LEICESTERSHIRE, England – Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea completed a World Superbike weekend sweep for the first time this season with a dominant Sunday rout at Donington Park.

With wins in both the Superpole and full-distance events, Rea’s World Superbike total stands at 78 leaving the British round of the championship.

There was action right from the start, with Rea coming out on top after another tough scrap with Toprak Razgatlioglu.

Rea grabbed the holeshot from the pole, but was challenged on lap three when Razgatlioglu took the lead at the circuit where he took his first WorldSBK career podium.

With a strong out-braking maneuver at the Melbourne Loop, Razgatlioglu was able to steal the advantage. However, two laps later, Rea took the lead back and one lap further on, Haslam momentarily got ahead of the Turk at the Foggy Esses.

Back at the Melbourne Loop, Razgatlioglu recovered and the 22-year-old retook second.

Razgatlioglu was able to retake the lead from Rea, with the two riders dancing side-by-side around the Donington Park circuit. Another late-braking move at the Melbourne Loop saw him retake the lead and then put the hammer down.

Razgatlioglu and Rea broke clear of the fading Haslam in third place, while Alvaro Bautista was all over the rear-end of Haslam for the position after a crash on Saturday.

With 12 to go, a rare error at the Foggy Esses from Razgatlioglu allowed Rea to cut through and take the lead back, a lead he wouldn’t relinquish again.

In the closing stages, there were two battles, one for first and second between Rea and Razgatlioglu, and one for third place between Bautista, Alex Lowes, Haslam and Loris Baz. Lowes eventually got ahead of Haslam with just three laps to go.

Going into the final lap, half-a-second split the leading two, while Bautista had a small buffer for a safe third place.

At the finish, it was Rea completing a hat trick over Razgatlioglu, with Bautista completing the podium. Lowes and Haslam finished fourth and fifth, respectively.

HOHENSTEIN-ERNSTTHAL, Germany – Marc Marquez completed a decade of dominance on Sunday at the Sachsenring with his 10th-straight victory at the German circuit.

Marquez’s dominant win in the German MotoGP Grand Prix was his 49th premier class triumph, fifth of the season and seventh in a row at the Sachsenring in MotoGP action.

The German won at the Sachsenring in the 125cc class in 2010 before claiming back-to-back Moto2 wins there in 2011 and 2012. He’s won every MotoGP race there since 2013.

Marquez beat Yamaha’s Maverick Viñales and journeyman Cal Crutchlow at the front of the field, but his victory wasn’t as easy as it might have seemed from the box score.

Marquez was sluggish off the line and it looked like he would get swallowed up heading into turn one, but the No. 93 was last among the late brakers and dove back into the lead as a result.

Fabio Quartararo slipped back from second to sixth at the start aboard his Yamaha as Viñales, Jack Miller, Alex Rins and Crutchlow all got past the Frenchman.

However, Quartararo’s race ended at turn three. The rookie went to get back past Ducati Team’s Danilo Petrucci on lap two, but the front of his Yamaha washed away from him as the 20-year-old crashed out of a race for the first time this season.

At the forefront of the MotoGP freight train, Marquez conducted the pace ahead of Viñales, with Crutchlow and Rins demoting Miller down to fifth as the top four started to edge clear of the rest of the field.

A 1:21.228 – a new lap record – on lap five saw Marquez’s lead creep up to just under a second over Rins, with the latter also stretching his advantage over Viñales and Crutchlow to the same distance.

Lap 10 saw Marquez go four tenths of a second faster than Rins as the gap rose above the two-second barrier. From then on, there was no stopping the nine-time Sachsenring winner from filling both hands with victories in the end.

“It was a perfect strategy, but I didn’t have a perfect start, as I ran a little deep at turn one,” noted Marquez. “After that, my plan was two slow laps to warm the front tire well and then push, and it’s exactly what I did. Step by step, I opened the gap and followed the plan as I needed to. Once the gap was at three seconds, I stayed there and saved the tire and enjoyed riding.

“It’s a great feeling to win here again and to enter the summer break in this way,” Marquez added. “I want to say thank you to the Repsol Honda Team for their work in this race and the first half of the season.”

Viñales crossed the line second for his second-straight podium of the season, with Crutchlow equaling his best result of the year in third, his first podium since the Qatar GP after battling a torn anterior cruciate ligament and a small fracture to the top of his tibia.

Petrucci finished fourth and Andrea Dovizioso climbed from 13th to complete the top five.

Miller was sixth ahead of Joan Mir, Valentino Rossi, Franco Morbidelli and Stefan Bradl, who was subbing for the injured Jorge Lorenzo.

HARRISBURG, N.C. — The changes NASCAR made to its Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule for next season are only an appetizer, as we anxiously await the main course.

The sanctioning body’s contracts with its race tracks expire following the 2020 season and that’s when fans can expect the Cup Series schedule, which has remained basically stagnant for two decades, to undergo a major reconstruction.

Rumors of what’s in store for the 2021 season are hotter than the July weather as even industry insiders speculate on what NASCAR will do in an effort to increase attendance and improve TV ratings.

There’s talk about the season possibly ending in late September or early October. Will we see multiple doubleheader weekends with races on both Saturday and Sunday? Will there be more short-short track events? Does Iowa Speedway finally get a Cup Series date? How about mid-week races?

Everyone expects the schedule to be scaled back, with most putting the number of races for the 2021 season between 24 and 28.

Does Indianapolis Motor Speedway continue the tradition of the Brickyard 400 or does that race fade into the history books? Will there still be an All-Star Race? What happens to the Shootout at Daytona? Will the playoffs continue to be comprised of 10 races or is that number also reduced?

At this point, there are more questions than answers, but one thing is certain: NASCAR has to get this right, because the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series schedule will chart the course for the future of major-league stock car racing.

If the schedule properly addresses the issue of supply and demand and provides a fresh mix of tracks that enhances the on-track product, the sport could very well experience a rebound that could last for decades.

If the schedule changes are only minor tweaks and fail to properly address the underlying issues that have been eroding the sport’s popularity, we should expect a continuation of the status quo with sub-par attendance and mediocre TV ratings.

— On Wednesday morning prior to the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600, we discovered a drastic difference in the way the two marquee motorsports events were being covered by the major newspapers in the host cities.

A review of the landing page for the Indianapolis Star’s website revealed 13 links to stories, photos and information related to the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500.

The headlines ranged from “James Dean, the Indy 500 driver who could’ve been” and “How to ride a scooter to the Indy 500” to “‘Winning’ starred Paul Newman and a cast of Hoosiers” and “The best Indy 500 bars and restaurants.”

The Indianapolis Star has long set the standard with its coverage of The Greatest Spectacle in Racing and the amount of content generated for its website this year tells us the current editors continue to recognize the importance of covering this event from multiple angles.

Meanwhile, a similar visit to the home page of The Charlotte Observer’s website revealed only one link to anything having to do with the 60th running of the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

It was a feature story headlined: “Daniel Hemric idolized Dale Earnhardt as a kid. Now he wants to drive like him.”

For more than five decades, The Charlotte Observer was a leading source of NASCAR news and information as the stock car industry planted roots and grew in the Charlotte region.

Now, it appears as if those making the editorial decisions for the Queen City’s primary news outlet have little — if any interest — in the sport. What a shame.

— We still vividly remember the focus and intensity that consumed sprint car racing’s brightest stars as they prepared to battle for $50,000 during the inaugural Kings Royal at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway on July 28, 1984.

With $175,000 awaiting the winner of this year’s edition of the Kings Royal, look for the intensity level to far exceed that seen 35 years ago as Eldora Speedway’s premier open-wheel event once again offers sprint car racing’s richest first-place prize.

This is part two of a special Q&A with veteran USAC star Dave Darland, which appeared in the July issue of Sprint Car & Midget Magazine. The full version can be viewed at www.sprintcarandmidget.com and requires either a print subscription to Sprint Car & Midget Magazine or online subscription to www.sprintcarandmidget.com to read.

SC&M: Well, the follow-up of that question would be what your thoughts are that NASCAR turned into a series where teams focused so much on looking for 17- or 18-year-old kids and turning their backs on older drivers? As you said, you could still win midget races, but you likely could have also adapted to a stock car or Indy car at that age and won races as well. Not everyone that’s a fan of NASCAR is 18, and I’m sure a lot of racing fans would have liked to have seen what you could have done in NASCAR.

DARLAND: Well, I understand it, but it seemed to switch right at the wrong time for me. When I was 17 or 20 years old, they wanted the older, more experienced guys, guys with experience that took care of things. But then it switched around to where when I was an experienced 30-year-old then they wanted the kids, the young talent. Maybe some of them had a little backing to help the team too, so I was just on the opposite side of the list of qualifications.

My personality…I’m a sprint car driver. That’s what I like to do; it’s what I was cut out to do. That’s what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life, it looks like. So, I certainly enjoy driving sprint cars. I’m not sure whether I would have been the right mold or the right guy to be a NASCAR or Indy car driver. It would have been fun, I think. It would have been a good experience to be able to go on to some sort of bigger series or bigger and better things maybe, but I got an opportunity to drive both of those cars at some point, but I don’t know, I’m a sprint car driver and that’s what I’m gonna be.

SC&M: But, being a lifelong Indiana open-wheel racer, driving the Indy 500 had to have been on your bucket list.

DARLAND: Yeah, I certainly would have liked to have done the Indy 500 or, like some of the guys did, just do a little short spurt of something like that. I would have liked to have drove the Indy 500 a time or two, or 10 maybe, but as far as being a fulltime Indy car driver, I had no desire to want to try to do that. To drive some races, though, I certainly would have enjoyed.

Read the full Sprint Car & Midget Magazine exclusive story by clicking here.

LYON, France -- With her penalty kick in the 61st minute to give the U.S. its first goal in its 2-0 victory over the Netherlands in Sunday's Women's World Cup final, forward Megan Rapinoe became only the second American woman to win the coveted Golden Boot award for the tournament's top scorer.

Rapinoe finished tied with U.S. forward Alex Morgan at the top of the standings with six goals and three assists apiece, but Rapinoe won the third tiebreaker, having played fewer minutes in the tournament than Morgan, who was awarded the Silver Boot.

• Key takeaways: Rapinoe, Lavelle lead USWNT past Netherlands

• USWNT a winner, but rest of world is catching up

• From Tom Brady to the Obamas, the world reacts to USWNT's win

Before Rapinoe, Michelle Akers, in 1999, was the lone American to win the Golden Boot.

Netherlands goalkeeper Sari Van Veenendaal was awarded the Golden Glove award for the tournament's top goalkeeper, and the Gold, Silver and Bronze Balls for the top three players in the World Cup went to Rapinoe, Lucy Bronze of England and Rose Lavelle, who scored the second goal for the Americans -- her third tally in six games.

Two American women had previously won the Golden Ball: Carin Jennings in 1991 and Carli Lloyd in 2015, who also won Goal of the Tournament.

American goalkeeper Hope Solo twice won the Golden Glove, in 2011 and 2015. Briana Scurry shared the award with Gao Hung of China in 1999.

The United States remains on top of the world.

Thanks to Megan Rapinoe and Rose Lavelle, the U.S. women's national team beat the Netherlands 2-0 on Sunday to repeat as Women's World Cup champions.

It's the fourth championship for the U.S., which also won in 1991, 1999 and 2015. Only in this one, the Americans broke the record for most goals in a single Women's World Cup with 26.

Rapinoe scored on a penalty kick in the 61st minute, thanks in part to video assistant referee technology, while Lavelle's blast past Netherlands goalkeeper Sari van Veenendaal, who stood on her head with four first-half saves, doubled the U.S. lead.

People around the world gave the U.S. team the props it deserved:

Let's Go! ???

— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) July 7, 2019

Woo-hoo! Congratulations to the @USWNT on their World Cup win. Your persistence on and off the field inspires girls and women everywhere to dream big, fight hard, and win. #FIFAWWC #OneNationOneTeam

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) July 7, 2019

YES YES YES YES!

To our 2019 World Cup Champion @USWNT: you have inspired the entire country - and New York City knows how to celebrate champions. We'll see you Wednesday at 9:30 AM for the Ticker Tape Parade down the Canyon of Heroes. #OneNationOneTeam pic.twitter.com/bwCEoJYg3r

— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) July 7, 2019

Yes! Fourth star. Back to back. Congrats to the record breakers on the @USWNT, an incredible team that's always pushing themselves-and the rest of us-to be even better. Love this team. #OneNationOneTeam

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 7, 2019

The US women's soccer team are the world champions! I'm so happy. These women are the best of what our country represents. You're welcome on my show any time. My World Cup runneth over. @USWNT #USA #FIFAWWC

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) July 7, 2019

Congrats team USA! Billie says it best here! So happy for each one of you and so proud. ❤️ @USWNT https://t.co/WK2Yi2z8F4

— Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) July 7, 2019

Congratulations to the @USWNT
Worthy winners in the end #FIFAWWC
Can't wait for the next encounter already ??

— Lucy Bronze (@LucyBronze) July 7, 2019

Rose LaVelle is my favorite soccer player in the world ??⚽️??⚽️??⚽️??⚽️??⚽️??⚽️??⚽️??⚽️??⚽️??⚽️??

— Landon Donovan (@landondonovan) July 7, 2019

Incredibly inspiring World Cup by our @USWNT ?????????? so fun to watch ????????!!!! #FIFAWomensWorldCup #legacy #leadersonandoffthepitch #EqualPay

— Aaron Rodgers (@AaronRodgers12) July 7, 2019

Congratulations to 2019 Women's World Cup Champions @TeamUSA! ⚽️??

— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) July 7, 2019

USA! ?? USA! ??

Congratulations and thank you @USWNT for your excellence, tenacity, and champion's spirit.

You did it. And we are ALL so proud! ✨ https://t.co/GG3Xq1tXf3

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 7, 2019

World champs-again!! To the amazing women of the #USWNT: Thank you for playing like girls. ?? pic.twitter.com/GWlLR0nwcX

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 7, 2019

US Women's soccer soooooo bad ass!!! Congrats ??????????????

— Kevin Love (@kevinlove) July 7, 2019

USA!!! World Champions!! @USWNT are so amazing!!

— Mia Hamm (@MiaHamm) July 7, 2019

WE STAN MEGAN RAPINOE ??

— Major League Soccer (@MLS) July 7, 2019

RAN. IT. BACK. ? pic.twitter.com/0UkVfZuxcw

— ESPN (@espn) July 7, 2019

It's 2-0! @roselavelle ?#USAvNED | #FIFAWWC pic.twitter.com/c5teQDCmKT

— NWSL (@NWSL) July 7, 2019

LYON, France -- It was less than a decade ago that some members of the French women's national team posed nude for a German publication, in what was essentially a protest on the eve of a Women's World Cup. What would it take, the captions asked, to get fans back home to watch them play a sport that is otherwise a national obsession?

When France and the United States played an epic World Cup quarterfinal in front of more than 45,000 in Paris, 51 percent of the televisions in use in the host country were tuned to the game.

In England, where the sport's domestic governing body outlawed the women's game until 1971, that team's semifinal against the U.S. was the country's most-watched sporting event since the men played in a World Cup semifinal a year ago.

After the Netherlands beat Sweden in the other semifinal, De Telegraaf, the nation's largest newspaper, turned its entire front page over to the team reaching its first World Cup final -- just as the paper did two years ago when the Dutch women won their first European championship.

• Key takeaways: Rapinoe, Lavelle lead USWNT past Netherlands

• Rapinoe second American to win Golden Boot

• From Tom Brady to the Obamas, the world reacts to USWNT's win

Welcome to the new normal.

The United States is again on top of the world. The team everyone wanted to beat -- and the team many invented reasons to hate -- extended its own record with a fourth World Cup title and won back-to-back World Cups for the first time. On European soil, five of the best European teams the continent had to offer couldn't stop it. Sunday made clear that the U.S. owned 2019.

Yet the reality for 2023 and beyond was already clear: Europe no longer follows our lead. And even as the U.S. won this title Sunday with a 2-0 victory against the Netherlands, it watched a monthlong preview of a more complicated future.

Or as U.S. coach Jill Ellis said before a game against Spain in the round of 16, it was only "a matter of time" until this sleeping giant of a continent awoke to the women's game.

With that in mind, picture where we are after Sunday's win as a location on Google Maps. Zoom in and zoom out to study it from three different perspectives.

The street view is 90 minutes of soccer. From that vantage point, the U.S. beat the Netherlands because they were too deep and relentless as the game wore on in the second half.

Pull back the focus slightly more to a neighborhood view and Sunday is the final part of a World Cup cycle that encompasses at least the three years since the last Olympics and arguably all four years since winning the World Cup in 2015. Ellis will always have her detractors, but they will have to work to turn this into something other than vindication. She won with a team she didn't have much say in shaping in 2015. She won with a team of her own making in 2019.

But zooming out to the final and widest perspective, the global view, reveals what ought to keep Ellis and everyone else associated with American soccer awake at night.

The U.S. has the deepest and most talented roster in the world. Its confidence and belief, collectively and individually, is unmatched. Its fitness is unmatched. It is the best in the world at the moment. But only at the moment because so many European teams -- France, England and the Netherlands, certainly, but also Italy and Spain -- have come such a long way in such a short time.

"You now have, let's say the right of women to play -- you know, it wasn't there 20 years ago," Ellis said of the evolving European dynamic before the U.S. played its first knockout game. "Now you have that. To me, it's a natural progression in terms of the development in these countries. Because they eat, sleep and breathe soccer."

Imagine what will happen if Europe maintains its rate of progression. The risk for the 2023 World Cup, or even next year's Olympics, is that staying on top is partially out of American hands.

"It's no secret we have to get better on the ball," Rapinoe said of the coming European wave after a win against France in which the U.S. had barely 40 percent of possession. "Playing better with it, better offensively, better in our possession and our passing. They were clearly much better than us in that tonight. So the level is just growing, it seems like every game.

"We have, absolutely, our work cut out for us."

This wasn't a monthlong phenomenon. The U.S. finished on the podium in just one of four Under-20 World Cups so far this decade. It didn't finish among the top three in any of four Under-17 World Cups. Along with Japan, European teams from France, Germany and Spain dominated those events, with England and Italy in the top three as often as the Americans.

For U.S. defender Ali Krieger, the lightbulb moment came while playing professionally in Germany more than a decade ago. Not far removed from playing college soccer at Penn State, she looked up during a Champions League knockout-round game and saw a 16-year-old teammate enter as a substitute. That's a far cry from a high school game.

"That's the different mentality," Krieger said recently. "They're thrown into their professional system so early, and that's why they develop these really good players at a young age. It's just a different model. Obviously, I encourage everyone to go to [college] and have that experience. But if you want to be a top player in our country, you have to understand the basic principles of the game. And you have to understand them at a young age and really grow with the game because the game constantly changes."

At the time she was in Europe, it was more difficult to find that kind of professional setting outside of Germany and Sweden. That's no longer the case. Winner of the Champions League in each of the past four seasons, Lyon leads the way. But viable leagues exist in England, France and Spain, countries not so long ago resistant to the women's game. Manchester United added a women's team last season. Real Madrid will field one beginning in 2020.

Even FIFA refereeing czar Pierluigi Collina noted recently that after so many years of cultural neglect, his native Italy set television records as its national team advanced to the quarterfinals. The same Italy where Juventus just won its second domestic title in its second year as a team.

France had been the flag-bearer for this new wave of European success, which only added to the pain of its quarterfinal loss. After reaching a World Cup semifinal for a second consecutive time, England is in the midst of turning domestic investment into international glory. The Dutch never made a World Cup before 2015. They came within a game of a world title.

But almost as telling of the U.S. predicament was the first knockout game, when a Spanish team that qualified for its first World Cup in 2015 went toe to toe with the Americans.

Now a member of Reign FC in the NWSL who played collegiately at the University of Alabama for two seasons, Celia Jimenez Delgado was part of that Spanish team and grew up in the same world Krieger described. She wasn't a paid professional, but she played for Sevilla in Spain's top division at 16. She lived hours from her family, her roommate a goalkeeper in her 30s, all while coming through a youth national system for which those youth titles are a byproduct of preparing players for the senior level, rather than a goal unto themselves.

"Spain has a really specific soccer philosophy, or style of play, and I think that game has been developing for the past 10 years," Jimenez Delgado said. "The investment from the federation and the institutions that support the sport, they're providing more money and more resources.

"At the end of the day, if you as an athlete take care of every variable you can control, but you're not provided with a platform or the materials or the coaching staff to keep growing as an athlete, it's harder to improve."

None of which is to say that the European game is without its own issues of sustainability and support, despite the influx of brand names behind teams. But no matter what happened Sunday in Lyon and no matter who coached the team or how that person constructed it over the past three years, that is the world the U.S. now inhabits. Social progress on this order rarely regresses. Girls who grow up in Madrid, Manchester and Milan will continue to play the game.

That happened in the blink of an eye.

Netherlands defender Merel van Dongen, 26, was the only player on the field Sunday who went to an SEC school. She was 19 years old when she left home to play on scholarship for the University of Alabama. As a teenage player at home, she recalled working multiple shifts at a restaurant during the day, then training for two hours after work.

"Then I went to Alabama, where they had a budget for women's football that was insane," van Dongen said before the final. "The only thing I had to do was train and play, and they did everything for me. OK, I had to make good grades in school. But that was the difference, it was so professional. They [taught] me how to take care of my body. I thought I knew what training hard was until I went to the University of Alabama.

"One of the reasons I'm here is what I learned in the United States."

Empires rarely vanish overnight. Rome produced emperors and influenced the world long after it was sacked by the Goths. And the U.S. still has massive advantages in women's soccer.

Even amid decreasing youth participation in the U.S., no European rival will ever be able to match the overall talent pool in a nation of more than 300 million people. And as Jimenez Delgado was quick to point out from her time at Alabama, Title IX creates a legally mandated equality of opportunity that isn't the case in much of Europe. She came to the U.S. precisely because it is possible to mix playing soccer and studying aerospace engineering in college.

But there are options now. The year after van Dongen left Alabama, the Netherlands qualified for its first World Cup. Two years after that it won the Euros at home. Everything changed.

"If you're 18, 19, you don't have to work seven hours a day to make your money," van Dongen said. "Absolutely not. You get a contract and you work and you train and you become a professional. It even starts from younger ages -- Ajax, for example, they have a youth academy. A lot of the teams have youth academies now, something that I always wanted but couldn't do.

"That's also something I take from the United States, is that they have such a history and they have been building young players. And we're doing that now as the Netherlands."

So, yes, the demise of U.S. women's soccer would be greatly exaggerated. Like Brazil in men's soccer, the U.S. will continue to produce so much talent that choosing a national team roster remains a riveting storyline second in popularity only to second-guessing coaches. The U.S. will remain among the favorites in every tournament. Also like Brazil, it won't win most of them -- which the U.S. did in winning eight of the 14 major titles available to it between 1991 and 2019.

But when it comes to identifying, developing and training the very best players among us, it also wouldn't hurt to follow someone else's lead for a change. Despite a four-month college season and a pay-to-play/win-at-all costs youth culture, the U.S. has succeeded in spite of these things in the past.

It succeeded in spite of those things in 2019. It won't forever. It won't, at least to the extent it has, for much longer.

"It was a matter of time," Jimenez Delgado said in regard to Spanish success at the youth level translating to senior success. "For the results to start showing."

This U.S. team is the best in the world. The past month showed that time was up on the American game leading the way.