■ FORMULA ONE
Team to drop Speed
Scott Speed will not be returning soon as a Toro Rosso driver in races, but could show up in other places for the team that dropped him earlier this week. "He might still be used for testing," Gerhard Berger, co-owner of the Toro Rosso team, said on Thursday at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The only US driver in F1 since 1993, Speed was dropped this week from racing. There were reports of an altercation with team director Franz Tost after Speed crashed out of the last race, the European Grand Prix on July 22, then criticized the team. "I grabbed him on the arm and said, `Please stop,'" Tost said of a heated discussion with Speed in the pits. He added that the decision to drop Speed had already been made.
■ SOCCER
Drinking claims denied
Mario Zagallo, Brazil's assistant coach at last year's World Cup, denied claims by the president of the Brazilian soccer federation that some players returned to the hotel drunk during the tournament. "There was nothing like that," Zagallo told the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper. "We never heard anything about it because it never happened. There was no drinking." On Wednesday, CBF president Ricardo Teixeira told Estado that a group of players lacked discipline during the World Cup and some players "arrived between four and six in the morning, drunk." Teixeira did not single out any individuals. "I don't even believe the president said that," Zagallo said. "And why say it now, almost two years after [the World Cup]? For what?"
■ FORMULA ONE
Driver grilled over gorilla
Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen was grilled by his countrymen at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Thursday about dressing up as a gorilla. Finnish reporters said Ferrari's free-spirited driver and two friends took part in a powerboat race last week in the Finnish harbor city of Hanko while wearing gorilla suits. They then won a prize for the best-dressed crew. Asked about the episode, Raikkonen smiled and said: "Yeah, but was it really me? ... You don't know ... We've got the trophy already. It was just a boat race and we went for fun." Raikkonen, winner of three races already in his first season at Ferrari, is used to such escapades. Earlier in the year, the "Iceman" entered and won a snowmobile race in his homeland under the name of James Hunt, the late British Formula One champion renowned for his wild playboy lifestyle. Ferrari are involved in a bitter row with McLaren, Raikkonen's former team, about leaked information that ended up in the hands of McLaren's suspended chief designer Mike Coughlan.
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