At the Track

The rescheduled O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 will be the first major league sports event in Texas open to fans since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

The June 24, July 22 and August 12 blood drives are the continuation of a program which began April 1. The drive that day and a subsequent drive May 6 yielded 68 pints of blood which helped up to 204 patients in need.

Dixon, who qualified second in the heat of the day when temperatures reached near triple digits, took the lead on Lap 32 and went on to lead 157 of the 200-lap, 300-mile race that kicked off the COVID-19-delayed 2020 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season.

A three-time winner (2018, 2015, 2008) at No Limits, Texas, the New Zealand native put the No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda atop the leaderboard on the 59^th of his 60 practice laps with a time of 24.000 seconds at 215.995 mph.

Despite the temperature nearing triple digits, the driver of the No. 1 XPEL Team Penske Chevrolet lapped the 1.5-mile high-banked tri-oval for a two-lap average of 24.0289 seconds at a speed of 215.740 mph.

The six-week, six-race amateur “run-what-you-brung” one-eighth-mile drag racing series held in June and July for the previous 11 seasons is slated to return for the 2021 season.