Heikki Kovalainen grabbed his first ever Formula One pole position yesterday with a near-flawless qualifying display at the British Grand Prix.
The Finnish McLaren driver produced an inspired final lap of 1 minute, 21.049 seconds, more than half-a-second faster than Red Bull’s Mark Webber who will start from second.
The Finn will have the Ferrari of world champion Kimi Raikkonen and also McLaren teammate Lewis Hamilton breathing down his neck from third and fourth on the grid respectively.BMW Sauber’s Nick Heidfeld will start fifth, just ahead of Spanish Renault driver Fernando Alonso. Nelson Piquet steered the other Renault to seventh on the grid, while Toro Rosso’s Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari’s world championship leader Felipe Massa will start eighth and ninth respectively. The BMW of Poland’s Robert Kubica completes the top 10.
Kovalainen led the way in the first mini-session, marginally ahead of Hamilton and Vettel, while at the bottom the slowest five drivers were eliminated from contention. Force India’s Italian veteran Giancarlo Fisichella was the first man to be eliminated and will start on the back row of the grid alongside his German teammate Adrian Sutil. Nico Rosberg spent the session fighting with his Williams and was knocked out at the first stage. He will start from 18th on the grid. The final drivers to go were Honda pair Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello.
Hamilton was quickest in the second mini-session, with Kovalainen and Webber just behind. This time Williams driver Kazuki Nakajima was the first man to be eliminated and will start from 15th, just behind Toyota’s Jarno Trulli and Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Bourdais who will start on the seventh row. The last two drivers not to make the top 10 were Trulli’s teammate Timo Glock and Red Bull’s David Coulthard.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later