By MONTE DUTTON

Sunday was an excellent day for automobile racing.

Lewis Hamilton, who, astonishingly, is about to turn 40, won the British Grand Prix for the ninth time. He’s at the age where it reminds me of what NASCAR’s Mark Martin used to say. One never knows if a win is the last one. That’s when a dominant driver finds out how much fans love him. He doesn’t get that level of adoration when he’s winning every week.

Pato O’Ward, who, amazingly, is Mexican, won the IndyCar race at Mid-Ohio, a track I briefly visited driving between Cleveland and Indianapolis once. It’s in Lexington, a municipality many states have. O’Ward, whose great grandfather was Irish, outdueled Alex Palou, a Spaniard.

In the streets of Chicago – amazingly, no network currently televises a show called Streets of Chicago, though most other aspects of life in the Windy City are covered – the driver to beat was Shane Van Gisbergen, who grew up in Auckland.

Isn’t that around Wilkesboro? Maybe Wilkesboro, New Zealand. A road-racing background is an advantage … in a road race. It is typically a disadvantage on ovals.

Why? The feel is opposite. A road racer drives deep into a corner before braking. On an oval, a driver backs off entering its wider turns, sets his car and accelerates away.

The great disadvantage for so-called road-racing “ringers” occurs typically on pit road. Most of the Cup regulars have better crews, and the ringers lose a few positions in the pits. That’s why Van Gisbergen was eliminated on Sunday. He got hit from behind while racing back up through the pack.

It rained. It ended in darkness. Alex Bowman won. Unfortunately, the Red Sox were playing the Yankees.

Some drivers – A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Parnelli Jones, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart among them — could drive anything with four wheels. Most can’t. It’s hard not to specialize.

It’s easier for those who learned their craft on ovals nowadays because modern technology does not require the fancy footwork on the clutch, brake and accelerator that road racers master. It’s still an edge for Van Gisbergen.

Juan Pablo Montoya told me that the biggest difficulty on an oval is the higher percentage of time on the edge of adhesion. A road racer gets out of a turn and has time to relax down a long straight. The variance in speed is smaller. A road race has 30-mph turns and 150-mph straights. Speeds on an oval of a mile or more may vary from 150 to 180. Daytona and Talladega allow a driver to run wide open all the way around.

The world is catching us in many ways.

Perhaps half the top 10 basketball basketball players in the world are from Europe, most from former parts of the Soviet Union.

Eight percent of major-league baseball players are African-American. Twenty-eight percent are Latinos and/or Hispanics.

Now NASCAR’s next possible superstar is from New Zealand.

In my opinion, the way race – not stock-car race, but racial identity — is determined is a backhanded example of racism. Hear me out.

Race is determined in the same manner it was in slave times. If a man or woman has any African blood at all, he or she is considered black.

The best example is Tiger Woods, who is one-quarter Thai, one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Caucasian, one-eighth African American and one-eighth Native American.

Thus, Woods is officially just about anything he wants to be. The public declares him African American, when in truth he is about as American as a man can be.

Nothing is wrong with being a fan of a person with a similar background. It’s okay for a poor person to root for an athlete who rose out of poverty. It’s okay for a black man (or woman) to hope other black men and women prosper. It’s okay for a Clemson graduate to root for other Tigers, or for a philosopher to root for other philosophers.

What’s wrong is to limit the competition only to certain groups.

I wonder who the greatest philosopher-athlete was. According to AI (Artificial Intelligence, not Al Jolson or Bundy), it was Milon, a pupil of Pythagoras. He won six Olympic titles in wrestling. It’s been a minute. Milon’s dominance began in 540 B.C.

Competitive sports have a long history of fans who adore one team and despise the other. It’s just recent in politics.

Everyone on earth who lives long enough, from Joe Biden to Willie Nelson, reaches a point where he or she compensates for a decline in brilliance with an increase in experience.

I’ve lost one step out of every four. I see a lot and lose a little. What I’ve forgotten is more than some folks know.

If only I hadn’t lost so much money. …

Nothing could spoil a weekend in which the Red Sox took two out of three in Yankee Stadium.

As is often the case, a fine baseball team resides in the Bronx. In Boston, a fun bunch of misfits has recently emerged. If the Red Sox get a wild-card berth and fall in the opening round, I will be exuberant.

The all-time favorite Yankees of a man who has always abhorred them: (1.) Hideki Matsui, (2.) Bobby Murcer, (3.) Mel Stottlemyre, (4.) Roy White, (5.) Elston Howard, (6.) Bobby Richardson, (7.) Scott Brosius, (8.) Bernie Williams, (9.) Whitey Ford and (10.) Willie Randolph.

All those other fellows were just too damned good.

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