sad. He was always a happy person, so we’re going to hold our heads high and represent him well this weekend.”

Larson (+400) is the BetMGM Sportsbook favorite, followed by Hamlin (+425), Christopher Bell (+650), Ryan Blaney (+750) and Chase Elliott (+900).

For the second time this season, Hendrick driver Alex Bowman will start from the pole position Sunday with tire wear expected to be a major factor in the 500-lap race at Bristol.

“I’m excited to see what we’ve got,” said Bowman, who dedicated his seventh career pole to Edwards. “It’s going to be tricky for sure. It’s probably difficult to manage from the front. It’s easy to run too hard. I think it could be really good for us.”

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. qualified second, followed by Larson, Hamlin and Ryan Blaney.

“It’s going to be treacherous,” Stenhouse said after a two-hour practice and qualifying session marked by excessive tire wear.

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

Jury is picked for Karen Read's retrial over death of police boyfriend, opening statements next week

2025-04-16 19:28 Last Updated At：19:30

The jury has been picked in Karen Read’s second murder trial over the death of her police officer boyfriend, with opening statements scheduled for next week.

An 18-member panel — nine men and nine women — was chosen by Tuesday. There will be 12 jurors and six alternates.

Opening statements are scheduled for April 22.

Read’s attorneys had filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court for a delay in the trial, contending that trying her again on second-degree murder and leaving the scene would be double jeopardy. The high court denied the delay and is expected to consider her appeal April 25.

Read, who lives in Mansfield, Massachusetts, is accused of striking her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm in 2022 outside a house party in nearby Canton. Her attorneys have said O’Keefe was actually killed by someone else, possibly another law enforcement agent who was at the party, and that she was framed.

Last year, the judge declared a mistrial after jurors said they were at an impasse and deliberating further would be futile.

After the trial, several jurors came forward to say the group was unanimous in finding Read not guilty of the most serious charge, second-degree murder, and a lesser charge. Despite attempts by Read’s lawyers to get those charges dismissed, she will face the same counts as she did at her first trial. They also failed to have the entire case tossed, arguing governmental misconduct.

Read, who worked as a financial analyst and as a Bentley College adjunct professor before she was charged, faces second-degree murder and other charges in the death of John O’Keefe, who was 46 when he died. The 16-year police veteran was found unresponsive outside the home of a fellow Boston police officer.

After a night out drinking, prosecutors say Read, who is 45, dropped off O’Keefe at the house party just after midnight. As she made a three-point turn, prosecutors say, she struck O’Keefe before driving away. She returned hours later to find him in a snowbank.

As they did at the first trial, prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Read’s actions were intentional. They are expected to call witnesses who will describe how the couple's relationship had begun to sour before O'Keefe's death. Among them will be his brother, who testified during the first trial that the couple regularly argued over such matters as what Read fed O’Keefe’s children, and that he witnessed a 2021 fight the couple had in Cape Cod over how his brother treated her. The brother's wife testified that Read told her the couple had argued in Aruba after she caught O’Keefe kissing another woman.

The defense is expected to portray the investigation into O’Keefe’s death as shoddy and undermined by the close relationship investigators had with the police officers and other law enforcement agents who were at the house party.

Among the key witnesses they will call is former State Trooper Michael Proctor, who led the investigation but has since been fired after a disciplinary board found he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues. He is also on the prosecution's witness list.

A key moment in the first trial was Proctor’s testimony, in which the defense suggested his texts about Read and the case showed he was biased, and had singled her out early in the investigation and ignored other potential suspects.

They also are expected to suggest Read was framed, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside the home during a fight with another partygoer and then dragged outside. In the first trial, defense attorneys suggested investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

Ahead of the second trial, the two sides sparred over whether Read's lawyers will be allowed to argue that someone else killed O'Keefe. Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Monday that attorneys can't mention potential third-party culprits in their opening statements but will be allowed to develop evidence against Brian Albert, a retired police officer who owned the Canton home, and his friend Brian Higgins. Lawyers cannot implicate Albert's nephew, Colin Albert, the judge said.

A town-commissioned Canton Police Department audit following O'Keefe's death was released March 30. While not reinvestigating any cases, its top suggestions regarding Read's were that first responders should have photographed O'Keefe where he was found before he was moved; that all interviews of “critical witnesses” should have been done at the department after O'Keefe was taken to a hospital; and that agreed-to recordings of witness interviews be conducted.

Soon after the mistrial, Read's lawyers set out to get the main charges dropped.

They argued Judge Cannone declared a mistrial without polling the jurors to confirm their conclusions. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg said five jurors indicated after the trial that they were only deadlocked on the manslaughter count and had unanimously agreed that she wasn’t guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene, but that they hadn’t told the judge.

The defense said that because jurors had agreed Read wasn't guilty of murder and leaving the scene, retrying her on those counts would amount to double jeopardy. But Cannone rejected that argument, as did the state's highest court, a federal court judge, and an appeals court.

Prosecutors had urged Cannone to dismiss the double jeopardy claim, saying it amounted to "hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.” Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the jurors never indicated they had reached a verdict on any of the charges, were given clear instructions on how to reach a verdict, and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the mistrial declaration.

The second trial will likely look similar to the first. It will be held in the same courthouse before the same judge, and dozens of Read's passionate supporters are again expected to rally outside. The charges, primary defense lawyers and many of the nearly 200 witnesses will also be the same.

The biggest difference will be the lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan. A former prosecutor and defense attorney who was brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial, Brennan has represented several prominent clients, including notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, and experts think he might be more forceful than Lally was in arguing the case.