Formula One championship leader Mark Webber gave Red Bull their 12th pole position in 13 races this season at the Belgian Grand Prix yesterday.
The Australian, favored by a late flurry of rain that prevented rivals from matching his time in final qualifying, ended a run of four successive poles for German teammate Sebastian Vettel.
McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton joined Webber on the front row, with Renault’s Robert Kubica third and Vettel fourth. The hopes of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso were scuppered by the fickle conditions and he will start 10th.
BIRTHDAY BOY
Webber, who celebrated his 34th birthday at the fast and flowing track on Friday, leads 2008 champion Hamilton by four points in the standings with seven races remaining, including today’s.
It was his fifth pole of the season, sixth of his career and first since Turkey in May.
“It’s a great place to get pole position, but we’ve seen a couple of times this year that the poles haven’t done too much,” said Webber, whose own teammate has taken seven poles and won just twice.
The driver on pole at Spa has failed to win four times out of the last five races here. Only 13 times in 43 races at the circuit has the winner started from the top slot.
“The showers that pop up here and there, there’s no real consistency to them,” added the winner of four races this year.
“But it wasn’t that difficult today in terms of picking the weather. It wasn’t too much of a mixed-up session in terms of people out of position,” he said.
HAMILTON SECOND
Hamilton, back on the front row for the first time since he took pole in Canada in June, looked forward to challenging Webber in the race.
“The positive thing is we are up there and in for the fight,” he said. “The car feels pretty good here so we are in a good position to get some good points.”
The Briton had been fastest in the second part of the session, ahead of teammate and reigning champion Jenson Button who qualified in fifth place.
RACY QUALIFIER
The first part was more like a race than qualifying, with drivers jostling for position on the road after the session was stopped when Renault’s Russian Vitaly Petrov spun and clouted the barriers.
With a darkening sky threatening rain at the re-start, the cars lined up at the pit-lane exit and streamed out nose-to-tail at the green light.
Brazilian Lucas di Grassi then spun at turn 14 and hit the Lotus of Italian Jarno Trulli, with seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher expertly carving through the melee in his Mercedes.
FAVORITE TRACK
The German, back at his favorite track at the age of 41, qualified 11th, but will start in 21st place due to a penalty imposed at the previous Hungarian Grand Prix for a move on former Ferrari teammate Rubens Barrichello.
Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg will collect a five-place grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change and should start 16th.
The penalties will lift Lotus’s Heikki Kovalainen up to 14th place, the highest that any driver for one of the three new teams — none of which has scored a point so far — has started this season.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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