Regular-season champion Tyler Reddick won the pole Saturday for the second race of the third round of NASCAR’s playoffs today.

Reddick turned a 167.452 mph lap in a Toyota Camry for 23XI Racing to best Hendricks Motorsports driver Kyle Larson by 0.077 seconds and take the top starting spot today at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Reddick is one of seven drivers vying for the remaining three spots in the Cup Series championship finale at Phoenix. Joey Logano of Team Penske became the first driver locked into the championship when he won at Las Vegas last week.

It is Reddick’s third pole of 2024 in the No. 45 Camry.

Christopher Bell of Joe Gibbs Racing, who won the race at Homestead last year, qualified third in the No. 20 Camry. Bell’s Gibbs teammate Denny Hamlin was next in the No. 11 Camry.

Qualifying positions for the remaining playoff drivers were Chase Elliott in seventh, reigning Cup champion Ryan Blaney in 20th and William Byron in 25th.

Austin Hill grabbed the second spot next month in the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship finale, racing to his fourth victory of the season at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Hill drove the No. 21 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet past Cole Custer with 12 laps to go, and held on to join AJ Allmendinger in the four-driver championship field at Phoenix. Allmendinger punched his ticket last week in Las Vegas.

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. won his first pole of the season at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, and Sergio Perez’s miserable Formula 1 season continued when he failed to advance out of the first round of qualifying at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Three-time defending champion Max Verstappen, who had an engine change Saturday, qualified second for Red Bull. Verstappen is a five-time winner in Mexico City.

Frankie Muniz finished 33rd in his first Truck Series race since the “Malcolm in the Middle” star announced he will become a full-time NASCAR racer next season.

Muniz, who is 38, recently made the jump from part-time racer to a full slate in the No. 33 Ford for Reaume Brothers Racing.

Muniz has said he is confident his team could be successful in this series, but Saturday’s race was marred by mechanical issues for his Toyota.

Grant Enfinger of CR7 Motorsports won the race — his second straight victory.

Mixed martial arts

Featherweight champion Ilia Topuria vowed to become the first man to knock out Max Holloway. He made good on his promise at UFC 308 in Abu Dhabi.

Using a huge right hand to daze Holloway, Topuria (16-0) followed up moments later with a powerful left hook that dropped the 32-year-old. Topuria pounced on Holloway (26-8) immediately for a ground-and-pound finish before referee Mark Goddard stopped the bout at the 1:34 mark of the third round.

It was Topuria’s first title defense since capturing the belt with a second-round technical knockout of Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 298 on Feb. 17.

Volkanovski was in attendance Saturday, and Topuria said he would honor him with a rematch.

In the co-main event, No. 13 Khamzat Chimaev (14-0) stopped No. 3 Robert Whitaker (27-8) with a first-round submission just 3:34 into the fight, after taking him down and administering a wicked face crank.

Top-ranked light heavyweight Magomed Ankalaev defeated No. 5 Aleksandar Rakic by unanimous decision after three rounds.

WNBA

The Las Vegas Aces, whose two-time championship run ended in a semifinals loss to the New York Liberty, fired general manager Natalie Williams.

Williams was hired in 2022 as part of a new regime that included Becky Hammon as coach. The Aces won titles in 2022 and 2023 to become the first WNBA team to claim back-to-back championships since the Sparks in 2001-02.

TENNIS

Karen Khachanov upset second-seeded Alex de Minaur 6-2, 6-4 and will play for consecutive ATP titles in the Erste Bank Open in Vienna.

Khachanov took his seventh career title and second of the year in Almaty last weekend and won his eighth straight singles on Saturday.

He’ll face seventh-seeded Jack Draper in today’s final after the Briton beat Lorenzo Musetti of Italy 6-2, 6-4 in the other semifinal.

Ben Shelton beat his doubles partner, Arthur Fils, at the Swiss Indoors in Basel, and will face another Frenchman, Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, in today’s final.

No. 6-seeded Shelton defeated No. 7 Fils 6-3, 7-6 (9), recovering from 6-3 down in the tiebreak of their semifinal.

The unseeded Mpetshi Perricard upset No. 4-seeded Holger Rune 7-6 (6), 6-4 by serving 17 aces. He’s yet to lose serve in Basel.

Former Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin advanced to the final of the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo with a 6-4, 6-4 win over ninth-seeded Katie Boulter.

Kenin will play No. 1 seed and Paris Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen. who beat Diana Shnaider 7-6 (5), 6-3 in the other semifinal.

SKIING

Italian skier Federica Brignone won the women’s World Cup season opener in Soelden, Austria, after first-run leader Mikaela Shiffrin dropped to fifth.

The American posted only the 27th-fastest time in the second run of the giant slalom and finished 1.61 seconds off the lead.

Brignone beat Alice Robinson of New Zealand by 0.17, and Austrian Julia Scheib trailed by 1.08 in third.