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Where to Watch F1, NASCAR, and Indy 500 Qualifying This Weekend (May 22nd, 2022)

Photo credit: Lars Baron - Getty Images
Photo credit: Lars Baron - Getty Images

Formula 1 - Spanish Grand Prix
Sunday, May 22nd - 9:00 a.m. ET - ESPN2

The European races are here. Spain marks the beginning of the heart of the F1 schedule, starting here with a race at the Circuit de Catalunya. This is the time of year when teams can more easily deploy upgrades as they race at tracks they know better. It's also the time of year where the championship battle narrows down to key contenders.

Points leader Charles Leclerc is still key among those contenders. He'll start on pole again for Ferrari, which seems to still have dominant one-lap pace even after Red Bull's race pace eclipsed theirs in Miami two weeks ago. He'll share the front row with current main title rival Max Verstappen. Carlos Sainz Jr. starts third, while George Russell starts a surprising fourth for Mercedes. Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton complete a three-row lockout by the three best teams in the series this year, although Mercedes has been notably behind Ferrari and Red Bull even after deploying major upgrades.

IndyCar - Indianapolis 500 qualifying
Saturday, May 21st - 11:00 a.m. ET - Peacock
Sunday, May 22nd - 4:00 p.m. ET - NBC

Although a 33-car entry list means this year's Indianapolis 500 will not have a Bump Day, Indianapolis 500 qualifying remains a two-day affair. Today's session is to set the field for two rounds of knockout qualifying tomorrow, replacing last year's one round. After an entire day of four-lap runs, 12 cars will advance to that round, which will then determine a final group of six that will run for pole.

The track has been downright sketchy this week. High winds yesterday led to first laps in the 232 MPH average speed range with speed trap peaks as high as 243 MPH. While drivers have not been crashing, yesterday's practice session was full of teams abandoning mock qualifying runs after big moments in laps 2 or 3. That, combined with aggressive setups that optimize one-lap speed over four-lap averages, make setting expectations for today's qualifying session from leaderboards earlier in the week a challenge, but everyone at the Speedway seems to know one thing with certainty: Takuma Sato is very fast. He and his Dale Coyne Racing team have been near the top of the time sheets on one-lap runs all week.

NASCAR - All-Star Race
Sunday, May 22nd - 5:30 p.m. ET - Fox Sports 1

NASCAR's non-championship All-Star race was already a strange thing. It is a non-championship race with a limited field and gimmicky rules, changed every few years seemingly at random. The prize is cash, but the size of that cash prize has not changed substantially in decades. It was at least a precursor to the Coca Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway for most of its history, but that race is still at Charlotte and this one has been moved to Texas as part of a deal to get the series to Circuit of the Americas. So, now the series simply goes to an unrelated intermediate track for a complicated race that does not count the week before one of its classics every year.

If nothing else, improved racing on mile-and-a-half tracks since the debut of the Next Gen car means that this should be better as a race and as a TV product than last year's event. Even Kansas, perhaps the most anonymous track on the entire NASCAR schedule, produced a memorable race last weekend.

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