BARBERVILLE, Fla. – Volusia Speedway Park’s newest success story, Jimmy Owens, made it three wins in a row to close the 49th DIRTcar Nationals presented by Bozard Ford Saturday night.

The Tennessean came into the week without ever having seen victory lane at the facility, but left with three gator trophies to show for his efforts across the four World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series shows.

“It’s awesome, I’ve never come out of Speedweeks with any kind of confidence,” said Owens. “Being in the top 10 and (getting) a couple top-fives is like ‘whoo-hoo’ for us. To come down here and win like this … we’re making confident decisions in our team, we’re putting our heads together and we’re just jiving well.”

Two-time and defending series champion Brandon Sheppard successfully defended his 2019 Big Gator title with finishes of first, second, first, sixth, fourth, and fifth over the six nights of Late Model Week for his second career DIRTcar Nationals championship.

With those consistent finishes, Sheppard also retains his position atop the World of Outlaws points standings.

He may not have been as dominant at Volusia as he was a year ago, but Sheppard was indeed the rightful champion for his consistency all week. And what a Florida-Georgia Speedweeks he’s had overall, winning five races across two Florida tracks and earning several other top-fives.

It does the Rocket1 Racing team good to know of their accomplishments as they head back home in preparation for next month’s Outlaw races in Tennessee.

“We’re still leaving on a good note, even though we didn’t win (on Saturday),” Sheppard said. “Our confidence is up high and we’re looking forward to getting the year rolling.

“The start to our year has been so good, I can’t say enough about it, really. It’s been unreal. We’ve got five wins in Speedweeks, and it’s just been unreal, honestly. It’s probably not going to sink in for a while because it’s been so good.”

As for Saturday night’s 50-lap DIRTcar Nationals finale, DIRTcar UMP Modified regular Kyle Strickler kicked things off with the early lead, which he quickly surrendered to Darrell Lanigan on lap two and faded back to fifth.

Lanigan led until a hard-charging Jonathan Davenport gave him a great run down low to swipe the spot away as they crossed the stripe to complete lap eight.

The two battled back-and-forth for the next few circuits, swapping the lead a few times until the race’s first caution flag waved on lap 10, where Davenport brought it down pit road and did not return to racing – a victim of an apparent internal failure.

Owens entered the picture after the restart, driving around Kyle Bronson on the top for the runner-up spot at the line. Bronson would battle back though, regaining the spot on lap 12 and coming after the leader.

Bronson shot past Lanigan on the top side for the lead on lap 16 and led for the greater portion of the contest. Meanwhile, Owens kept it inside the top three and made a great power move underneath Darrell Lanigan on a lap-25 restart to take second.

Bronson paraded the field around for the next several laps on his usual high line, but was soon slowed up enough for Owens to close the gap in lapped traffic. Into turn three they raced with 11 laps left, before Owens drove it high off the fourth turn and stole the lead.

Bronson said tire wear may have played a factor in his car’s performance in the waning circuits.

“We just got bottled up behind them lapped cars there and got to where I had pushed the right-front tire off and couldn’t steer anymore. I believe them guys had a little bit harder tire on than we did, and it just gave up on us,” he said.

As he paced behind Bronson under yellow before the final restart, Owens said he knew the chance to catch and pass the No. 40b was there. He just needed some patience.

“I know he was running pretty hard and pretty aggressive there,” Owens said. “But he was good, he was fast, and I thought I’m just going to calm down and just pace myself, maybe he’ll come to me. He got out there a little bit but then I just slowly started reeling him in and it paid off.”

As Owens crossed the stripe to collect his third-straight win, Ricky Weiss completed his drive back to the podium after starting third.

Weiss had slipped way back as far as ninth at one point before getting back up on the wheel to regain the lost ground. Using the yellows to his advantage, the reigning Rookie of the Year turned it into a positive end to his 2020 DIRTcar Nationals campaign.

Bronson crossed the stripe in third, and Lanigan fended off Sheppard for fourth in the latter half of the race to become one of only a few drivers to record top-10 finishes in each of the Late Model Week shows.

Sheppard also completed the top five as another driver without a finish of 11th or worse all week.

“We left on a good note,” Sheppard said. “We started 11th tonight and got up through there. I thought we were in contention there for a little bit and then the caution came out. I had a bad restart, but our car was a lot better in slick conditions than we had seen it in the past couple nights.”

The finish:

1. 20-Jimmy Owens [2][$10,000]; 2. 7-Ricky Weiss [3][$5,000]; 3. 40B-Kyle Bronson [7][$3,000]; 4. 29v-Darrell Lanigan [4][$2,500]; 5. 1-Brandon Sheppard [11][$2,000]; 6. 8-Kyle Strickler [1][$1,700]; 7. 0-Scott Bloomquist [13][$1,400]; 8. 25-Shane Clanton [9][$1,300]; 9. 39-Tim McCreadie [15][$1,200]; 10. 25z-Mason Zeigler [10][$1,100]; 11. 0M-Chris Madden [23][$1,050]; 12. 2e-Rick Eckert [16][$1,000]; 13. 6T-Tyler Erb [12][$950]; 14. 3s-Brian Shirley [17][$900]; 15. 28-Dennis Erb [14][$850]; 16. B1-Brent Larson [28][$110]; 17. 18-Chase Junghans [19][$770]; 18. 76-Brandon Overton [21][$750]; 19. 12-Ashton Winger [24][$730]; 20. 97-Cade Dillard [18][$700]; 21. 66c-Matt Cosner [26][$110]; 22. 4G-Kody Evans [27][$110]; 23. 99B-Boom Briggs [25][$110]; 24. 5-Mark Whitener [6][$700]; 25. 22-Gregg Satterlee [20][$700]; 26. 157-Mike Marlar [8][$700]; 27. 17M-Dale McDowell [22][$700]; 28. 49-Jonathan Davenport [5][$700]; 29. 6-Blake Spencer [29][$110].

Lap Leaders – Kyle Strickler 1, Darrell Lanigan 2-7, Jonathan Davenport 8, Darrell Lanigan 9-14, Kyle Bronson 15-39, Jimmy Owens 40-50.

Hard Charger: 0M-Chris Madden (+12)

South Africa won the toss and elected to bat first vs England

Quinton de Kock opted to "put the English under pressure first," and asked Eoin Morgan's men to chase in the series decider at SuperSport Park.

With matters level at 1-1, de Kock put faith in his attack, bolstered by the return of Dale Steyn, to defend in warm conditions in front of a full house.

Steyn, who replaced left-armer Beuran Hendricks, was one of two changes to the home XI. Jon-Jon Smuts was benched in favour of home boy Heinrich Klaasen, who will not be keeping wicket.

England had an enforced change with Joe Denly unable to play because of illness and Dawid Malan making his first appearance on the tour. The visitors are ending the tour as they began it - with players struggling with their health on the Highveld. Morgan was concerned with the frequency of poor health among the group and said it was something England need to look into on their travels.

Malan was carded to bat at No. 4. He has never batted outside of the top three in T20Is, but batted in the middle order during his recent Bangladesh Premier League stint. Jos Buttler was set to continue at the top of the order, with Morgan asserting after the second game in Durban: "We believe him, Jason [Roy] and Jonny [Bairstow] are our top three at the moment, moving forward."

South Africa: 1 Quinton de Kock (captain, wk), 2 Temba Bavuma, 3 Rassie van der Dussen, 4 Heinrich Klaasen, 5 David Miller, 6 Andile Phehlukwayo, 7 Dwaine Pretorius, 8 Dale Steyn, 9 Bjorn Fortuin, 10 Tabraiz Shamsi, 11 Lungi Ngidi

England: 1 Jason Roy, 2 Jos Buttler (wk), 3 Jonny Bairstow, 4 Dawid Malan, 5 Eoin Morgan (captain), 6 Ben Stokes, 7 Moeen Ali, 8 Tom Curran, 9 Chris Jordan, 10 Adil Rashid, 11 Mark Wood

The BCCI has given the nod for India to play one day-night Test during their 2020-21 tour of Australia, where the two teams will play four Test matches between December and January. In another significant move, the BCCI has also chalked in the refurbished Sardar Patel Stadium in Motera, Ahmedabad as a likely venue to host a day-night Test during the five-match series against England, to be played in January-February 2021.

Both decisions were taken by the BCCI's Apex Council, which met in Delhi on Sunday, and was attended by BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah.

The BCCI's decision follows its meeting with a Cricket Australia delegation led by chairman Earl Eddings in January. Eddings met Ganguly and Shah on the sidelines of the India-Australia ODI series to chart out a plan for the day-night Test and identify the venue. Originally, CA wanted to host two pink-ball Tests against India, but the BCCI gave the nod for just one. Ganguly had then said, "Two out of four would be a bit too much with the pink ball". ESPNcricinfo understands that either Brisbane or Adelaide will be the venue for the game. Brisbane will host the first Test of the series, and Adelaide will host a Test towards the latter part of the tour.

Ever since Ganguly took charge of the BCCI last October, he has supported the move for India to play more day-night Test cricket, and India played their maiden pink-ball Test against Bangladesh at Kolkata's Eden Gardens in November last year. Ganguly has also spoken to India captain Virat Kohli on the matter, and subsequently, in January during the home ODI series against Australia, Kohli said that his team was happy to play day-night Tests in Australia as long as the players were given enough time and notice to prepare.

"We played the day-night Test [against Bangladesh] here, we were pretty happy with how it went," Kohli said. "It's become a very exciting feature of any Test series and we're open to playing day-night Tests. We're ready and up for the challenge - whether it's Gabba, Perth... it doesn't matter to us, we have the skillsets as a team now to compete against anyone in the world, anywhere, in any format of the game, whether it's white ball, red ball or pink ball, we're ready to play anything."

At the meeting, the BCCI also discussed the possible venues for England's tour of India next year, which will be India's last engagement in the inaugural cycle of the World Test Championship - each team has to play six Test series with the WTC final scheduled to be held at Lord's in June 2021. Being a marquee series, the BCCI has decided to cash in by shortlisting Motera as a likely venue for the day-night fixture.

The ground has not hosted international cricket since November 2014, when India played Sri Lanka in an ODI, as the Gujarat Cricket Association wanted to renovate the facility completely, including relaying the pitches as well as the outfield. The new-look stadium, once it is complete - which should be very soon - will become the biggest cricket ground in the world with a capacity of 110,000.

The Apex Council also decided to release funds to all the state associations that had applied to the BCCI to clear their pending payments. It was also decided that the BCCI would make an ad-hoc payment of Rs 2 crore (US$ 280,000 approx.) to the newly formed Indian Cricketers' Association to set up its offices and create organisational structure.

Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred defended his punishment of the Houston Astros for their sign stealing in 2017 and said Major League Baseball will institute new rules to police the use of technology before the 2020 season.

In a wide-ranging interview with ESPN's Karl Ravech, Manfred explained why he didn't punish any Astros players for their roles in the scandal, which involved illegal use of technology to decipher their opponents' signs and relay them to Houston batters in real time.

MLB announced its discipline of the Astros last month, suspending general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch for the entire 2020 season while stripping the organization of four draft picks and levying a $5 million fine.

But none of Houston's players was suspended or fined, and Manfred previously announced that MLB had no plans to strip the Astros of the 2017 World Series title -- decisions that have drawn widespread criticism from the baseball community, including players from other teams.

Manfred told Ravech that any discipline of the players likely would have resulted in grievances from the Major League Baseball Players Association, citing Luhnow's failure to communicate to the Astros' players the contents of a 2017 memorandum outlining MLB's policy on the use of technology.

Manfred said that although he doesn't absolve the players in Houston, he believes that Luhnow and Hinch were obligated to inform them of the memo and enforce MLB's rules.

Manfred also said he understands the sport's reaction to the scandal, especially after the Astros' ill-received news conference on Thursday, when owner Jim Crane made several comments that stoked the ire of players and officials from other teams.

When asked about MLB's plans going forward, Manfred indicated that baseball would restrict access to video during games.

World 10,000m champion runs 12:51 to improve on the fastest ever time for the distance, while Nick Goolab breaks British best

Joshua Cheptegei smashed the world 5km road record in Monaco on Sunday, clocking 12:51 to take 27 seconds off the official global record mark.

Improving on Rhonex Kipruto’s 13:18 which had been set en route to his 26:24 world 10km record in Valencia last month, Cheptegei’s time at the Monaco Run 5km also beats the previous fastest ever time for the distance, which was Sammy Kipketer’s 13:00 from Carlsbad in 2000, run before it was an official world record event.

“Wow, this is a really great,” said Uganda’s Cheptegei, the world 10,000m champion.

“I had sub-13 minutes in my mind today so when my legs felt good during the race I decided to really go for it.

“To take this many seconds off the record makes me very happy and is a great first test for me in an important season.”

Given the current discussion around Nike’s Vaporfly shoes, the world record performance was met with some comment on social media that Cheptegei had achieved it while wearing Nike footwear.

France’s Jimmy Gressier was second in 13:18, which breaks Julien Wanders’ European record set at the same event last year.

Britain’s Nick Goolab was also among the record-breakers as he improved the UK best with his time of 13:27 for third place. He replaces Rob Denmark and Mo Farah at the top of the British all-time rankings, with the pair having clocked 13:30 in 1996 and 2006 respectively.

Liv Westphal broke the French record in the women’s race with her time of 15:31.

More to follow..

British number three Kyle Edmund reached the final of the New York Open after beating Serbia's Miomir Kecmanovic 6-1 6-4.

The victory has seen the 25-year-old reach his first ATP final since he won the European Open in Antwerp in October 2018.

"This is great to be back in a final, playing the matches you want to be playing," Edmund said.

"I obviously want to go all the way, but I'm enjoying my tennis."

Edmund will play Italy's Andreas Seppi or American Jason Jung in the final.