GLENDORA, Calif. – NHRA officials released the 2020 schedule for the Pro Stock category of the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series on Monday afternoon.

Pro Stock teams will compete at 18 of the 24 events on the series.

Throughout the year, NHRA will celebrate the 50th anniversary of this exciting and competitive class.

Pro Stock returns to several venues in 2020, including the Mopar Express Lane NHRA SpringNationals in Houston; the NHRA Southern Nationals in Atlanta; and the Menards NHRA Heartland Nationals in Topeka, Kan.

Additionally, fans in Bristol, Tenn. and Epping, N.H. will see Pro Stock in action at the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals and the NHRA New England Nationals.

Also of note, Pro Stock will compete in five events in the NHRA Mello Yello Countdown to the Championship. Points will be adjusted accordingly.

NHRA’s two nitro categories – Funny Car and Top Fuel – will participate at all 24 national events in the 2020 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series.

2020 NHRA Pro Stock Schedule

NHRA Mello Yello Series Pro Stock Regular Season

Feb. 6-9 – Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals, Pomona, Calif.
Feb. 21-23 – Magic Dry Organic Absorbent NHRA Arizona Nationals, Phoenix
March 12-15 – AMALIE Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals, Gainesville, Fla.
April 3-5 – DENSO Spark Plugs NHRA Four-Wide Nationals, Las Vegas
April 17-19 – Mopar Express Lane NHRA SpringNationals, Houston
May 15-17 – NHRA Southern Nationals, Atlanta
June 12-14 – Menards NHRA Heartland Nationals, Topeka, Kan.
June 19-21 – NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals, Bristol, Tenn.
June 25-28 – Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals, Norwalk, Ohio
July 24-26 – NHRA Sonoma Nationals, Sonoma, Calif.
July 31-Aug.2 – Magic Dry Organic Absorbent NHRA Northwest Nationals, Seattle
Aug. 21-23 – NHRA New England Nationals, Epping, N.H.
Sept. 2-7 – NHRA U.S. Nationals, Indianapolis

NHRA Mello Yello Countdown To The Championship

Sept. 17-20 – Mopar Express Lane NHRA Nationals, Reading, Pa.
Sept. 25-27 – NHRA Carolina Nationals, Charlotte
Oct. 15-18 – AAA Texas NHRA FallNationals, Dallas
Oct. 29-Nov. 1 – Dodge NHRA Nationals, Las Vegas
Nov. 12-15 – Auto Club NHRA Finals, Pomona, Calif.

TOLEDO, Ohio – Herr Foods, Track Enterprises and the Automobile Racing Club of America have announced that Herr’s will sponsor the ARCA Menards Series visit to Lucas Oil Raceway.

The Herr’s Potato Chips 200 is scheduled for Saturday night, Oct. 5 at 8:00 p.m. CT.

ARCA practice and General Tire Pole Qualifying will precede the 200-lap feature event, which is scheduled for live broadcast coverage on MAVTV.

There will also be a compete Thunder Roadsters program on the night’s racing card.

“We continue to benefit from the exposure ARCA provides us as we grow the Herr’s brand nationwide,” said Bob Clark, VP of Marketing at Herr Foods, Inc.

The Herr’s 200 will be the championship event for the Sioux Chief Short Track Challenge, ARCA’s championship within a championship contested at tracks one mile in length or less.

After nine of eleven events, Michael Self leads Bret Holmes by 140 points, with only races at Indiana’s Salem Speedway and the Herr’s Potato Chips 200 at Lucas Oil Raceway yet to be contested.

The Lucas Oil event will also be the second-to-last race of the season for the ARCA Menards Series, with the season finale set for Oct. 18 at Kansas Speedway.

INDIANAPOLIS – As Kevin Harvick was celebrating his second Big Machine Vodka 400 victory Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway at the famed Yard of Bricks, team owner Tony Stewart stood under the flagstand taking in the moment.

Stewart knows the feeling of winning at the Brickyard as a driver in 2005 and 2007. Sunday’s win was also his second as a team owner, with Ryan Newman earning him his first triumph as a team owner in 2013.

Stewart is able to compare the unique feeling to winning it as a driver and as an owner.

“It is close because where it’s an individual accomplishment as a driver, it’s an accomplishment for your driver and 350 people who bust their ass to make these cars go,” Stewart told SPEED SPORT Sunday night. “Your focus goes from a personal goal to a team goal.”

Stewart has three of his four drivers in the NASCAR playoffs including Harvick, Aric Almirola and Clint Bowyer, who officially clinched his place with a fifth-place finish in Sunday’s final race of NASCAR’s regular season.

The only driver who didn’t make it in from Stewart-Haas Racing was Mexico’s Daniel Suarez, who brushed the wall early in the race and finished 11th.

“It’s hard to do,” Stewart said. “You look at all the good cars and good teams out here, to think you would get 25 percent of the championship field, that’s hard to do. It’s a big deal.”

Stewart was proud of Suarez effort to battle back, however.

“That’s one thing about Daniel; it’s never a lack of effort,” Stewart said. “He got behind today, and it didn’t work out as planned, but you can point to 10 days that we could have done something different and got those 10 points.

“It always comes down to this last race and take care of the points that you need.”

Stewart said his emotions ranged from trying to get Harvick to win the race to getting both Bowyer and Suarez into the NASCAR Playoffs.

“We hoped for good results for all three of them,” Stewart said. “We just didn’t get the result for all four of them. He just came up four points short.

“I told him if he didn’t make this 16, there is still a lot to do for the rest of the season and win some races.”

Stewart expects another great playoff for NASCAR, with lots of pressure and intensity over the next two and a half months.

“It literally comes down to that last restart in the last race at Homestead,” Stewart said.

He won five of 10 races in 2011 to win his third NASCAR Cup Series title during the playoffs. He is the only driver to win Cup titles under three different formats, including the old full-season points system in 2002.

The driver from Columbus, Ind., remains a Hoosier Hero at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“The cool part is where we lined up today, A.J. Foyt’s brick was right in front of me,” Stewart revealed. “That was pretty cool to me.”

MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Former Penske Racing South President Don Miller and Dan Luginbuhl, one of the pioneers of motorsports marketing and public relations, have been inducted into the Team Penske Hall of Fame.

The duo were honored Monday morning in a special ceremony at the team’s Mooresville, N.C., facility.

Miller met team owner Roger Penske in the early 1970s during his time as a sales manager for National Engines and Parts, Co. in St. Louis. Miller joined Penske Racing in 1972, working on the team’s stock car and IndyCar programs. A former racer himself, Miller brought a wide range of experience to the team and he worked in many capacities on his way to becoming Vice President of Penske Products.

Miller was instrumental in bringing Penske Racing back into full-time NASCAR competition in 1991 with driver and fellow Team Penske Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace. Miller then became President of Penske Racing South, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the team’s stock car program. Under Miller’s leadership, Penske stock car teams produced a total of 69 victories in NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series and ARCA competition until his retirement in 2007. The Chicago native was also an innovator in the sport, helping to design and develop several car safety advancements in NASCAR while leading the Penske team.

“When I first started at Team Penske there were 29 of us,” said Miller. “The population has grown significantly since then, but there is no place I’d rather be. I always tried to do the very best, not only for this team, but for Mr. Penske. When you are a member of this team, he will always have your back. I really appreciate this award. I am honored to be a part of this organization and the Team Penske Hall of Fame.”

When Luginbuhl joined Penske Racing in 1969, he helped chart the course for the team’s innovative and successful partnership model. He also helped pioneer modern motorsports public relations and marketing.  Early in his tenure with Penske Racing, Luginbuhl cultivated the relationship with key team sponsor Sunoco, before he helped foster partnerships with some of the other top brands in motorsports including Pennzoil, Marlboro, Miller, Goodyear, Mobil, Mercedes-Benz and many other Fortune 500 companies.

Under his guiding hand, Team Penske became the industry leader in American motorsports media relations, sponsorship and hospitality – a standard that continues today. During his 35-year career with Team Penske, Luginbuhl distinguished himself in numerous roles within the organization as he helped define and refine the Penske brand. He served as Vice President of Communications when he retired in 2002 and he continues to be a valued resource for Team Penske.

“I am very honored to receive this special honor. And I am humbled to be in the company of some amazing people,” said Luginbuhl. “It’s been my privilege to work with many a great people over the years.  We have come a long way since 1969 and our team of 10 working at the four-bay truck garage in Pennsylvania. But the mission today is still the same – work together, get the job done, keep building the Penske brand worldwide and of course, ‘effort equals results.’”

Inductions into the Team Penske Hall of Fame occur annually. Each year, two inductees are chosen from current and former drivers, employees and partners that have made a significant impact on the team and its history. The Hall of Fame class members are honored both at an event and within the walls of the Team Penske facility in Mooresville, N.C.

Miller and Luginbuhl join past Team Penske Hall of Fame inductees including: Roger Penske (2016), Mark Donohue (2016), Rick Mears (2017), Karl Kainhofer (2017), Rusty Wallace (2018) and Walter Czarnecki (2018).

Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski has signed a three-year, $15 million contract, general manager Jarmo Kekalainen announced Monday.

"Zach Werenski is one of the best young defensemen in the National Hockey League and we couldn't be happier that he will continue to be a foundational player for the Columbus Blue Jackets," Kekalainen said in a statement. "He is a gifted offensive player that has continued to improve in all facets of the game and will be an elite player for many years."

Werenski, 22, had 44 points in 82 games last season for Columbus, averaging a career high 22:54 per game. In three seasons, the Michigan native has blossomed into one of the NHL's best young defensemen, with 128 points in 237 games and solid underlying analytics.

He was part of a restricted-free-agent crop this summer that led to several negotiation stalemates around the league, as teams waited on other RFAs to sign their deals and set the market. Sources told ESPN last month that Werenski was waiting on Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy and Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov, both restricted free agents. Instead, he's the one who sets the market.

The $5 million AAV on this contract gives Werenski only the sixth-highest cap hit on the Blue Jackets and puts him at No. 51 overall for active NHL defensemen. It's a bridge contract, meant to bring Werenski closer to unrestricted free agency and the riches that it brings. But when it ends in 2022, Werenski will still have one more year of restricted-free-agent status. His salary in the final year of his deal rises to $7 million, establishing a new floor for his next contract.

For the Blue Jackets, the contract means that their top two defensemen have contracts that expire at the same time. Seth Jones, who has 228 points in 468 career games and has been Werenski's frequent partner on the blue line, is an unrestricted free agent in 2022. But getting Werenski to sign at this salary-cap hit, and with an arbitration-eligible year left before unrestricted free agency, is being seen as a coup around the NHL -- even if the agents for the league's remaining young RFA defensemen might be cringing at the team-friendly financials.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- New Jersey Devils general manager Ray Shero said he is still attempting to sign center Pavel Zacha amid concerns the former first-round draft pick will play in the Kontinental Hockey League this season.

Peppering his comments with profanities, Shero told The Associated Press on Monday that he doesn't care if Zacha signs with the KHL or with Brampton, an ECHL team. Shero said the Devils still retain the restricted free agent's rights after issuing him a qualifying offer this summer, and he hopes to get a deal completed with training camp opening this week.

Shero said he's unaware if Zacha has signed with a KHL team, although he adds that possibility was raised by the player's agent during a recent conversation.

Shero said playing in the KHL is "not the advice I would give him," and added that "it's a long way back to the NHL" if Zacha goes that route.

Zacha's agent, Patrik Stefan, did not immediately respond to several messages from the AP seeking comment.

Shero called Zacha an "important player" entering a key year in his development. He spoke while watching the Devils' third and final game at the Sabres' prospects tournament in Buffalo.

The 22-year-old Zacha is from the Czech Republic and had a career-best 13 goals in 61 games last season. Overall, he has 29 goals and 47 assists for 76 points in 201 career NHL games.

NEW YORK -- Dani Rylan believes professional women's hockey should grow and thrive. She doesn't believe that her league needs to be sacrificed for that to happen.

"We're not going anywhere," said Rylan, the commissioner of the National Women's Hockey League, during an hour-long conversation with ESPN last week in Brooklyn. "It's definitely disappointing, to say the least, when the people that you built a business for, or a platform for, feel that destroying that business is the best way forward."

It's been a roller-coaster 18 months for women's hockey. In February 2018, the U.S. national team won Winter Olympic gold for the first time in 20 years, finally overcoming their arch rivals from Canada. In March 2019, the sport was stunned when the Canadian Women's Hockey League folded after 12 seasons, citing a funding gap and an unsound financial model.

That left North American stars like Hilary Knight and Marie-Philip Poulin without a team for the upcoming season, sparking speculation that Canadian and American national team players would flock to the NWHL, where some of them -- like U.S. forward Amanda Kessel -- played last year. Instead, 200 players announced en masse in May that they would not play in a women's professional league this season "until we get the resources that professional women's hockey demands and deserves."

Thus began the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association, which is going on a multi-city exhibition tour this season. They said in a statement: "We cannot make a sustainable living playing in the current state of the professional game. Having no health insurance and making as low as two thousand dollars a season means players can't adequately train and prepare to play at the highest level."

It wasn't hard to connect the dots here. Not only did these players see the NWHL as inadequate, they saw it as an impediment. For years, many of these elite players had expressed a desire to create a single women's pro league that has the support of the National Hockey League, much like the NBA supports the WNBA.

To get that support? The NWHL has to die off like the CWHL did.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has indicated his league has no desire to get into the women's game if a viable pro league exists. "As long as elite women hockey players have professional opportunities, it is not an environment we are prepared to wade into in any formal way," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly reiterated to ESPN when the CWHL folded.

This signal from the NHL has led to this unprecedented moment in pro sports: a coalition of the game's biggest stars withholding their talents from a particular league in the hopes of suffocating it.

Rylan couldn't help but take it personally.

"Yes, I do. And I think there are some players where it hurts a little bit more that they made this decision. Not just hurts me personally, but also the other people in the league who invested in them, who have done a lot to help players grow their brands and grow as hockey players. Maybe that means players that made the national team who weren't in that conversation before," she said.

For Rylan, there's another side to this boycott that hasn't been given the same amount of attention as the desires of the national team stars. This is understandable: Every fight the players have taken up has been a virtuous one, like when they bit the hand of USA Hockey to get the equality they deserved. Our default setting is to side with the players here as well, and that's what many did -- without thinking about the players and fans who still see the NWHL as their hockey home.

"They weren't even mentioned at all," lamented Rylan.

"I think a lot of those players took this as a personal attack. You only have so many years to play professional sports or sports in general. So for there to be a commitment to take a gap year, that sacrifices opportunities for others. It's something that a lot of players in the NWHL thought about, and decided that what was best was to play here."

That includes some players who supported the boycott at first, but eventually decided to return to the league. As an example, Rylan points to Jillian Dempsey, the NWHL's leading career scorer, who returned to captain the Boston Pride.

"Quite a few have flipped. It's been hard for our general managers to leave room for the players that could end the boycott and return to the league. They have conversations with them about being torn, not knowing what to do," she said.

The NWHL attempted to make itself more appealing to players this offseason. For the first time in league history, there's a 50/50 split of league-wide sponsorship and media dollars, with 50 percent going to increasing the players' salary cap. A new stream that falls under that split: a three-year deal with Twitch, which will offer the entire NWHL season on its streaming platform. (Rylan would not disclose the terms of the deal.)

The five-team league will increase its regular-season schedule from 16 to 24 games. Rylan said that player salaries are up 26 percent over last season, and there was also an increase in per diem. Rylan wouldn't offer specifics, but last season the per diem rates increased from $10 to $20 for road games, which was much less than the recognized federal standard of $51.

As in the past, 15 percent of all player-specific merchandise that's sold goes back to that player as a bonus.

In theory, this would be a spot where not having star players like Kessel hurts the NWHL. But Rylan points out that Metropolitan Riveters forward Audra Richards, now with Minnesota, led the league in merch sales last season and was never a member of the national team. She also notes that despite the PWHPA "gap year" boycott, season ticket renewals were up over last season.

"Fans believe in the teams and in the league and in pro women's hockey," said Rylan.

But the boycott did have an effect on the league's sponsorship opportunities. "Some brands decided to put a hold on support altogether just based on the unknowns. Conversations changed during the summer," she said. "It wasn't the summer that we expected. We can say that for sure."

That cruel summer goes beyond the players' decision to sit out and the ramifications of that call. Plans for potential NWHL Canadian expansion were put on hold. The Buffalo Beauts and the Metropolitan Riveters both had to find new homes. In the case of the latter, the New Jersey Devils ended their partnership with the team and would no longer offer them ice time in their practice rink facility, where the Riveters played home games and the league held its Isobel Cup championship.

In the case of Buffalo, the NWHL took control of the team when the Pegula family -- owners of the Sabres and Bills -- relinquished control of the team to the NWHL.

"They decided that it didn't work for them, so we took the Beauts back," said Rylan, without elaboration.

The NWHL currently owns and operates its five teams, but is working with the Sports Advisory Group to find independent owners for each franchise. That group has worked with a variety of minor leagues to connect teams and ownership.

The financial speed bumps over the last five years created a sense of concern about the NWHL's future. Yes, it was the first women's pro hockey league to pay its players, but the lowest salary in the league last season was a paltry $2,500. While salaries were respectable in the early years, in 2016 the NWHL slashed salaries by 50 percent midseason in an effort to stay "financially viable." Throughout its existence, a lack of transparency in the league's finances was a sticking point for many players.

But Rylan said she believes in what the NHWL is building.

"We're going into our fifth season. To have the people that you're building it for take such a strong stance against it, it's tough. But we're only going to continue to build. We want to be the league that they're proud of. At the end of the day, we want what they want, too. We want a strong future for women's hockey. We want a strong, viable league with the best players participating," she said.

Getting those players to believe in Rylan's product again is another story, especially when they believe the only path to a thriving women's league is stepping over the NWHL's burial plot while moving toward a partnership with the NHL.

"We've certainly seen a lot of the NHL's statements that have mentioned they would be prepared to step in if there is no viable option for women's ice hockey in North America," 2018 Olympic gold medalist Meghan Duggan told ESPN earlier this year. "If that opportunity presents itself, I trust that they have a vision as well. If you look at what history tells us, it's that startup women's leagues are very successful when they're connected to an existing league. That's true throughout Europe, in women's soccer, the WNBA, and the NWSL with their support from U.S. Soccer. That's part of what we're looking for."

Rylan sees it differently.

"Don't get me wrong: We love the NHL. We love the support that we get from them," she said, in reference to the $100,000 the league is expected to invest in the NWHL this season. "But we don't believe that women's hockey needs the NHL, or men's teams, to prove that women's professional hockey is viable."

But she isn't slamming the door.

"If the NHL really wants to start a league, we can talk about what that looks like," she said. "We think there's an opportunity to all work together and make a better league."

Rylan said she's spoken to the NHL about a women's league in the last few months. "Everything that Gary has said to the media, he's said to us: He has no intention of starting a league," she said.

"I think there's a chance to get all of the stakeholders around a table and figure out how to do this together."

The problem, according to Rylan, is that it's near impossible to do that when one of the stakeholders isn't interested in a seat at that table.

"We've gone to [the boycotting players] many times to sit down and have conversations. They've refused to communicate with us at all. There have been no demands -- only what we've read through the media. They've not come to us and said that they want anything," she said.

It could be that they don't want anything from the NWHL, which is why they're skipping this season instead of playing in Rylan's league. The messaging on the NWHL from stars like Kendall Coyne Schofield, who played for the Minnesota Whitecaps last season, would indicate that: "At the end of the day, the product we were receiving wasn't the best product in the world," she said.

But Rylan sees their decision to pull back instead of working with the NWHL to better that product as counterproductive. "We could argue that the growth of the game has slowed because of this," she said.

"I think the question for the players taking the gap year is what happens next year. Because, like I said, we're not going anywhere."

European clubs are looking at new options for the future of the Champions League after a proposal that would have given captive places to 24 teams ran into strong opposition, sources with knowledge of the matter said on Monday.

The chairman of the European Club Association (ECA) Andrea Agnelli also appeared indicate that the contentious plan had hit the rocks, acknowledging in a speech on Monday that its members had different views on the matter.

- Champions League group stage: All you need to know

UEFA has been working with ECA, which represents 232 clubs, on reform of the European club competition system from 2024 onwards.

The initial proposal envisaged a three-tier pan European league with promotion and relegation between the divisions.

The top tier would be the new version of the Champions League but 24 of the 32 teams would keep their places for the following season, breaking the tradition that qualification is achieved through performance in domestic competition.

It also suggested four groups of eight in the group stage, meaning a large increase in the number of European matches.

However, the proposal was strongly opposed by Europe's domestic leagues that say the battle for Champions League places is a key aspect of their competitions. A number of ECA members then broke ranks after a meeting in Malta in June and also criticised the plan.

Sources close the to clubs said on Monday that other proposals were now on the table.

These included one which suggested groups of six for the Champions League and another proposed by FC Copenhagen which would change the criteria which decides the allocation of places.

At present, slots are allocated to clubs depending on where they finish in their respective domestic leagues, with the top four teams from England, Spain, Italy and Germany earning direct qualification for the Champions League group stage.

However, FC Copenhagen proposed that historical records of the clubs should also be taken into account -- which would favour big clubs from middle-ranking leagues over smaller clubs from top-ranked leagues.

"The feeling before Malta was that everything was written in stone. You've all seen it's not like this," Agnelli told the ECA general assembly, without directly mentioning the proposal.

"It's been great seeing the participation of many clubs in sharing consultation in the past couple of months. This was the start of a genuine, open and transparent process."

"We have different views on formats and the stability principles. We have issues on the calendar. I understand that -- but there is an overall acceptance that reform must happen in 2024-25."

He also struck a conciliatory note towards the needs of the leagues. "We strongly believe that whatever the future holds ... we must maintain a strong symbiosis with domestic leagues."