Lewis Hamilton is confident that he can improve on his showing in last year’s British Grand Prix come this weekend’s race at Silverstone.
Hamilton snatched a dramatic pole position in front of an adoring home crowd at the Northamptonshire circuit 12 months ago, but was unable to match the pace of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen in the race, eventually finishing third. This year though, Hamilton believes that the work he and his McLaren team got through at last week’s Silverstone testing session will equip him for a more competitive weekend.
“I think doing the test has made quite a big difference,” Hamilton said. “Last year, I came here and was just given the car and you don’t have that much time during Friday practice to really get the right settings. I tried last year and failed, and the car was terrible, I was very fortunate to put it on pole, but this year I think we’re in a much stronger position. This year I know what I want from the car and having the test here has really given me the opportunity to get it in the right ballpark. Conditions will be slightly different to those at the test, but at least we’ve got a good place to start from.”
Unlike last year when Hamilton arrived in Britain on the crest of a wave, he has recently endured a poor run of form, failing to gain a single point in his last two races and dropping 10 points behind championship leader Felipe Massa.
However, Hamilton maintains that he will continue to approach each race in exactly the same way and insists that his confidence and belief are not shaken.
“I’m not expecting to blow everyone else away here this weekend,” he said. “But we have worked very hard, the test last week was really good and we come here with a strong feeling within the team, and for sure a strong package. We’d love to get some good results here. It would be a good starting point for the next 10 races.”
Hamilton also denied that the added pressure and demands of his home race would adversely affect his race weekend. The 23-year-old has fulfilled a seemingly endless run of media and sponsorship engagements over the last fortnight, but he claims to have drawn “positive energy” from many of these and is not concerned over the punishing workload.
“I haven’t noticed that it has been any different from last year really,” he said. “Through the whole time, I haven’t lost focus. My mind has always been on preparing for the next race.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier