Ryan Blaney kicked off the second half of the NASCAR season by running away down the stretch for his first Cup Series win of the year Sunday night at Nashville Superspeedway.

The 2023 Cup champ had been racing well with five top-five finishes over the first half of this season. He finally got to Victory Lane in the No. 12 Ford Mustang for Team Penske for his 14th career victory and first since Martinsville in November.

Blaney, who started 15th, quickly drove his way to the front as he won the second stage. He easily held off Carson Hocevar by 2.83 seconds. Hocevar matched his second-place finish at Atlanta in February.

McLaren pair Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris moved closer to making this Formula 1 season a simple question of which one of them will come out on top after finishing the Spanish Grand Prix one-two.

That sense of dominance was aided by a late-race collapse by Max Verstappen and his Red Bull team. Verstappen was bearing down on Norris until a late safety car led to him having slower tires. He was quickly passed by Charles Leclerc and George Russell before the defending champion made it much worse by colliding with Russell’s Mercedes.

The resulting 10-second penalty for Verstappen sent him plummeting down to a 10th-placed finish in Spain.

Things got testy from there.

Russell called the move “deliberate” and said Verstappen set a bad example.

Verstappen replied that “next time I will bring a tissue.”

Piastri won the race with poise from pole position and ended Verstappen’s run of three consecutive wins at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Piastri has 186 points, 10 more than Norris. Verstappen dropped to 49 points behind the leader.

Kyle Kirkwood survived front wing damage and pulled away on a late restart to win the IndyCar Detroit Grand Prix.

It was the second victory of the season and fourth career IndyCar Series victory for Kirkwood, who also won the Acura Long Beach Grand Prix on April 13, also on a temporary street circuit.

Kirkwood, who started third, crossed the finish line 3.5931 seconds ahead of the AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet of Santino Ferrucci. It was a career-best finish for Ferrucci and the best road- or street-course result for the team owned by legendary four-time Indianapolis 500 winner A.J. Foyt since Takuma Sato also finished second in 2015 at this event when it took place on Belle Isle.

NHL

The Kings signed prospect defenseman Kirill Kirsanov to a two-year, entry-level contract, the team announced in a news release.

Kirsanov, 22, was a third-round selection in the 2021 draft (No. 84 overall).

Kirsanov was billed as a mature prospect both physically and mentally by Mark Yannetti when he was drafted. The Kings’ scouting guru suggested that Kirsanov could potentially have challenged for a roster spot on the Kings that same season if he were to have been able to come to North America.

After four seasons playing professionally in Russia, Kirsanov should be even more prepared to make the leap to North American pro competition.

Last season, he set a career high in games played in Russia’s top-flight league, the Kontinental Hockey League, with 34 regular-season games plus a pair of playoff games.

At 6-feet-2 and 220 pounds, he has strength, physicality and instincts in the defensive zone.

The left-handed-shooting rearguard also has been billed as having the sort of penetrative skating and one-on-one ability with the puck that the Kings defense corps largely lacks at the moment.

— Andrew Knoll

COLLEGE BASEBALL

Griffen Paige gave up one run on one hit across eight innings, Boston Smith and Luke Arnold hit back-to-back homers early, and Wright State held off Vanderbilt in the ninth to knock the No. 1 national seed out of the NCAA Tournament with a 5-4 victory in the Nashville Regional.

The Commodores (43-18) became the first No. 1 national seed to fail to reach their regional final since the tournament went to its current format in 1999.

Wright State is 39-20.

UC Irvine 11, Arizona State 6: Chase Call hit two of UCI’s five home runs and the Anteaters (43-16) advanced to the championship round of the Los Angeles Regional at UCLA. Alonso Reyes, Jacob McCombs and James Castagnola also went deep for UC Irvine. The Anteaters advanced to play UCLA late Sunday night. A UCLA win would wrap up the home regional for the Bruins. A UC Irvine win would force a deciding game today.

No. 8 Oregon State 20, Saint Mary’s 3: Wilson Weber, Trent Caraway and Tyce Peterson all homered to back a strong start by Ethan Kleinschmit and the Beavers (43-13-1) avoided elimination in the Corvallis Regional. The Beavers need to beat USC twice — late Sunday night and again today — to move on to the super regionals. The Trojans (37-21) need one win to advance.