Green Wins at Concord

Jeff Green held off hard-charging Greg Biffle on a last-lap duel Saturday to win the Carquest Auto Parts 300 on a hot day at Lowe’s Motor Speedway at Concord, N.C.

Green, who runs sporadically in the Busch series now that he’s a full-time Winston Cup driver, inherited the lead when teammate Jay Sauter pitted.

After eight cautions in the first 112 laps, the race had a long green-flag stretch that allowed Sauter to open a 15-car length lead on the field.

But he didn’t have enough gas to make it, and gave up the lead to Green when he pitted.

It looked like Green was going to run away with the race until Dan Pardus spun out to bring out a yellow flag with eight laps to go.

Biffle, running in second at the time, elected to pit and take four tires. He came out in seventh and began his charge when the race resumed with four laps to go.

He was in second place in two laps, then closed the gap on Green until he pulled alongside him on the outside of Turn 3 on the final lap. But Green held him off to win this race for the second consecutive year.

Scott Riggs finished third, Mike McLaughlin was fourth and Todd Bodine finished fifth.

Pole winner Ron Hornaday and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were knocked out of contention by crashes in the first half of the race.

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Juan Montoya won the pole position at the Monaco Grand Prix in his Williams BMW, beating out David Coulthard on the final lap at Monte Carlo, Monaco. The Colombian weaved through the winding streets of picturesque and hilly Monte Carlo in 1 minute, 16.676 seconds in Formula One’s most prestigious race.

Michael Schumacher, trying to match Aryton Senna’s record of five wins at Monaco, will start right behind Montoya on the second row after a third-place time of 1:17.118 in his series-leading Ferrari.

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Larry Dixon earned his sixth No. 1 qualifying position of the season and 18th of his career in the NHRA Summer Nationals at Topeka, Kan. Dixon had a quarter-mile run of 4.588 seconds at 320.81 mph to lead the top fuel category.

Bruce Sarver topped the funny car category with a 4.862 pass at 304.39, and Jim Yates took his second consecutive top qualifying spot with a pass of 6.853 at 200.20 in pro stock.

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Long Beach’s Rip Michels won the 75-lap Jani-King Super Late Model series feature race in front of a near-capacity crowd of 5,920 at Irwindale Speedway.

Michels, who had the top qualifying time of 18.086, started in the sixth position but quickly moved up and took the lead from Deyon Young on lap eight. Nathan Wulff and Brandon Loverock were second and third and series point leader Tony Green finished fourth after borrowing Loverock’s backup car.

In the Vista Paints Super Stock feature race, an accident on lap 19 involving five cars shortened the race from 40 laps to 30. Julianne Seeley was hospitalized at Los Angeles County-USC as a precaution after she was involved in the accident. At the restart, Will Cotrell held off Andrew Phipps and Dan Fitzgerald for the victory.

Tom Landreth won his first race of the season by holding off Ricky Wildman in the 30-lap King Taco Legends feature race.

Tony Solorzano