Sebastian Vettel claimed his third pole position of the season yesterday at the British Formula One Grand Prix as local hero Jenson Button had to settle for a season-worst sixth place.
The German Vettel clocked 1 minute, 19.509 seconds in his Red Bull on the 5.141km circuit as he topped the grid from Brawn GP driver Rubens Barrichello and Mark Webber in the second Red Bull.
Championship leader Button managed no better than sixth and compatriot Lewis Hamilton, the reigning world champion and the winner at Silverstone last year, will have to start in the last row from 19th place in his McLaren-Mercedes.
Button has won six of the seven races this season for a commanding lead on 61 points. Teammate Rubens Barrichello has 35 points and Vettel 29 points. Vettel won the other race in China.
German Force India driver Adrian Sutil crashed heavily into a tire wall at the Becketts turn at the end of the first session. He walked away from the wreck on his own, but then underwent medical checks. The cause of the accident was not immediately known.
Meanwhile, Formula One intends to sue the eight teams that announced plans for a rival series next season — the biggest crisis to engulf the sport since the championship began in 1950.
The governing body accused the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) of “serious violations of law.”
The breakaway came after Ferrari, championship leader Brawn GP and six other teams failed to resolve a dispute over the introduction of a budget cap for next season.
Governing body the FIA has responded by delaying publication of a final entry list for next season while it “asserts its legal rights.”
“The FIA’s lawyers have now examined the FOTA threat to begin a breakaway series,” the organization said in a statement. “The actions of FOTA as a whole, and Ferrari in particular, amount to serious violations of law, including willful interference with contractual relations, direct breaches of Ferrari’s legal obligations and a grave violation of competition law.”
Ferrari is already countersuing the ruling body “to protect its contractual rights.”
But FIA president Mosley remains “completely confident” that the breakaway series will never come to fruition.
“In the end, people do what it’s in their interests to do and it’s in the interest of teams to be in F1 world championship, and there is actually no fundamental, or even important, issue preventing them from taking part,” Mosley said. “It’s all about personalities and power, and who can grab what from whom, which is easy when nothing’s at stake but, when it comes to the first race and it’s make-your-mind-up time, they will be there.”
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