It hasn’t taken long for the Can-Am World Finals to morph into one of short-track racing’s premier events.

The Dirt Track at Charlotte, which is a four-tenths-mile, semi-banked dirt oval in Concord, N.C., hosts the spectacle each fall. The event, which runs Nov. 7-9 this year, features the season finales for the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series, the World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series and the Super DIRTcar Series big-block modifieds.

The seating capacity of the main grandstand along the frontstretch is approximately 14,000. However, the number of people on-site each year is usually several thousand more, with nearly every state represented.

It has turned into one of the easiest tickets to sell and hardest to buy — the Saturday finale has sold out grandstand seating each of the last eight years — thanks in part to a group of unsung heroes in charge of track maintenance.

“What makes the World Finals unique is also what makes the track prep unique,” said Tom Deery, president and COO of World Racing Group. “It’s three different types of cars. the good news is Rob (Platfoot) and Larry (Fink), both with their efforts at Eldora and Volusia, are pretty well schooled in dealing with that. They know their way around and what to do and how to manage.”

The event is hosted by both the track and World Racing Group, and a combined crew from both groups as well as other motorsports entities is assembled to provide the best racing surface for three very different divisions of race cars.

From the World Racing Group side, track maintenance expert Larry Fink is joined by Rob Platfoot, who heads the track crew at Ohio’s famed Eldora Speedway. The Dirt Track at Charlotte also has representatives as part of the process in determining the best steps to take in an effort to produce elite racing.

“It’s more collaborative than one person,” Deery noted. “We all work together on what we need to do. That’s such a big event it has to be collaborative.”

In addition to his regular duties at Eldora Speedway, Platfoot helps World Racing Group during the DIRTcar Nationals in Florida each February, the World Finals and the DRIVEN Racing Oil World Short Track Championship — run the weekend prior to the World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte.

“It’s got its challenges, but that’s pretty much any track you go to,” Platfoot said. “You have to get used to that dirt to get familiarized. You have to get it tightened up and moisture in it so you don’t have to do a lot of track prep once the night gets started. That’s a fine line, too, because you can get it too wet and be in trouble, or not wet enough and be in trouble. It’s a very fine line with this line of work to be a hero or a zero.”

Platfoot estimates he spends 85 to 90 hours per week during each of the two weeks at The Dirt Track at Charlotte.

“Start off in the morning with some water down,” he said. “You get it tightened up and grade it to get it smoothed over. Then you keep watering and tilling it, fluffing it up to make sure you get enough moisture inside the track. It’s a constant all day of putting water on.”

The amount of water a track takes varies based on several factors, including the water table and the type of dirt.

“The biggest part is your water table,” Platfoot said. “Volusia has that gumbo dirt. It’s a very unique dirt. It doesn’t take as much water. That has to do with your water table. At Eldora for the Kings Royal, I was putting roughly 55,000 gallons of water on and I started about a week before the race got there. I was doing that all the way through to the end. Eldora takes a lot more water than what Charlotte does and it’s way more than Volusia. That dirt doesn’t take as much water as Eldora does. It holds better.

“It could be 80 degrees one day and you’ll put 30,000 gallons on,” he continued. “The next day it’s cool and cloudy and you’ll only put 8,000 gallons on. It’s really hard to predict what weather you’re going to get, so the water is hard to guess how much you’re going to put on. It depends on how much sun you’ve got. Weather is such a big factor of what you do and how you do it.”

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MARTINSVILLE, Va. – A NASCAR executive noted Monday morning on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that a penalty may be handed down from the pit road scuffle that ensued between Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano and their crews after Sunday’s First Data 500.

Hamlin squeezed Logano into the wall on lap 458 at Martinsville Speedway Sunday evening, leading to a cut tire from Logano and subsequent spin from which the defending Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion had to rally just to get a top-10 finish.

After the race, Logano and Hamlin engaged in a heated conversation on pit road before Logano pushed off of Hamlin’s shoulder as he walked away, leading to a melee that involved multiple crew members from both sides.

Particularly noteworthy was a crew member from Logano’s team who pulled Hamlin back and to the ground in the chaos.

After the race, NASCAR officials called Team Penske competition director Travis Geisler, Logano’s crew chief Todd Gordon and the unnamed crew member who took down Hamlin to the Cup Series hauler for further discussion.

Then, Monday morning, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell made his weekly appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s The Morning Drive to expand on the situation further.

“As we always say, we know emotions are going to run high, especially at this time of the season,” O’Donnell noted. “The drivers, we don’t encourage it, but we know that they’re going to address each other after the race when they have an incident and you saw that happen.

“Then, unfortunately, instead of kind of breaking up a fight, I think what we saw was an aggressive move by a crew member, so we called the team into the hauler, including Todd Gordon. … I think in this case, you’ve got a crew member who was maybe trying to break it up but certainly an aggressive move that we viewed on our part and unfortunately we’ll probably have to take some action to address that later today or tomorrow.”

To his credit, Gordon took some responsibility for the fight ever happening at all when he made his own remarks on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio as well.

“I probably take some of the ownership myself to start with,” Gordon said. “(I) stopped Joey when he got out of the car and he’s frustrated. He got run up in the wall with 50 to go and was frustrated about it, and justifiably so. I went back and re-watched it. He pretty much got put in the wall on a straightaway. There’s frustration with that. (So I stopped Joey at the car and said ‘we just don’t need to handle that right now and let his emotions get down,’ and I thought they were at a point where he could go talk. Unfortunately, in the conversation, there got to be a push (from Logano).

“The direction that our organization has is (to) separate drivers,” Gordon added. “We don’t want to have drivers beating on each other. We’ve had the conversation internally, we want situations diffused and separated. Unfortunately, in this situation that happened there, the separation was with too much power afterwards and I don’t think the crew member … he was trying to separate the drivers and did so with probably more force than he anticipated, and he’s regretful of that.”

Gordon added that he’s unsure what direction NASCAR may go with their handling of the situation, but that he did offer an apology to Hamlin afterward.

“(We’ll) see what NASCAR does that and where it goes. There weren’t any punches or anything pulled. (But) Denny got pulled out there and got pulled down pretty hard,” Gordon said. “Apologized to Denny for that and how that was handled. Ultimately, I’ll put that one back on me to start with. I shouldn’t have let Joey down there to start with. I probably made a poor decision in letting him go down and talk. A little bit of that is on me and we’ll work forward from that.

“(I) understand Joey’s frustration. I think it’s genuine. What started the whole situation was what happened on the race track,” Gordon pointed out. “We can talk about what happens in short track racing and all, 50 to go … to get pushed up into the wall side-by-side, it’s going to frustrate you. I think if the roles were revered, it’s probably frustrating as much the other way. … We’ll see what NASCAR does and we’ll adapt to whatever comes forward.”

Sunday marked the second-straight week that fisticuffs ensued on pit road after a NASCAR race, following an Xfinity Series incident between Tyler Reddick and Cole Custer at Kansas Speedway.

No penalties were issued from that fight.

“I think if you go back to Kansas, we spent a lot of time reviewing that video and in our mind, always a judgment call but different incident,” O’Donnell said. “We didn’t see anybody really trying to escalate the situation.

“I think in this case (at Martinsville), you had a crew member who, honestly, I don’t think realized the force with which he made that move,” O’Donnell said. “We have some light drivers and some big crew members and unfortunately that’s what happens when those situations take place. I think they understand what’s coming.

“It’s not something we want to see or encourage, but we’ll have to address.”

Devante Smith-Pelly, who scored seven goals during the Washington Capitals' Stanley Cup-winning run in 2018, has signed a contract to play in the KHL.

The Kunlun Red Star, which play in China, announced they had signed the 27-year-old winger to a one-year contract.

Smith-Pelly was waived by the Capitals in February, ahead of the trade deadline, after scoring just four goals with four assists in 54 games. He later joined the Capitals in the 2019 playoffs after being recalled from the AHL.

He was with the Calgary Flames before this season on a professional tryout contract but was released by the team in September.

He was in the headlines in 2018 when four Chicago Blackhawks fans were ejected from a game for making racist comments toward him while he was in the penalty box. Smith-Pelly, who called the fans' chants of "basketball, basketball, basketball" disgusting, spoke up about the taunts because he experienced racial taunting as a teenager trying to make the NHL, but didn't tell anyone. Fellow black NHL players reached out to Smith-Pelly to thank him for speaking up.

He has 44 goals and 57 assists in eight NHL seasons.

St. Louis Blues star forward Vladimir Tarasenko will undergo shoulder surgery on Tuesday, the team announced.

Tarasenko will be placed on long-term injury reserve and will be reevaluated in five months, meaning he will miss the majority of the 2019-20 season.

Tarasenko suffered the injury in a game against the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday in the first period. At the time, he had points in five straight games. He has three goals in seven assists in 10 games this season.

Tarasenko, 27, who did not travel with the Blues for their two games this past weekend, had reconstructive surgery in April 2018 to repair a dislocated left shoulder. Following the Stanley Cup in June, the team announced that he also had a successful arthroscopic surgery on his left knee.

He scored 68 points (33 goals, 35 assists) in 76 regular-season games last season, and he had another 11 goals and 17 points in 26 playoff games en route to the Blues winning the Stanley Cup.

St. Louis is 6-3-3 this season and is in third place in the Central Division entering Monday's games.

After tying the PGA Tour's all-time wins record halfway around the world, Tiger Woods made a move in the latest installment of the Official World Golf Ranking.

Woods' three-shot win at the inaugural Zozo Championship tied him with Sam Snead for the most trophies in Tour history, and it also helped him jump from 10th to sixth in the world. Woods started the year ranked 13th and reached as high as fifth following his Masters win in April.

The top five ahead of Woods remained the same, with Brooks Koepka No. 1 followed by Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm. Woods' victory bumped four players down one spot apiece: Patrick Cantlay dropped from sixth to seventh, with Justin Rose, Xander Schauffele and Bryson DeChambeau rounding out the latest top 10.

Hideki Matsuyama went from 27th to 22nd after finishing second behind Woods in his native Japan, while Gary Woodland went from 18th to 15th after finishing fifth. Reigning PGA Tour Rookie of the Year Sungjae Im rose from 43rd to 34th after a T-3 finish.

Despite skipping the Zozo Championship, Phil Mickelson remained No. 50 in the latest rankings to extend his streak of remaining inside the top 50 which dates back to 1993. Mickelson is in the field for this week's WGC-HSBC Champions in China.

With his $1,775,000 first-place check at the Zozo Championship, Tiger Woods broke another barrier on the PGA Tour. He has now amassed over $120 million in career earnings.

Below is a look at the current top 20 on the list, with Rickie Fowler a tad behind at No. 21. 

Here are a few notes:

• 191 players have earned more than $10 million
• 77 players have earned more than $20 million
• 38 players have earned more than $30 million
• And you can see right below how many have $40 million or more

President Donald Trump was busy attending Game 5 of the World Series on Sunday night, so he may not have gotten to watch Tiger Woods put the finishing touches on his historic 82nd PGA Tour victory live, but he did congratulate the Zozo champion on Twitter Monday.

Trump added a comment on Gary Player's congratulatory tweet, calling Woods "An AMAZING CHAMPION."

Since being elected president, Trump has teed it up with Woods on several occasions and kept an eye on his return from injury.

About a month after Tiger completed his historic comeback at the Masters in April, Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, calling him a "global symbol of American excellence, devotion and drive."

LAFC's Carlos Vela and LA Galaxy forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic headline this year's MLS Best XI.

Vela is in the midst of a stellar season, having scored a single-season record 34 goals and adding 15 assists during the league campaign. He's joined by LAFC teammates Walker Zimmerman and Eduard Atuesta, who helped the Supporters' Shield winners to an MLS-record 72 points in the standings, as well as a league-low 37 goals allowed. With a total of the three players in the Best XI, LAFC had the most of any team.

Vela, the presumptive league MVP, is joined on the front line by Ibrahimovic, who scored 30 regular-season goals, as well as last year's MVP, Atlanta United's Josef Martinez, who tallied 27 times during the league season. Martinez scored in 15 consecutive matches in 2019, tied for second-most in global soccer since the start of MLS in 1996, behind Lionel Messi.

This marks the third time Martinez has been named to the Best XI, and both Vela and Ibrahimovic were named to the team for the second time.

The other player to achieve multiple Best XI honors is Minnesota United defender Ike Opara, who helped his team reduce its goals against from 71 in 2018 to 43 in 2019. Opara was recently named the league's defender of the year for 2019.

Opara is joined by teammate and recently named goalkeeper of the year Vito Mannone, who aided the Loons' defensive improvement -- the third-best in MLS history -- with 129 saves, which ranked second in the league.

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The third member of the backline is Atlanta United's Miles Robinson, who enjoyed a breakout season in which he had his first call-up to the U.S. men's national team.

The rest of the midfield is comprised of MLS assist leader Maxi Moralez of New York City FC, Toronto FC's Alejandro Pozuelo -- who tallied 12 goals and 12 assists on the season -- and the New England Revolution's Carles Gil, who recently claimed the league's Newcomer of the Year award.

MLS Best XI

Goalkeeper: Vito Mannone (Minnesota)

Defense: Ike Opara (Minnesota), Walker Zimmerman (LAFC), Miles Robinson (Atlanta)

Midfield: Maxi Moralez (NYCFC), Eduard Atuesta (LAFC), Alejandro Pozuelo (Toronto), Carles Gil (New England)

Forward: Zlatan Ibrahimovic (LA Galaxy), Josef Martinez (Atlanta), Carlos Vela (LAFC)

Ajax full-back Sergino Dest has pledged his international future to the U.S. men's national team, the player announced on Monday.

Dest, 18, was born in Almere, Netherlands, the son of a Dutch mother and Surinamese-American father. As such, he could have represented either the U.S. or the Netherlands at international level, and both sides have been pushing for Dest to make a decision in recent weeks. Dest has made that decision, opting to represent the U.S., with his first opportunity to represent the senior team in a competitive fixture set to take place on Nov. 15 against Canada.

The American Dream continues...??

Sergiño Dest -> @USMNT ? pic.twitter.com/fg77aiZPLA

— AFC Ajax (@AFCAjax) October 28, 2019

"Of course, it was a tough decision for me when the Dutch Men's National Team showed their interest, but I have built up a very good feeling with Team USA over the last couple of years and I strongly believe in the plans and potential of U.S. Soccer," Dest said. "I am therefore dedicated to making the next 10-15 years a big success and will do my utmost to help the team play for titles."

Dest has already represented the U.S. at Under-17 and U20 level, helping the U20s reach the quarterfinals of the U20 World Cup earlier this year. He also made two appearances for the U.S. senior team back in September, though because those were friendlies, his was not cap-tied for the Stars and Stripes.

But when Dest cracked the lineup of club side Ajax at the start of the season, he drew the attention of Netherlands national team manager Ronald Koeman, who attempted to sell the player on the benefits of representing the country of his birth.

Given that Dest has spent his entire life in the Netherlands, and came up through Ajax's youth system, the thought was that the Dutch had the inside track. But in a bid to keep Dest in the U.S. fold, U.S. manager Gregg Berhalter and sporting director Earnie Stewart went to Amsterdam last week, meeting with the player and his father the day after Ajax's UEFA Champions League encounter against Chelsea. Those efforts proved successful.

"We are thrilled to have Sergino commit to our program," said Berhalter. "He is an exceptional young player with a bright future. Our youth national teams gave him the platform to showcase his talents on the world stage and now he will continue his progress with us at the senior level."

Dest's announcement counts as a welcome bit of good news for the U.S. While 69 dual nationals have represented the U.S. at senior level since 2008, some high-profile defections have resulted in the U.S. Soccer Federation being criticized for not doing more to gain commitments from such players.

In 2018, Monterrey and former U.S. U20 midfielder Jonathan Gonzalez filed a one-time switch to represent rivals Mexico. In 2016, highly touted prospect and former U.S. youth international Efrain Alvarez switched his allegiance to Mexico, though because he hasn't played for El Tri in a competitive fixture at senior level, a return to the U.S. remains possible. For Stewart, who himself was a dual national with Dutch and American citizenship, Dest's decision was especially gratifying.

"We are excited that Sergino will continue with our program," Stewart said. "In all of our discussions, Sergino expressed the comfort he feels within the group and his appreciation for the commitment the Federation has made along the way. As a dual national myself, I understand the choices that these young players face. Our job is to provide a clear pathway and maintain honest and open communication, and then ultimately it comes down to a personal decision."