WEST BURLINGTON, Iowa – A milestone 33 years in the making will be celebrated Saturday night at 34 Raceway.

The 500th event in Deery Brothers Summer Series history will be held Sept. 21 at West Burlington. Touring IMCA Late Models have made 50 previous visits to 34 Raceway, including the first-ever series race on April 11, 1987.

34 Raceway also hosted the 300th Deery event, on Sept. 15-16 of 2006, and the 400th series event, on Sept. 2, 2012.

“It is hard to articulate what it means to have run 500 Deery Brothers Summer Series events spanning four different decades,” said Tour Director Kevin Yoder. “It is appropriate that 34 Raceway will host it, as some of the more significant milestones in series history have taken place in West Burlington. It promises to be a special night.”

A top prize of $2,000 is at stake Saturday. Eight different drivers have won the nine events held so far this season; Andy Eckrich remains the point leader while Darrel DeFrance brings his perfect attendance streak of 499 consecutive events to town.

The winner of Saturday’s Arnold Motor Supply Dirt Knights Tour feature for IMCA Modifieds, the first AMS event held at West Burlington, earns $1,541 along with a Fast Shafts All-Star Invitational ballot berth.

The rescheduled Gangbusters 41 special, held in honor of the late Jim Oliver Sr., grandfather of IMCA driver John Oliver Jr., shares the Saturday card with the Deery Series and AMS Dirt Knights.

Five thousand dollars has been added to purses for IMCA Sunoco Stock Cars and Karl Kustoms Northern SportMods. Those features pay $1,441 and $1,041 to win, respectively.

Completing the program are Mach-1 Sport Compacts.

CONCORD, N.C. – Speedway Motorsports Inc. and Sonic Financial Corp. have confirmed the acquisition of all outstanding SMI stocks, officially making SMI a private company.

SMI is the ownership group of eight tracks that host the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, including Charlotte Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Kentucky Speedway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Sonoma Raceway.

According to a press release issued by SMI and Sonic Financial, the sale closed Tuesday. Each outstanding share being valued at $19.75 per share. More than 11 million shares were outstanding, bringing the value of the deal to more than $225 million.

Bruton Smith and his family own and control Sonic Financial and are the primary owners of Speedway Motorsports Inc. The deal to go private means the company no longer answers to share holders and the organization won’t have to report its finances publicly.

A similar deal is currently in the works to have all outstanding shares of the International Speedway Corp. sold to NASCAR. Both companies are mainly owned by the France family.

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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Porsche’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GT Le Mans program has partnered with Coca-Cola for a special livery during the Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.

Coca-Cola was once a sponsor of IMSA legend Bob Akin’s Porsche race cars from 1980 through 1987, along with unmistakable Coca-Cola red paint scheme and the white Coke wave. The Nos. 911 and 912 Porsche 911 RSR entries will carry that scheme during the 10-hour endurance race on Oct. 12.

The Petit Le Mans closes the curtain on the IMSA 50th Anniversary Celebration.

“I can’t think of a better way for fans to celebrate the final race of IMSA’s 50th Anniversary season by seeing two of the most iconic brands in the world – Porsche and Coca-Cola – bring back an unforgettable livery,” said Jim France, NASCAR chairman and IMSA chairman, who attended Tuesday’s unveiling of the livery at Coca-Cola’s world headquarters in downtown Atlanta alongside IMSA CEO Ed Bennett and President Scott Atherton.

“Bob Akin was one of a kind, much like Porsche and Coca-Cola, and to see this livery at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta for this year’s Motul Petit Le Mans will certainly be exciting for everyone.”

Atlanta was the common thread that brought the opportunity together and made it fit like a glove. In addition to being the home of Coca-Cola HQ, Atlanta also is home to Porsche Cars North America. Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta is in Braselton, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb.

“As one last tribute to honor IMSA on their Golden Anniversary, we are bringing back yet another memorable livery – a local favorite: Coca-Cola,” said Pedro Mota, vice president of marketing for Porsche Cars North America. “As an added benefit, we get to fondly recall Bob Akin, the gentleman who first brought Coca-Cola and Porsche together with the customer 935 and 962 race cars he successfully campaigned.”

Both the No. 911 Porsche GT Team entry shared by Nick Tandy, Patrick Pilet and Frederic Makowiecki and the No. 912 RSR co-driven by Earl Bamber, Laurens Vanthoor and Mathieu Jaminet will carry the Coke livery, as will their firesuits.

The livery will match the one used by the Bob Akin Racing No. 5 Porsche 962 at the 1986 Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, which Akin co-drove to victory alongside Hans-Joachim Stuck and Jo Gartner. Akin’s cars carried Coca-Cola colors beginning with the 1980 Rolex 24 At Daytona and continued through the IMSA race at Road America in 1987.

“We are keen to add to the celebrations of IMSA’s 50th anniversary at the final round of the season in a very special way,” said Fritz Enzinger, Porsche’s vice president, motorsport. “I’m very curious to see how the fans will respond to our two Porsche 911 RSRs in Coca-Cola colors.”

Bamber and Vanthoor currently lead the WeatherTech Championship GTLM standings by 12 points, 304-292, over Tandy and Pilet. Roles are reversed in the Michelin Endurance Cup standings, where Tandy and Pilet have a six-point advantage, 31-25, over Bamber and Vanthoor, who are tied for second with No. 67 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing GT co-drivers Richard Westbrook and Ryan Briscoe.

Recent historic liveries have served No. 911 co-drivers Tandy, Pilet and Makowiecki particularly well. They won last year’s Motul Petit Le Mans carrying the famed Mobil 1 livery that competed in the inaugural Motul Petit Le Mans in 1998.

Earlier this year, the same trio also took the victory in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts in March. The livery for that race was the well-known red, white and blue colors used by Brumos Racing for decades of IMSA competition.

Yet another historic livery, the “Pink Pig” scheme, was carried to the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans GTE Pro class victory by Vanthoor and co-drivers Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen.

“The special vehicle liveries of the past few months have yielded us numerous successes,” Enzinger said. “We won at Road Atlanta last year, we won Le Mans in 2018 and we won at Sebring this year. We would be happy for things to continue like this.”

VIRGINIA WATER, England – Justin Rose is scheduled to get back to work this week at the BMW PGA Championship but his return to competition might have to wait.

Rose withdrew from Wednesday’s pro-am at the European Tour’s flagship event citing a knee injury.

“Last Thursday I slipped and jarred my knee,” Rose said in a statement. “Since then I have been getting treatment on the injury and I have been working hard with Justin Buckthorp and my medical team away from the course in order to ensure I am able to play in this week’s BMW PGA Championship. I am doing everything I can to be fit to play on Thursday.”

Rose, who hasn’t played since last month’s Tour Championship, is scheduled to tee off at 7:40 a.m. ET on Thursday with Jon Rahm and Patrick Reed.

The PGA Tour Champions has entered a five-year agreement to add a new tournament in Morocco beginning in 2020, marking the first time a PGA Tour circuit will hold a sanctioned stroke-play event in Africa.

The inaugural Morocco Champions will debut Jan. 30-Feb. 1 next year at Samanah Golf Club in Marrakesh. The event, which will feature a Saturday finish, will include 66 players vying for a $2 million purse. The announcement continues a global expansion trend for the over-50 circuit, which added its first event in Japan in 2017.

"As we enter 2020, the globalization of golf is at an all-time high and it's important for us to look at opportunities to bring these legends of the game to fans around the world," said PGA Tour Champions president Miller Brady. "The Morocco Champions will allow us to do just that, and we're eager to build a tremendous debut tournament."

Morocco currently hosts the Trophee Hassan II each year on the European Tour as well as an event on the Ladies' European Tour. The only other PGA Tour-sanctioned events held in Africa were both team events in South Africa, the 1996 World Cup and the 2003 Presidents Cup.

VIRGINIA WATER, England – The PGA Tour may have ended its season last month at the Tour Championship, but for the international players who split time between the United States and Europe, the year is far from over.

On Tuesday at the BMW PGA Championship, Francesco Molinari explained that he still has a third of his schedule to play before the end of the year, a list that includes stops in Italy, China, Turkey, Dubai, Hong Kong and Napa, Calif.

The Italian said he plans to return to the United States for next week’s Safeway Open out of necessity.

“One of the issues I find with the schedule and with playing two tours, obviously you don't want to start in the States in January having not played in any events,” Molinari said. “It's trying to fit one or two U.S. events between now and the end of the year.”

The challenge for Molinari is a familiar one for many of the game’s top players. This year’s condensed schedule on the PGA Tour forced many to play more than they normally would in the summer, and as Molinari has learned, the fall can be just as hectic.

“You learn as you go, really,” said Molinari, who is the defending champion this week at Wentworth. “None of us had any previous experiences on a schedule this compact and this tight. It's learning as you go and then trying to do a better job next year.”

VIRGINIA WATER, England – For Shane Lowry it feels like Groundhog Day. The best kind of Groundhog Day.

Although he returned to work last month during the PGA Tour Playoffs, this week’s event at Wentworth is his first start on the European Tour since winning The Open.

“It's kind of new again where everybody is coming up and congratulating me,” he said with a smile on Tuesday at the BMW PGA Championship. “It's kind of sunk in now. To be honest, I'm quite eager to get on with my golf and I'm looking forward to trying to achieve different goals I have the rest of the year.”

The primary goal for the Irishman is to remain atop the Race to Dubai standings and, as he’s repeatedly explained, there is the Ryder Cup.

This week’s BMW PGA Championship is the first event that will count for European Ryder Cup qualifying.

“My main goal for the start of this year, I sit at Christmas with my coach and manager, what do I want to do, and I said, ‘Lads, the one thing I want to do is play on the next Ryder Cup team,’” Lowry said. “I was maybe about 80th in the world and I needed to get myself in the situation this week. We talked about when Wentworth comes around, first qualifying event, I need to be in all the big events going forward and give myself a chance to make the team and I've done that.”

Lowry was also awarded lifetime membership on the European Tour following his victory at Royal Portrush.

Serie A club Cagliari again escaped sanctions over racist behaviour by their fans, as the league's disciplinary tribunal decided on Tuesday not to take action over monkey noises aimed at Inter Milan's Belgian forward Romelu Lukaku.

The tribunal said in a statement on Tuesday that "in terms of dimension and real perception," the chants could not be considered discriminatory under the league's disciplinary code.

"The tribunal has decided not to apply sanctions to Cagliari," it said, referring to the incidents in the match on Sept 1.

Cagliari were, however, fined €5,000 ($5,530) after their fans threw plastic bottles onto the field in a 3-1 win at Parma on Sunday.

Against Inter, monkey noises could be heard from the Cagliari supporters as Lukaku stepped up to take a penalty which he converted to give his side a 2-1 win.

Lukaku said at the time that he had been a victim of racism and Cagliari called the fans' behaviour shameful.

The tribunal said in a statement that public security officials had informed it of "chants, animal noises and jeering" toward Lukaku. It added, however, that "these were not interpreted by the stewards nor federation delegates as discriminatory."

The tribunal used similar arguments last season when it declined to sanction Cagliari after racist insults were aimed at Moise Kean, who was playing for Juventus at the time.

In 2017, Ghanaian midfielder Sulley Muntari, playing for Pescara at the time, walked off the pitch, also complaining of racist abuse at Cagliari's ground. Serie A took no action against Cagliari, saying only around 10 fans were involved.

The tribunal made no mention of the racist insults which media reports said were aimed at AC Milan's Ivorian midfielder Franck Kessie during a 1-0 win at Verona on Sunday.

Verona said that their fans jeered the referee, but denied racism.

Italian football has been blighted by racism over the last decade. In one incident in 2013, AC Milan walked off the pitch during a friendly against a lower division side in protest at racist chanting.

In 2014, Carlo Tavecchio was elected head of the Italian Football federation (FIGC) weeks after making a comment about a fictitious African player he named Opti Poba "eating bananas".

The FIGC cleared him of wrongdoing, but he was barred from holding any position with world soccer's governing body FIFA for six months.

Exactly a year ago Wednesday, on Sept. 18, 2018, Ansu Fati couldn't get a game with kids his own age. It was the UEFA Youth League, Barcelona in their soon-to-be-demolished Mini Estadi, against PSV Eindhoven.

Today, he has become the youngest footballer to score for the senior team in the Camp Nou. He has somehow managed to vault over Joao Felix to become the "it kid" of world football, and it'll be not only a surprise but also a disappointment to romantics everywhere if he doesn't get game time against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League on Tuesday.

Football, not to mention Ansu, is truly a remarkable phenomenon, a dream maker in the way that boxing once was.

Three hundred sixty-four days ago, it was a 10-minute cameo for a precocious then-15-year-old. On Saturday, during the 5-2 defeat of Valencia, it was announced by the Spain national team coach that Ansu is being persuaded to commit to a future with La Roja, having lived in the country long enough to qualify as naturalised.

It's last weekend's goal and assist against Los Che that are on most people's lips. But I swear, you can take your pick of the standout moments since three weeks ago, when with 12 minutes left against Real Betis, Ernesto Valverde opted to ignore the claims of Samuel Umtiti, Ivan Rakitic and Arthur on the Barca bench and introduce Ansu to what is -- now -- an adoring world.

Please take note: Valverde didn't put Ansu on because there was nobody else deserving of the remaining time against an already crushed Betis. Nor because there was a striker crisis. Carles Perez had done extremely well, and Antoine Griezmann was strutting around his new, and tinsel-strewn, stage. Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- would have complained had 16-year-old Ansu been left to remember a special day when he was called up to the first-team squad but left with nothing but memories -- rather than minutes.

Valverde put him on because he's exceptional.

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Immediately, Ansu gave notice as to why Manchester United, at the head of a long queue, devoted significant man hours and were ready to invest huge financial resources in trying to prise the striker from Barcelona's academy last June. Quite frankly, there was a stage in the spring of 2019 when United would have been forgiven for thinking they were going to get their man. Excuse me: their boy.

Back to that in a second.

When he came on against Betis, Ansu played startlingly: young but patently mature; slight, as a 16-year old should be, but tough enough to hold off grown men as they jostled and pressed him; possessed with really sharp acceleration and lovely technical skills but smart enough to pass or trot back to cover when the rules of La Masia training said he should; also confident enough to produce a little bundle of dribbles, one-v-one jousts and one sizzling shot that nearly brought him a goal.

He didn't just know the rules. He knew what he was capable of, and he felt at home instantly. That's for the privileged of talent and mentality. It looked like football's version of Freaky Friday -- a 28-year-old in an adolescent's body.

What Ansu didn't look like was the last 16-year-old to make such a head-turning impact on world football when he burst into the first team: Wayne Rooney. Or even the physically much more powerful Kylian Mbappe.

I recently listened to Rooney admitting that if he hadn't spent his life, by the tender age of 16, around boxing -- training, understanding what constitutes real toughness, learning to hit and be hit -- then "I'd never have been able to cope with being promoted to Everton's first team so young." Rooney went on to do pretty well, if you consider 16 major trophies, including the Champions League, and becoming England's all-time leading scorer notable achievements.

But Ansu hasn't had that Golden Gloves life; no sweaty gym, no jumping rope, no gum-shields and sparring. He has had La Masia, which is a funny old part of the Ansu story -- such as it is so far.

I was at the ceremony in October 2011 when Barca's new Oriol Tort Masia was opened -- an €11 million investment where talented kids could be accommodated, schooled, fed, kept safe, developed and, generally, taught "the Barca way." Recently, against a background of even this new, advanced and very promising facility producing precisely zero footballers for the first team in the subsequent eight years, a very long, exhaustively detailed and pretty critical report was published in the Catalan media. The reliable Xavi Torres, in the newspaper ARA, painted a pretty desolate picture: space meant for talented sports kids converted into offices; emotional well-being training courses flopping; elite kids, with home bases too far away to travel to Barcelona training, left in hotels because La Masia's rooms (accommodations for just more than 40 footballers instead of the planned 83 when the facility opened) were often occupied by young players who'd been loaned out to lower-grade local teams or who were substitute material in the Barcelona youth system. Not elite.

Anyway, you get the picture.

However, it was the very existence of La Masia -- a residence that would be safe, paid for and educational and that bore the world-famous stamp of the Barca academy -- that persuaded Ansu's dad, when the family were ready to leave their original Spanish home of Sevilla, to move to the Camp Nou and not the Santiago Bernabeu.

"Madrid offered more money. They offered a house for the family, everything, but when I went to Valdebebas, they didn't have a residence for their young players, and Barcelona did. So when Albert Puig [now an assistant at New York City FC] persuaded me that they had a better project we chose Barca," Ansu's father, Bori, told Cope Radio.

Real Madrid offered higher rewards, but it was the availability of a well-renowned residence that won the day for the Fati family. When that facility opened, Pep Guardiola said, "If there's one thing that can never stop at Barca, it's the Cantera [youth system]." His words echo from then to now as the club discovers that, potentially, it has a new Cantera super talent on its hands.

Please go back and watch Ansu's moments in the first team, if you will. He makes decisions in exactly the same way as people such as Andres Iniesta, Xavi, Pedro, Sergio Busquets, Sergi Roberto, Cesc Fabregas and Lionel Messi were taught to in years gone by. Also, go check the moment in training while both Messi and Luis Suarez are injured when Ansu scores with a midair, back-heel volley. Valverde is watching, and you can almost hear his jaw drop and his brain think: "I'm the luckiest coach in the universe. This kid's getting more game time against Osasuna!"

Whatever has gone awry in the La Masia system, residence and football education, enough has gone right with Ansu's development that what we are witnessing is not simply an astonishing, all-time freak of footballing nature. So-called Barca DNA has been drilled into him.

I wonder, in light of what we are seeing from this ambidextrous, confident, centre-of-attention kid -- who, it would seem, is being firmly tucked under the arm of the Messi family when it comes to evolving his career -- what is going through the minds of people such as Xavi Simons, Eric Garcia and Take Kubo.

Let's start with the wonderful Japanese talent. Their ages differ slightly, but he and Ansu formed an absolutely jaw-dropping attack partnership for Barcelona's youth teams before the FIFA ban meant Kubo was repatriated. Eventually, though some believe Barcelona's now-sacked general manager Pep Segura could have worked harder to re-sign Kubo, the bewitching forward chose to move to Real Madrid when reentering Spanish football. He's now on loan at Mallorca and having to work hard to get game time.

Garcia, too, played some matches with the emerging Ansu, who's nearly three years his junior (Garcia will be 20 in January). But when faced with temptation from Manchester City, Garcia chose in January 2018 to move to the Etihad Campus. Admittedly, now that Aymeric Laporte will miss the next six months with a knee injury, the Catalan might get more opportunities, but he has just three senior appearances for Guardiola's first team -- the same number as Ansu has for Barcelona.

Then there's Simons. A tad younger than the striker who now has two goals and an assist in the whirlwind time since his debut three weeks ago, the Dutch kid with the Sideshow Bob hair, the massive social media profile and the super-agent Mino Raiola must be wondering: "Should I really have bust out of Barca and headed for Paris Saint-Germain if Ansu is already getting this kind of opportunity?"

Perhaps all three of these young bucks will thrive and Ansu will find the road forward rocky. You never know. But it's not hype to state that, currently, we are watching an outright phenomenon.

There are no guarantees that he will enjoy 16 or 17 years of the quality and achievement that whiz kid forebears of his type -- Rooney, Messi, Raul, Ronaldo or even the ascendant Mbappe -- have racked up. However, the safer bet -- taking into account who this kid is, how he plays, what he's been taught, the family behind him and the influence of wise heads such as Messi, Busquets and Gerard Pique -- is that he probably will.

And that's not hype. That's appreciation of someone who has already made history. Football, the greatest sport ever invented, will just keep on doing this to us. Thank heavens.