It took less than one-and-a-half minutes for Jenson Button to wipe away McLaren’s winter testing of discontent and assert the team as a prime contender for tomorrow’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
Button and Lewis Hamilton set the fastest times in yesterday’s practice as the team profited from late changes to the car’s set-up.
Button posted the fastest lap of 1 minute, 28.854 seconds in the second practice session, 0.132 seconds ahead of Hamilton as the McLaren cars performed strongly on the softer “option” tires after being off the pace on the hard tires in the morning session.
“We don’t know what fuel loads the others are running, but our car feels like a big improvement from where we were just a few weeks ago,” Hamilton said.
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso was third quickest in both sessions.
Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber were fourth and fifth respectively.
Sixth-placed Michael Schumacher of Mercedes led for much of the second session, indicating the team may have taken a step forward after last year’s disappointments.
“We learned a lot today and are more or less where we thought we would be, although it was quite windy and tricky to drive,” Schumacher said. “We will sort out some issues on our car for the rest of the weekend, but I am still happy with what we have seen here so far.”
Button and Hamilton had talked down McLaren’s chances before arriving in Australia, following an offseason in which the team struggled to integrate a complex new exhaust system and get the best out of the new Pirelli tires. A last-minute decision to revert to a simpler exhaust and floor of the car paid off.
“Today showed that, first of all, we’ve got reliability, which is great,” Button said. “That’s something we’ve not had all winter, so to have a car that runs for as many laps as we want it to is very satisfying. It also means we can get stuck into our set-up work and improve the car.”
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