This Weekend in Auto Racing (May 8th, 2021) - RoadandTrack.com

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Formula 1 - Spanish Grand Prix
Sunday, May 8nd - 9:00 a.m. ET - ESPN - Streaming on the ESPN app

Formula 1's European swing is well underway, and COVID-related schedule blocking means that it is effectively the entire first two-thirds of the season. That odd schedule is going to be advantageous to teams, who will be relatively close to their factories while upgrading throughout the season and will likely have shifted focus to their 2022 cars by the time the sport gets back to larger road trips. All of that is particularly good news for Mercedes, who can re-build their gap over Red Bull Racing over the next few months.

And they will need to. Lewis Hamilton has won two of the season's first three races and has qualified on pole yet again, his 100th career start from P1, but his margin over Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen is slim. He grabbed pole over Verstappen by half a tenth of a second, not to mention just over a tenth ahead of his teammate Valtteri Bottas in the other Mercedes. It is a slim margin, but Hamilton will need to both beat Verstappen and win tomorrow if he hopes to begin building the dominant lead that has decided so many of his championships a month before the season officially ends.

The series appears to firmly be in three-car race territory, but, behind the leaders, Ferrari is seeing some encouraging signs after qualifying fourth and sixth. Alpine, too, has shown some signs of recovery after coming into this season weaker than they appeared last year. Their Esteban Ocon will start fifth, and both of their cars made Q3 after showing serious speed in practice. The losers in the midpack are McLaren, falling to seventh and ninth on the grid after setting an early expectation that they were the week-by-week third-fastest team on the grid, and Aston Martin, who have once again failed to put a single car into Q3.

Behind the stronger teams, qualifying produced some mid-pack drama. Yuki Tsunoda's start at AlphaTauri is beginning to border on rocky, and another frustrating Q1 elimination led Tsunoda to say some things about his team he might regret. Nikita Mazepin, meanwhile, has even more to regret. He was handed a three-spot penalty for impeding Lando Norris in qualifying. It will demote him to last, but that is no major concern; Mazepin qualified last anyway.

NASCAR - Darlington Raceway
Sunday, May 8th - 3:30 p.m. ET - Fox Sports 1 - Streaming on the FOX Sports app

It may not have been the biggest headline from NASCAR's 2021 schedule release, but the sport has made few decisions better than their choice to race at Darlington, arguably the best track the series runs, twice a season. This is the designated "Throwback" race, a tradition that started over the past few Southern 500 weekends and has now been moved to the what's-old-is-new-again Spring Darlington event. That means that much of the field will wear throwback liveries in all three series, and, although creativity has waned with these throwbacks as time has gone on, the general result is still a well-designed field of unique and memorable cars.

Somehow, the on-track story of this race is still Denny Hamlin. 10 drivers have won through 11 races this season, but dominant championship leader Hamlin is not one. He has elite pace every weekend, and should be considered the favorite for every race he enters for the foreseeable future, but he has yet to actually turn that speed into a win. His position as the clear championship leader means his playoff spot is secure for the time being, but, as the season goes on, the issue with the lack of wins will be the lack of playoff points he is accruing. Drivers who win five or six times in the regular season, a standard through 26 races for the clear dominant pace Hamlin is showing, are effectively locked into the Round of 8 under this playoff format, and are in the best-possible position to make the Championship Four from there. But Hamlin has not been gathering up wins, and, until he does, he will enter that portion of the season with little to show for his week-to-week dominance.

Hamlin has won three times at Darlington, including one of last season's three races here. This would be an excellent time to return to winning form.

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