MILLINGTON, Tenn. — The ARCA Menards Series and the NASCAR K&N Pro Series will come together on Sept. 26, 2020 at Memphis Int’l Raceway to crown a series champion.

The inaugural season of the ARCA Racing Series Showdown, where drivers from the ARCA Menards Series and NASCAR K&N Pro Series will race against each other in a new and unique race format, will conclude a 10-race championship series at MIR in 2020.

The Memphis 200 will crown the ARCA Racing Series Showdown champion in NASCAR and ARCA’s only visit to the Mid-South.

“We and our race fans in the Mid-South are appreciative for the opportunity to host the Inaugural ARCA Racing Series Showdown championship weekend at Memphis International Raceway,” Memphis Int’l Raceway General Manager Justin Kamm said. “It will be an exciting conclusion to the 10-race showdown as we all see who will be crowned as champion Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020.”

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – NASCAR and ARCA have announced a new championship format for 2020 that will see the continuation of three historic regional championship series and the coronation of a new fourth champion, all under the ARCA Menards Series banner.

The series provide an integral development step for young drivers who aspire to move up to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series or NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series; as well as a professional level for short-track veterans.

They will also provide continuity to three of the longest running high-level regional stock car series in the United States.

The four championships will be:

• ARCA Menards Series East and ARCA Menards Series West will continue the traditions established by the Busch North Series (founded in 1987) and Pacific Coast Late Model Series/Winston West (1954) and currently competing as the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East and West. The series will feature an annual schedule of six to eight races and crowning of separate regional champions.
• ARCA Menards Series – The 20-race ARCA Menards Series, founded in 1953, a mix of national-series combination events at venues such as Daytona Int’l Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway, as well as short tracks like Madison Int’l Speedway in Wisconsin and the Illinois and DuQuoin State Fairgrounds one-mile dirt tracks.
• ARCA Racing Series Showdown – Ten races within the larger ARCA Menards Series championship will feature the best of the three series coming together to crown a Showdown champion.

“We cannot be more excited about 2020,” said Brandon Thompson, Managing Director, NASCAR Touring Series. “Both NASCAR and ARCA have worked extremely hard over the last year to provide a rules package and schedule that will serve as the foundation for the preeminent series for racing at this level. It was important for us to move the series forward while creating an environment inclusive for both the current long-term owners and drivers in the series as well as aspiring competitors.”

“What first started as a friendship between Bill France Sr. and John Marcum nearly 70 years ago took a momentous step forward today,” added ARCA President Ron Drager. “The amount of history and tradition these series are bringing together to form four elite championships for drivers is an amazing testament to the strength of this sport.

“We are proud and honored to be able to bring the ARCA sanction to the East and West Series; and we are looking forward to working with the race teams, tracks, media partners, fans, and sponsors that have helped those series achieve their long term success.”

NASCAR also announced if an East, West or current ARCA Menards Series car owner has a car that meets the 2019 rulebook, there will be a rules package that will allow them to compete in 2020.

“We’re pleased that we’re able to extend our racing sponsorships to include the ARCA Menards Series East and ARCA Menards Series West,” said Menards President & CEO John Menard.  “We hope that race fans throughout the country will further enjoy great racing action while also becoming familiar with the Menards brand by shopping at our home improvement stores located in the Midwest or at Menards.com”.

The 2020 ARCA Menards Series will officially begin on Saturday, Feb. 8 at Daytona with the Lucas Oil 200 driven by General Tire. It will mark the 57th annual ARCA visit to Daytona.

The Showdown will take the green flag with ARCA’s inaugural visit to ISM Raceway on March 6 as part of the national series’ event weekend in Phoenix, while the West will kick off the Las Vegas weekend with a return to the Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

West dates also include traditional events at Irwindale Speedway, Sonoma Raceway and All American Speedway in Roseville, Calif., and will crown its champion at ISM Raceway in November.

The East will race at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Fla., as well as Toledo (Ohio) Speedway, Watkins Glen Int’l, and again be part of New Hampshire Motor Speedway’s annual Full Throttle Fall Weekend.

The East season will culminate with the championship race at Dover Int’l Speedway.

In addition to Daytona and Charlotte, the ARCA Menards Series schedule will include Talladega Superspeedway, Michigan Int’l Speedway, Chicagoland Speedway and Pocono Raceway, and finish the season at Kansas Speedway on Oct. 16.

The Showdown 10-race schedule features Salem Speedway, Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis, Minnesota’s Elko Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Iowa Speedway and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, and will crown its first Showdown champion at Memphis Motorsports Park on Sept. 26.

Complete schedules for all four championships will be announced shortly.

Since April 1989, radial tires have been the standard for NASCAR’s top-three racing divisions. Prior to that change in design took place, bias-ply tires were used from the days drivers first entered NASCAR events, offering good side-by-side racing and challenges that had to be overcome.

The terms radial and bias-ply describe the internal construction of a tire. Radial tires came to NASCAR because of improved durability, but also because they were becoming more prominent in the marketplace.

In elementary terms, bias-ply tires were built by placing fabric cords laid at opposing angles to the ply underneath it, creating a crisscross pattern. Most bias-ply tires were four ply, indicating they had four layers of reinforcing fabric cords. For track use, crew chiefs could use “stagger” — the difference in circumference between the left-side tires and the right-side tires — by under inflating the left-side tires and the right-side rubber. Heat also expended them, improving the car’s ability to turn left through fluctuating air pressure.

In 1948, the year NASCAR was founded, Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. provided tires for open-wheel racing and began branching out to NASCAR’s newly formed arena. Two years later, Johnny Mantz won the inaugural Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway on hard-treaded truck tires similar to those used in Indy car racing.

In 1954, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. entered NASCAR with a plan to build tires for stock car racing. At the time, the majority of the circuit was made up of dirt and asphalt short tracks. Goodyear engineers. set out to create a tire that could withstand the high speeds generated at two relatively new superspeedways — Darlington Raceway, which was built in 1950, and the one-mile Raleigh (N.C.) Speedway that opened in 1952.

By the early 1960s, race tires were becoming wider and were designed to have more tread on the racing surface. The deaths of Jimmy Pardue in 1964 and Billy Wade in ’65 prompted the design of the inner liner, a tire within a tire that guarded against catastrophic blowouts such as the ones that took their lives. Throughout the mid to late 1960s, drivers Buddy Baker and Darel Dieringer bravely ran over objects on the track at high speeds to further enhance tire safety.

A tire controversy before the debut race at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway in September 1969 caused drivers to stage a walkout over safety. Firestone, the manufacturer of the tire, couldn’t made the tire hold up at high speeds. The company left NASCAR altogether in 1974. Its departure left Goodyear as the sole tire provider for the next 12 seasons.

Then, in 1986, a hostile takeover attempt and uncertainty of tire delivery prompted the sanctioning body to open the door to Hoosier Tire Co. While Goodyear employed 350,000 workers around the globe, Hoosier Tire Co., owned by Bob Newton, had only 16 employees in his Indiana stable.

H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, former president of Charlotte Motor Speedway and a former representative for Firestone, knew the storm was brewing.

“It was reminiscent of the old Goodyear and Firestone days in Cup racing in the 1960s,” Wheeler said. “Then along comes Hoosier. I knew when they came in that tire was going to get real light. Hoosier ran a real soft tire and the softer you get, the faster you go. Goodyear didn’t want to take it that soft. The bias-ply tire was a much more comfortable tire to ride on for race drivers. Obviously, tire companies didn’t want them because they weren’t selling them as much. Both manufacturers got to the point where they were so on the edge their tires became prohibitively dangerous. And the tire companies never want danger.”

Entering Speedweeks at Daytona Int’l Speedway in 1988, Baker, Donnie Allison, Neil Bonnett, Lake Speed, Morgan Shepherd and Rick Wilson were among those using Hoosier tires.

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- The Arizona Coyotes have signed goalie Darcy Kuemper to a two-year contract extension with an average annual salary of $4.5 million.

The deal announced Wednesday would keep Kuemper in the desert through the 2021-22 season.

The 29-year-old Kuemper had been a career backup until Arizona's No. 1 goalie Antti Raanta suffered a season-ending injury last year.

Kuemper was 27-20-8 with a 2.33 goals-against average and .925 save percentage.

He went 22-9-6 with a 2.05 goals-against average after January as the Coyotes made a playoff push. Arizona fell four points short of the final Western Conference playoff spot.

Kuemper is expected to share time with Raanta this season.

What began as a group text in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian led to a simple question from Justin Leonard: What can we do?

Leonard and his wife, Amanda, have property at Baker's Bay just east of Great Abaco in the Bahamas, and she was on a text chain with a woman who lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, and had a home near Baker's Bay. The woman, Beth Warren, was hosting families and sharing tales of the devastation and the needs.

The answer was a collaboration with player and analyst Brad Faxon and Seth Waugh, the retired Deutsche Bank Americas CEO and now president of the PGA of America. That resulted in the ''Bahamas Strong Pro-Am'' to be held Oct. 8 at Old Marsh Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Registration is closed because the pro-am of 22 groups already sold out. Donations are still being sought through the website and all proceeds go directly to relief efforts.

The field has some star power – Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Ernie Els and Justin Thomas are among 19 players already enlisted.

Leonard said his only experience with such events was a charity spin class that raised $100,000 annually for a camp for children coping with cancer. He at least knew the right people to call. It started with PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, mainly to get contact information for Waugh. And then he got Faxon involved to help find a golf course and players.

''Fax opened up his Rolodex, which is way more extensive than mine, and we started sending texts and emails,'' Leonard said.

They had to move quickly, especially with the PGA Tour and LPGA tour heading for Asia. The only logical date was Oct. 8, which gave them a month to get to work. Thomas, who vacations at Baker's Bay, was among the first to sign up. Nicklaus, Norman and Els added Hall of Fame cachet.

Others include Jessica Korda, Marina Alex, Leta Lindley and Jaye Marie Greene from the LPGA tour, Lucas Glover, Billy Horschel, Corey Conners, Charl Schwartzel, Rory Sabbatini, Brett Quigley, Jesper Parnevik, Leonard and Faxon. The latest to sign up was Joaquin Niemann of Chile.

''There's so much they need before they can even think about rebuilding,'' Warren told Golf Digest. ''There is a lot of need and a lot of confusion down there.''

Doug Ferguson is golf writer for The Associated Press

The LPGA tour is in Texas this week, and it could be the end of the season some two months before the season actually ends.

The Volunteers of America Classic north of Dallas is the final full-field event of the year before the LPGA heads to Asia for four weeks and then concludes at the CME Group Tour Championship in Naples, Florida, the week before Thanksgiving.

At stake for some, like Cristie Kerr, is a chance to reach the Tour Championship. For others, like Paula Creamer and Gerina Piller, it's a matter of making sure they have full LPGA cards for next year. Creamer is No. 89 while Piller is No. 91. Both were on the U.S. Solheim Cup team two years ago.

The top 100 on the Race to the CME Globe keep their full cards, but this could be the last week to earn points. The four Asian events – China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan – have sponsor exemptions, but any LPGA member who gets into the tournament through an exemption is not eligible to earn Race to CME Globe points.

The field for three Asia events is for the top 62 on the LPGA points list, with only 43 spots in Japan. Not everyone plays. Lexi Thompson, for example, plans to play only the Toto Japan Classic, so the availability dips down beyond No. 62.

For some players, it's a matter of how far. Kerr is at No. 69. She currently is the third alternate for the Buick LPGA Shanghai and the fifth alternate for the Taiwan Swinging Skirts LPGA.

Jennifer Kupcho, who deferred her membership until June so she could finish at Wake Forest, is at No. 59.

All but four players – Haru Nomura, Mel Reid, Mariajo Uribe and Alison Lee – from No. 61 through No. 100 is in the field in the Volunteers of America Classic.

Doug Ferguson is a golf writer for The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS – Brooks Koepka made it clear Wednesday that he doesn’t need another Player of the Year Award to know he’s the LeBron James of golf.

This year’s POY vote stirred up debate after Koepka — who won three times and finished in the top 4 at all four majors with a victory at the PGA Championship — lost the vote to to Players and FedExCup champion Rory McIlroy.

Asked on Wednesday for his reaction to the vote, Koepka was initially short.

“I don't play for awards. I just play to win, win trophies, win tournaments,” he said.

But then, right when it sounded like he was ready to move on and quash the conversation, the PGA Tour’s alpha dog made a sufficiently alpha comparison.

“Yeah, it would've been great, but I think everybody in this room knows — I mean, LeBron has only won 4 MVPs, and I'm pretty sure he's been the best player for more than just four years,” he added.

Koepka also mentioned that he feels close to 100 percent after undergoing stem-cell treatment in August for a torn patella tendon that had bothered him since March.

Coming off two seasons impacted by knee and wrist injuries, Koepka says he will now be able to devote more time to working on his game.

That should be of concern for the rest of the Tour, considering the world No. 1 has claimed four major titles since July of 2017 while limiting his practice.

LAS VEGAS – Brooks Koepka on Wednesday revealed that he recently underwent stem-cell treatment to repair a partially torn patella tendon in his left knee.

Speaking ahead of the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, where he’ll make his 2019-20 debut this week, Koepka said the procedure took place in Orlando, Florida, the Monday after the Tour Championship.

“I was watching it on the screen as they were doing it and it was probably one of the most painful things,” he said. “I was screaming when they did it.”

Koepka limped around and tried to stay off his feet for three days before beginning three to four weeks of rehab. He started working on his golf game once again about a week and a half ago, which is a radical departure for the world No. 1.

“I'm prepared for a tournament for once,” he said.

Koepka courted criticism last season when he openly discussed coming into non-major weeks rusty, searching for his game after weeks spent with his clubs in the closet. The common critique was that Koepka just didn’t care about regular Tour stops.

But on Wednesday, Koepka made it clear that he didn’t practice because he couldn’t practice. He was playing his way into form during tournament weeks not out of nonchalance but out of necessity.

“I can finally practice again, which is nice, without pain,” he said. “Last year, I didn't practice at all. I mean, I vocalized that, said I hadn't practiced. … I finally feel good enough where I can actually practice and feel prepared coming into golf tournaments – not trying to find it on Tuesday or Wednesday.

“I'll be practicing this year.”

United States international Christian Pulisic has not been included in Chelsea's matchday squad for the Champions League clash with Lille.

Aside from the Carabao Cup third round tie with third tier Grimsby which Frank Lampard's side won 7-1, Pulisic has not featured for Chelsea since a 2-2 draw with Sheffield United on Aug. 31.

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Lampard has started with Mason Mount and Willian supporting Tammy Abraham in attack, while Callum Hudson-Odoi and Pedro are options from the substitute's bench.

Having lost their first match of the group stage 1-0 at home to Valencia -- with Pulisic an unused substitute -- Chelsea are looking to take all three points from Lille.

Pulisic eventually joined Chelsea in the summer having spent the second half of the 2018-19 campaign on loan at former side Borussia Dortmund after the two sides agreed to a $64 million transfer in January.

Luis Suarez scored two superlative goals as Barcelona beat Inter Milan 2-1 in a thrilling Champions League Group F encounter at the Camp Nou on Wednesday.

Lautaro Martinez got the visitors off to a flying start after just three minutes when he pounced on a ball behind the defence and slotted his left-footed shot past Marc-Andre ter Stegen while under pressure from Clement Lenglet.

His goal marked the fifth time Barca have conceded a Champions League goal within the opening five minutes of a match and the first goal Inter have ever scored at the storied stadium in four tries.

Barcelona piled on the pressure shortly after, however, but could only force a handful of straightforward saves from Inter goalkeeper Samir Handanovic.

Inter thought they had a second in the 27th minute when Antonio Candreva was found free on the right wing before beating Ter Stegen at the near post but he was rightly flagged for offside.

Barca then needed separate blocks from Nelson Semedo and Ter Stegen to thwart promising Inter attacks soon after as the Italians ended the half looking the more threatening side.

Despite Inter looking the better side, Suarez levelled the score in the 58th minute with a sensational scissor-kick volley from an Arturo Vidal cross -- the Uruguay international firing from the edge of the 18-yard box and leaving Handanovic no chance in the Inter net.

He capped his brace in dramatic fashion six minutes from time, smartly pushing a square ball from Messi through a thicket of defenders at the top of the box and beating a late-arriving Handanovic with a low dragged shot.

The win gives Barca four points from two matches in the young campaign, while Inter have taken just one.

Ernesto Valverde's men will next visit Slavia Prague on Oct. 23 and Inter will host Borussia Dortmund that same day.