Tony Stewart bettered his 5-month-old qualifying record at a track where he claims to struggle, and won the pole at Martinsville Speedway.
Stewart circled the tight, .526-mile oval in Martinsville, Va., at 95.371 m.p.h. in his Pontiac. That eclipsed his 95.275 of April, and edged Rusty Wallace and Jeff Burton for the top spot in Sunday’s NAPA Auto Care 500.
Stewart, who gained a share of the series lead with Wallace with his fourth victory of the season last weekend in Dover, Del., said his success in qualifying on the Winston Cup series’ shortest track is a mystery.
Colleges: Pete Schmidt, 52, Indiana University’s assistant football coach, died Friday after a yearlong battle with cancer. Schmidt, who also had been head football coach at Albion College in Michigan, died at Bloomington Hospital.
– Jacksonville, Austin Peay, Davidson, and Morehead St. will join the Division I-AA Pioneer League next season in football. Teams will be split into two divisions.
The new league members will play in the South Division, with Butler, Dayton, Drake, San Diego and Valparaiso in the North. The division winners will play in a league championship game.
Soccer: The Wizards and the Galaxy played to a scoreless tie in Kansas City in the first game of their MLS semifinal playoff series. The tie gives each team one point in the series, and assures a third game in Kansas City. The first team to gain five points wins the series. That winner advances to the finals to face the winner of the Fire and New York-New Jersey series, which the Fire leads 1-0.
