LOUDON, N.H. — Juan Pablo Montoya has found his groove at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Montoya turned a lap of 132.337 mph and won the pole in Friday’s qualifying — the second straight time he’ll start first at New Hampshire. It was his first pole of the season after taking two last season.
On Sunday, Montoya will be looking for his first career NASCAR win on an oval.
“We have been very close as a team to winning races,” he said.
Starting first could help. He set a track record at New Hampshire last September to win the pole and parlayed that into a third-place finish.
“I think last year we were too conservative here against Mark Martin, but it was the beginning of the Chase and we thought we needed to be smart and take the points,” Montoya said. “Right now, we are kind of in the same situation. We need a lot of points. We’ll see what happens.”
Kasey Kahne was second and Kurt Busch third. Martin and Ryan Newman round out the top five.
USC asks NCAA for leniency.
Southern California filed an appeal with the NCAA, asking that several sanctions on its football program be reduced because they are “too severe” and “inconsistent with precedent.”
USC appealed only certain aspects of this month’s ruling. Among the penalties were a two-year bowl ban, four years of probation, scholarship losses and removal of several victories. The school will accept a bowl ban for the upcoming season and certain scholarship penalties in football, but claims the full sanctions were unduly harsh.
USC asked for the two-year postseason ban to be reduced to one year. The school also wants the NCAA’s scholarship reductions in football from 2011 to 2013 to be reduced to five lost scholarships in each season, rather than 10.
The NCAA’s infractions appeal committee next meets in late September.
• North Carolina State named Debbie Yow its new athletic director. Yow, who has spent the last 16 years with Maryland, replaces Lee Fowler, who resigned in May and ends a 10-year tenure with the Wolfpack next week.
Yow is the younger sister of Kay Yow, the Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach who spent more than three decades with the Wolfpack before her death in January 2009 after a fight against cancer.
U.S. rolls to 3-0 in softball worlds
CARACAS, Venezuela — The United States improved to 3-0 in the world softball championships with a 12-2 win over New Zealand and a 7-0 victory over Venezuela.
Footnotes.
Former world champion Tom Boonen will miss the Tour de France next month because of tendinitis around his left kneecap.
• Real Salt Lake and the San Jose Earthquakes played to a scoreless tie in the first Major League Soccer game since the league took an unprecedented break for the World Cup in South Africa.
• Michael Phelps will swim in four events — the 100-meter freestyle, 200 butterfly, 200 freestyle and 200 individual medley — at the Paris Open this weekend as part of his preparations for the U.S. championships in August.
