NEWTON, Iowa (AP) — Erik Jones knew the reality of his situation heading into the NASCAR Cup Series race at Iowa Speedway.
Jones came into the weekend 18th in the standings, 44 points behind 16th-place Austin Cindric for the final spot in The Chase that determines the series champion. The 350-lap race Sunday was the first of the final four races of the regular season, and Jones was running out of time.
“One more bad week where we lose any ground, and it’s going to be pretty insurmountable,” Jones said.
Then Jones, who started 10th, got taken out four laps in when Tyler Reddick’s car slid into him, sending both cars into the wall and ending the day for both drivers.
Reddick knew the damage he had done.
“If I’m going to take myself out, that’s one thing,” Reddick said. “But I took out a (Toyota) teammate who needed a good day.”
Such is life in the closing stretch of the regular season, where one bad finish or one good finish can change fortunes.
Denny Hamlin leads the standings with 923 points, 103 points ahead of Ty Gibbs, who won Sunday's race just ahead of Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Christopher Bell.
Only four drivers have wrapped up Chase spots: Hamlin, Gibbs, Ryan Blaney (813) and Reddick (803).
Cindric has 526 points. Ryan Preece is the first driver below the cutline at 497 points. Ross Chastain jumped three spots after his seventh-place finish at Iowa, moving into 18th place at 479 points. Brad Keselowski is one point behind Chastain.
Other than maybe the last one or two spots, the biggest scramble now in this final month could be for seeding. Points for the top 16 drivers will reset after the Aug. 29 regular-season finale at Daytona. The regular-season champion will be the top seed and start The Chase with 2,100 points, the second seed will have 2,075 points and the third seed will have 2,065, with a five-point drop for each seed after that.
“You have all these other little battles going on, like the battle from sixth to 11th or 12th right now is really, really tight and that’s exciting,” said Blaney, who finished third Sunday. “Those guys are dogging it out right now. That’s a lot of points from sixth down to 11th or whatever. So I think it creates a lot of exciting things through the regular season.”
Some of the biggest changes in the standings came in that middle group. Chase Briscoe rose three spots to fifth place with 663 points. He's four points ahead of Bell, who climbed four spots with his second-place finish.
A crash ended Kyle Larson’s day and he finished 33rd to drop four spots in the standings to 10th.
The crucial jump of the day, though, belonged to Gibbs, who went from fourth to second.
“We’ve scored a lot of points in the last couple races,” Gibbs said. “To be able to finish it off today was awesome. I think the difference between the leader and 16th is 100 points, isn’t it, when the playoffs start? So it puts you in a better shot for the title at the end of the year.”
Jones’ early exit dropped him to 20th place, 50 points behind Cindric and four drivers to climb over to get on the good side of the cut line.
“At this point, we’ve got three races,” Jones said. “We got to just go try to win and run the best we can. It’s not over until it’s over, but it’s a tall mountain.”
AP NASCAR: https://apnews.com/hub/nascar-racing
Ty Gibbs does a burnout after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2026, at Iowa Speedway in Newton, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Ryan Blaney leads the field at the start of a NASCAR Cup Series auto race, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2026, at Iowa Speedway in Newton, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
A crew member leaps in front of Ty Gibbs' car during a pit stop in a NASCAR Cup Series auto race, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2026, at Iowa Speedway in Newton, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
NEW YORK (AP) — The inferno rages onscreen three minutes into “ Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear.” Dashcam footage lifted from a police car shows the blaze: It's 2008, and Barker has survived a plane crash in South Carolina. Four others did not.
And then, a cut. The documentary, which follows the Blink-182 drummer from 2017 to 2026, is a celebration of Barker's life before and after the life-altering accident, a central event in a career full of them. The film began as a mirror of his memoir, 2015's “Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums, Drums, Drums,” but became something else entirely after a producer suggested it end with the image of Barker, then still unable to fly due to post-traumatic stress disorder, walking toward a plane.
Ending on that note, “where this thing still has power over me,” didn’t sit well with him. Instead, he boards a plane at the end, but the documentary’s final images are a slide show of family photos, including his wife Kourtney Kardashian and kids.
“I almost died,” he says. It “could be helpful to share my life.”
Barker's resume is long, and a two-and-a-half-hour documentary can only cover so much of it. The film hits most of the big notes, quickly establishing Barker as a rebellious kid with a supernatural drumming ability from age 4, when he got his first kit, to now, at 50.
And that's with many projects in-between: From the SoCal punks Feeble, which he joined while working as a trash collector, to his stint in the ska band The Aquabats and multiplatinum, pop-punk legends Blink-182 — the band that skyrocketed Barker into superstardom.
Also covered? His love of skateboarding and car culture, his clothing brands, side-projects Box Car Racer and +44, turntable duo TRV$DJAM, various experiments and collaborations in hip-hop (Bun B, Lil Wayne ) and beyond.
But it all began with drumming, and hilariously enough, Animal from “The Muppets” — his first drumming hero — until he discovered cross-genre greats like jazz legends Buddy Rich, Dennis Chambers and Elvin Jones as well as Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee.
“Where drumming got really serious for me was after my mom passed, so it was therapy,” he says, reflecting on his childhood. “It’s like my life. It’s like oxygen to me.”
It's also a kind of sport. Barker has long been a dedicated, athletic percussionist, and he likens it to a boxer's meditative state. “It’s like when you see a fighter and he just goes for broke the first round. There’s sometimes where I just feel like that,” he says. “Something just takes over my body.”
Many events in life threatened that euphoria, but none quite as physically as the plane crash. “I was in a burn center for six months on morphine and I had 30 surgeries,” he recounts. “Seventy percent of my body was burned.” At one point, he didn't only fear if he would be able to drum again — even walking was a question mark.
Even before the crash, Barker's life — as marked with musical triumphs as it has been — offered lessons in resiliency.
“Whether it was my mom passing away or my plane crash, I learned — and through watching friends of mine and just living life — I’ve seen traumatic experiences either destroy someone or define them,” he says. “Every loss I had, or every everything I took to the chin, it made me stronger. At the time, I can’t realize it, right? I can't like really wrap my head around it. But ... that’s why I went so hard and I was so determined to play music and so determined to succeed. Plan B was only making Plan A work. You know? There was no Plan B.”
The same tenacity can be applied to his sobriety and dedication to flying again — a journey emboldened by his family. “I fly all the time now and I feel turbulence and I can’t even tell you what’s going on in my head. And I just look over and my wife’s perfectly OK,” he says. “My son loves airplanes and plays with airplanes and it’s so innocent. It’s so beautiful.”
“They’ve been my greatest joy,” he says of his children, who grow up on screen across the film's near-decade of filming.
As someone who has lost a lot and thought about what it would be like to lose even more, when it comes to the topic of legacy, Barker has a simple dream. “I think I’d want to be remembered for my music and my drumming and being a great father, husband, and son and brother,” he says.
As for the doc? “Maybe my story helps somebody,” he pauses. “I don’t love how everything happened. I don’t like the losses that happened. But I like how hard I had to work. I like that I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I liked that I had to navigate and find my way. And the journey was awesome.”
FILE - Kourtney Kardashian, left, and Travis Barker appear at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards in Las Vegas on April 3, 2022. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Travis Barker poses for a portrait in New York on Thursday, June 11, 2026. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Travis Barker poses for a portrait in New York on Thursday, June 11, 2026. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Travis Barker poses for a portrait in New York on Thursday, June 11, 2026. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Travis Barker poses for a portrait in New York on Thursday, June 11, 2026. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
