Gloucester stand-off Danny Cipriani has been ruled out for up to eight weeks with a torn calf muscle.

Head coach Johan Ackermann says he must choose from Owen Williams and Lloyd Evans as a replacement for the 16-times capped England number 10 for Sunday's Champions Cup trip to Toulouse.

"It's not nice to lose any player to injury. Especially a quality player like Danny," said Ackermann.

"But we couldn't have asked for better timing in terms of Owen's return."

Ackermann told BBC Radio Gloucester: "We've also got a lot of faith in Lloyd. He's been the understudy and patiently waited for his chance and has learned a lot from Danny.

"I could have picked him at any time over the last few months. The two of them can hopefully carry on keeping the attack going and scoring tries for us."

Gloucester wing Charlie Sharples has also been ruled out for "a couple of weeks to three months" following a knee operation.

Ackermann also faces the potential loss next month of exciting teenage wing Louis Rees-Zammit, who has been called up at the age of 18 alongside Williams for Wayne Pivac's first Wales Six Nations squad.

"It's going to be challenging for us going forward with our preparation but I'm always telling our players you have to grab opportunities when they come in life," Ackermann added.

"You have to grab them when you have the chance and I'm delighted for Louis. he has grabbed that opportunity well.

"But I'm also delighted for Owen. After a long time out to get a call-up. He is extremely professional and keeps himself in the best possible. He will get better as the weeks go past "

Gloucester go to Toulouse second in European Champions Cup pool knowing that they must beat the unbeaten pool leaders to have a chance of going through with the French side.

The Cherry and Whites kept their hopes alive with last weekend's 29-6 bonus-point victory over Montpellier.

Despite losing Cipriani after just 12 minutes, Williams came on to help Gloucester stay in contention for one of the three best runner-up spots thanks to tries from Willi Heinz, Rees-Zammit, Ben Morgan and Todd Gleave.

Saracens prop Rhys Carre will miss Wales' Six Nations opener against Italy after being handed a three-week ban for a dangerous tackle.

Carre was sent off in the Champions Cup win against Ospreys last Saturday.

The 21-year-old was red-carded after five minutes by French referee Alexandre Ruiz for a shoulder-led tackle on Ospreys full-back Dan Evans.

Ruiz adjudged Carre made contact with Evans' head or neck with no arms used in the tackle.

Wales face Italy at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on Saturday, 1 February with Carre now missing that game after facing a disciplinary hearing on Wednesday.

The committee upheld the red card decision, finding that Carre had made contact with Evans' head in a dangerous manner.

It determined the offence was at the mid-range of World Rugby's sanctions and selected six weeks as the appropriate entry point.

There were no aggravating factors, and taking into account the player's guilty plea, clear disciplinary record and expression of remorse, the committee reduced the sanction by the maximum of 50% before imposing a three-week suspension.

Carre is free to play again on Monday, 3 February and will be available for Wales' second match against Ireland in Dublin on 8 February.

Carre and European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) have the right to appeal the decision.

The 21-year-old is one of three loose-head props named in Wayne Pivac's Six Nations squad alongside Scarlets duo Wyn Jones and Rob Evans with Nicky Smith left out.

Carre has won six Wales caps with his starting debut against Ireland in August 2019 followed by five 2019 World Cup replacement appearances in Japan.

For the latest Welsh rugby union news follow @BBCScrumV on Twitter.

PALMETTO, Fla. – Road to Indy TV, the broadcast production arm of the Road to Indy Presented by Cooper Tires, will return for its seventh season with an expanded programming platform to provide increased coverage for race fans, competitors and series partners.

The three-pronged video content plan will feature increased live, edited and social media segments covering the three renowned driver development series — Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires, the Indy Pro 2000 Championship Presented by Cooper Tires and the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship — to audiences around the world.

Road to Indy TV is the brainchild of JP Manterola, Founder, CEO and Creative Director of Pro Racing Group — an international award winning, full-service sports marketing agency headquartered in Lithia, Fla. just outside Tampa.

Since 2014, Manterola and his team, including Senior Creative Designer Travis Earnest and Project Manager and Producer Kyran Guild, have strived to bring unprecedented coverage of the Road to Indy across all platforms.

In 2016, the Road to Indy became the first American racing series with a dedicated broadcast channel on demand and also the first open-wheel series to have an official App on Xbox One.

In 2020, all shows will now be available on demand as well as live on Apple TV, Amazon Fire and Roku. The shows will also be live streamed on the free Road to Indy TV App (which launched in 2015), on RoadToIndy.TV and its social media platforms and on the respective series websites — indylights.com, indypro2000.com and usf2000.com — and social media outlets.

Road to Indy TV will now be producing full live race shows with over three hours of streaming content daily on race weekends which includes a dedicated pre-race show, and race and post-race coverage of each series highlighted by special segments Paddock Pass, RTI Insider and The False Grid.

For the first time, embed codes for all shows will be available to series drivers, teams, partners and interested media for live streaming use on their own outlets.

“Live content is so important in this day and age,” said Manterola. “In 2020, live streaming is expected to account for 82% of all internet traffic. Our goal with our new expanded live programming is to meet what the numbers tell us in terms of consumption by consumers with quality live programming and behind-the-scenes access. The Road to Indy is a great product with tremendous racing and a host of stories off the track. We are excited about the creative process we have lined up and look forward to engaging more fans this season.”

The social media component of the video content plan will include regular one-minute features with individual Indy Lights, Indy Pro 2000 and USF2000 race weekend highlights as well as Beyond the Grid, Road to Indy 101, Tech Talk, Story of the Moment and Weekend Recap segments.

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. – After a career-best campaign in the NASCAR Xfinity Series last year, Josh Williams will return to DGM Racing for his second full season, team officials confirmed Wednesday.

The highlight of Williams’ 2019 was an eighth-place finish at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, the best run of his Xfinity Series career, to go along with seven top-15 finishes during the year.

Those consistent results, combined with staying out of trouble for the majority of the season, propelled Williams to a 17th-place finish in the final standings – among the best of the non-Cup Series affiliated teams in the Xfinity Series ranks.

With another opportunity to be a cornerstone of the DGM Racing program, Williams is optimistic for the upcoming season.

“I’m really excited about coming back again with Mario and everybody at DGM,” said Williams. “We had such a good year last year, and in my opinion, I feel like we had a successful season to say the least. If we can come back and do it again and have me be a little bit better myself, with going back to some of these tracks for the second time and others even for the third time, I think we’ll show a lot of improvement.

“I learned a lot last year and am looking forward to applying that to the 2020 season. I know we’re doing a lot of stuff to get better,” Williams added. “Mario has been working his tail off on getting better parts and pieces for us, so that we can improve our program on the track. We’re really looking forward to 2020 and I’m thankful for the chance that Mario has given me to come back and try this deal again.”

Gosselin is looking forward to having Williams back as one of the leaders of his Xfinity Series organization and building on the successes that he and Williams produced together in 2019.

“It’s a pleasure to be able to retain Josh and have him back with us for another year in the Xfinity Series,” said Gosselin. “Josh’s knowledge of the race cars and ability to get as much as possible out of them week in and week out served us well last year and we hope to improve both in the standings and on the race track throughout the year”

Last year marked Williams’ first time being able to remain with one team for a full season in his NASCAR career, allowing for plenty of seat time and chances to learn and grow as a driver.

Williams is hoping to build on that platform in 2020, grateful for every chance he can get to compete.

“That’s what this sport’s all about, is seat time and constantly finding ways to improve and get better,” Williams noted. “I don’t care how good you are, even Kyle Busch, I’m sure, learns something every weekend. So it’s big for me and has been big for me to be at the track every weekend. It makes me a better driver, because you don’t have to sit out and take weeks off and build up any rust. I think it’s helped me a lot, being able to run full time and focus on one thing and not bounce around as much.

After a “growing year” for his team, which produced a number of high points in Williams’ eyes, the Florida native is hoping for even brighter days in 2020 as DGM Racing continues to improve.

“Last year, we had great success and were hunting top 20s most weeks; we did that a bunch. This year, I think we’re going to hunt top 15s,” said Williams. “We’re going try to stay inside the top 15 week in and week out, and maybe even creep inside the top 10 when we can at some of the shorter tracks and places where we feel like we can shine. Everybody says that speedways provide an even playing field, but I want to win a speedway race. We’ve got three chances (to do that) and we’ve had really good success at both Daytona and Talladega. We’ve always been fast and we’ve always shown good speed.

“I want to win a speedway race. That’s one of the boxes that I want to check off pretty bad in 2020.”

Williams is scheduled to drive the No. 92 for DGM Racing, and will have a guaranteed starting spot in the opening races of the 2020 campaign due to the owner points he accrued last season.

Returning partners for Williams’ 2020 Xfinity Series effort with DGM Racing include StarTron, Sleep Well, Stay Sky Hotels and Resorts, General Formulations, Silverton Casino, IV Bars and Verve Systems LLC.

Williams will also embark on the sixth year of his nationwide children’s hospital tour, highlighted by running a special “handprint” tribute car at the end of the Xfinity Series season.

A typical 17-year-old may spend most of his or her summer hanging with friends, enjoying outdoor activities and experiencing their first part-time job.

Teenage open-wheel racing sensation Buddy Kofoid is far from typical.

During this past summer, Kofoid, who celebrated his 18th birthday on Dec. 2, left his parents — Michael and Jennifer — and home in Penngrove, Calif., to pursue his dream of racing a sprint car in the Midwest.

By the time the calendar turned from summer to fall, Kofoid had recorded his first Ollie’s Bargain Outlet All Star Circuit Champions feature triumph, wheeled a Keith Kunz-prepared midget to victory at Jacksonville (Ill.) Speedway and captured a sprint car championship at Ohio’s Fremont Speedway.

It was the latest leg of a racing journey that began before Kofoid was old enough to attend school.

“Before I started racing my family always had dirt bikes, and I got my first dirt bike for my second Christmas, which was a little after my second birthday,” Kofoid told SPEED SPORT. “We had a little track in our backyard, but we’d also go camping and riding, and we had friends that rode too. The racing really came along when I was about 5. I started racing outlaw karts a couple of months before I started kindergarten.

“One of our friends, their son was a couple years older than me and he was racing. They had a second car and I ran their second car for my first year,” Kofoid recalled. “After that, we thought maybe we should get our own car and do it more because we liked it and had fun with it.”

Kofoid quickly advanced through the various divisions of outlaw karting at northern California tracks such as Cycleland Speedway, often competing against — and beating — older drivers with far more experience.

“In an outlaw kart, you’ve got to be really smooth on the wheel and there is really tight racing. You’ve got to be smooth and smart,” Kofoid explained. “I raced with a lot of really great people in outlaw karts like Logan Seavey, Rico Abreu a little bit and Tanner Thorson. I was younger than most of those guys, but I got to race with them a little bit. There’s something about outlaw karts that teaches you to race a certain way. They teach you to be really aggressive, smooth and clean.”

Kofoid actually began honing his skills in a sprint car before his age reached double digits.

“In between racing karts, I got in a spec sprint when I was 9 and practiced at Marysville Speedway for a year,” he said. “A spec sprint is a non-winged, limited 360 sprint car. The next year we actually sold that car because we thought it was better to learn with a winged car. We bought a winged 360 and practiced that for another year at Marysville because they had open practices on Monday. That’s when I was 10.

“That’s where Dan Simpson discovered me, if you will. His crew and all of them were there and they were watching me. They were practicing with Danielle Simpson, who is Dan’s daughter and she raced at the time,” Kofoid continued. “At the time, Dan owned the King of the West series, which is now known as NARC and is a traveling 410 sprint car series in California. He also owned, and still owns, Fernley Speedway, which is a sprint car track in Nevada.”

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LAS VEGAS — Two-time and reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch will make his return to The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway Feb. 20 to compete in the Star Nursery 100 super late model race.

Busch, a Las Vegas native and Durango High School graduate who developed his skills on the three-eighths-mile Bullring track, will compete in the 100-lap race, which will be followed by the Star Nursery 150 ARCA Menards Series West race.

Busch compiled more than 50 wins on LVMS property between 1999 and 2003, as well as a U.S. Legends-Pro season points championship in 2000. He last competed at the Bullring in 2007.

“It’s going to be great to get back to where it all began,” Busch said. “My family and I spent many Friday and Saturday nights racing at the Bullring, and it will always hold a special place for me. I’m really looking forward to racing against a few guys I raced against back in the day as well as some of the new drivers who are cutting their teeth coming up through the ranks.”

Busch has accumulated 208 career wins across all three NASCAR national series including 56 in the NASCAR Cup Series.

His 96 NASCAR Xfinity Series wins and 56 NASCAR Gander RV and Outdoor Truck Series wins rank him first all-time for both series.

Busch, along with all other drivers in both the super late model and ARCA races, will take part in a pre-race autograph session from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. on race day.

The super late models race begins at 7 p.m. followed by the Star Nursery 150 at 8 p.m.

TULSA, Okla. – Ryan Newman’s return to dirt midget racing at the Gateway Dirt Nationals last month didn’t go as planned, but he’s hoping to exorcise those bad memories with a strong run during the Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals.

Newman will take the track during Wednesday’s Hard Rock Casino Qualifying Night program, wheeling the No. 6n Aggressive Hydraulics/Coca-Cola Spike-Stanton SR11x for Clauson-Marshall Racing.

The NASCAR Cup Series star and former USAC Silver Crown Series champion hadn’t driven a midget on dirt since 2000 prior to the Gateway event, and this week marks his debut appearance at the Chili Bowl.

However, he’s with a strong team in Clauson-Marshall Racing, and Newman believes that strength will allow him to have a chance at excelling as he goes through the program at Tulsa Expo Raceway.

“I’m excited,” Newman said prior to Wednesday’s on-track action. “I want to come out and have fun and race, because Tim Clauson and Richard Marshall have given me a great opportunity. Aggressive Hydraulics is on the car, Coca Cola – one of our Cup sponsors – as well as Brake-Safe, a new sponsor for the week. But I just look forward to having fun Wednesday night. This is a cool thing to be a part of.”

Newman noted that the spark that lit his fire to want to return to midget racing actually came last summer, when he watched as a spectator during the Stoops Pursuit at The Dirt Track at IMS.

“I was there last year as a spectator and it kind of motivated me to come do this,” said Newman of the prelude to the BC39. “It was an awesome race last year that Larson and Pickens and those guys ran and I wanted to be a part of the atmosphere if it made sense.”

That race, combined with some changes physically, turned the corner in his decision and led to a Gateway-Chili Bowl package being put together with the reigning USAC National Midget Series titlists.

“I’ve lost 20 pounds, too, so that’s a big part of coming back midget racing also. I do believe that the weight is a performance advantage, and that weight can be a performance advantage when the track gets slicked off. To me, what I’ve been told with a lot of people here, is that of all places the Chili Bowl has its rewards or potential rewards for a slick track that’s small and tight and needs weight transfer.

“All in all, it’s a lot of things that led to this, and now we’re here to see what we can do with it.”

While Newman struggled mightily at Gateway, his practice round on Monday in Tulsa seemed much smoother as he got more acclimated with the race car.

“The gateway race, that was the icebreaker, so to speak … as far as knocking the rust off,” Newman noted. “Practice here was mostly just kind of getting used to this track. Other than TV, I’d never watched anything at this place. So just getting a chance to gauge speed and grip and how the track is really narrow when it’s tacky was key.

“Getting an idea on what to expect was what it was all about, and now using that knowledge is the next step.”

One of the things that Newman is relishing the most, even as he’s learning more about the modern midgets and how to drive them at their peak, is the opportunity to work and interact with team co-owners Tim Clauson and Richard Marshall, who added Newman to the “dream team” in December.

“This deal is a team effort, just like in the Cup garage. You’ve got Tim Clauson, Richard Marshall, Rizzy (Tyler Ransbottom) being the crew chief and then obviously the (other) drivers, who all have a level of understanding of what the cars are doing,” explained Newman. “But we also have to deal with the track changing all the time. So just for me, learning about the track, learning about what they’re talking about and their language – because it’s totally different than talking about downforce and percent front and drag and things like that. In these cars, it’s more about turning and keeping the car free, but getting forward drive so that you can go down the straightaway.

“It’s been a process so far, but I’m enjoying the challenge and excited to get to work Wednesday night.”

He may be a rookie, but Newman believes that if he adapts well to the team and the car, he’ll have a shot to make some waves throughout the remainder of the week.

What that means on paper, he’s not sure, but Newman hopes it equals a shot at the Saturday A-main.

“I feel like if I can be as good as the race car is here, I’ll have a good shot of doing well,” Newman noted. “That’s what it’s really kind of all about, is getting me caught up to speed and making sure that I’m adjusting to the car and not that they’re adjusting to me. If we can click and keep getting comfortable, I think we’ll be alright. I really do.”

How to Watch the Chili Bowl:

LIVE From the Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Presented by MyRacePass – Story Index Page
News, analysis, interviews, behind-the-scenes and more – updated throughout each day.

LIVE PPV Streaming Broadcast – Racinboys.com
Monday – Saturday coverage

LIVE Television Broadcast – MAVTV.com
Saturday, Jan. 18th at 8:30pm EST

LIVE Timing and Scoring – MyRacePass
https://www.myracepass.com/app

SPEED SPORT’s Chili Bowl coverage is presented by MyRacePass, the official timing and scoring app of the 2020 Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals. Fans can download the MyRacePass app on their phones to follow all the action during the Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals. For more information on MyRacePass, visit www.myracepass.com and use the hashtag #GetTheApp on Twitter!

In an NHL season filled with shocking coaching changes, add another to the list: The Vegas Golden Knights have fired Gerard Gallant and hired former San Jose coach Peter DeBoer, whom the Sharks fired last month.

The Knights also fired assistant Mike Kelly.

"You've seen consistency issues," Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon said in Ottawa. "We are like a lot of teams -- had real high hopes for the year, still have real high hopes for the year. We're in a unique position where we're right in the mix, so this isn't a case where the bottom fell out and we were left with no choice. It was a situation more where proactively it was our belief that this was going to be the best thing for our organization."

In a statement earlier Wednesday, McCrimmon had said that "our team is capable of more than we have demonstrated this season," but he thanked Gallant and Kelly for being "instrumental to the success we have enjoyed in our first two-plus seasons."

DeBoer has a career NHL coaching record of 415-329-111 with the Florida Panthers, New Jersey Devils and Sharks. He led the latter two teams to the Stanley Cup Final, but lost both times. He was fired by the Sharks when they had a 15-16-2 record on Dec. 11 despite high expectations entering the season. They've gone 6-7-2 since.

Ironically, DeBoer is hired by the Knights after eliminating them in a seven-game first-round series last year, during which the Sharks rallied from a 3-0 third-period deficit in the final game to eliminate Vegas.

"His teams are always very well prepared, very well coached," McCrimmon said of DeBoer. "He's an intelligent guy. Teams have always been very strong special teams. He's been to the Stanley Cup Final with two different teams. He enjoyed a lot of success in the National Hockey League as a coach and I think with this opportunity he'll continue to do that."

Gallant has a 118-75-20 record with the Golden Knights, having led them to the Stanley Cup Final in the team's inaugural season in 2017-18, the same year he won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year. But the Knights have been underwhelming in the standings this season with a record of 24-19-6. Their .551 points percentage ranks ninth in the conference.

Despite being around the top of the Pacific Division for most of this season, the Golden Knights have now lost four in a row and are tied with Winnipeg for the second wild card in the West.

The team has also been one of the unluckiest in the NHL. The Golden Knights have the 24th-ranked shooting percentage at 7.5 percent. They're first by a wide margin in expected goals at 5-on-5 -- weighed for shot quality -- at 106.93, but are only 12th in actual goals (98). Overall, the Knights are 17th in the NHL in goals per game (3.02) and they're not getting great goaltending either, with a team save percentage of .900 (19th).

Gallant, 56, was hired by Vegas after a three-year stint with Florida. He also coached Columbus. He was just over a week away from coaching the Pacific Division team at the NHL All-Star Game in St. Louis.

McCrimmon explained why he made a move now.

"It's hard to put into words unless you've done these jobs. It's just the feeling you have that a change might be needed," he said, according to the team's Twitter account.

"We thought about this a lot, it certainly wasn't something we did in haste."

Two of the past four Stanley Cup champions fired their coaches during the season they won it -- the Blues last season and the Penguins in 2015-16.

Gallant is the seventh coach fired in this NHL this season, joining Bill Peters of Calgary and Jim Montgomery of Dallas, who were fired for off-ice incidents; and John Hynes of the Devils, Peter Laviolette of the Predators, Mike Babcock of the Maple Leafs and DeBoer.

Meanwhile, DeBoer joins Hynes as two coaches fired in-season who were then hired again in the same season, as Hynes is now the head coach in Nashville.

There are now just 11 current NHL head coaches who have been with their teams more than two seasons, according to ESPN Stats & Information.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.