Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg claimed the first pole position of his career yesterday, topping the qualifiers for the Chinese Grand Prix.
McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton qualified second, but will have to start today’s race in seventh due to a five-place grid penalty for changing his gearbox.
Michael Schumacher placed third, but will be promoted to start beside his Mercedes teammate on the front row due to Hamilton’s penalty.
Photo: AFP
Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi placed an impressive fourth in qualifying, followed by Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus, Jenson Button of McLaren, Mark Webber of Red Bull and Sergio Perez of Sauber, with Fernando Alonso of Ferrari and Romain Grosjean of Lotus rounding out the top 10.
The biggest surprise of all was the absence of world champion Sebastian Vettel from the final session. He missed out on the top ten in Q2 by just 0.05 seconds.
Vettel was well off the pace of Red Bull teammate Webber, who is using a revamped exhaust system this weekend, which Vettel decided to forego as the reduced down force did not suit his driving style.
Rosberg did only one lap in Q3 to preserve his tires and then watched from the pit to see whether anyone could beat his time.
“It was strange before, because I was standing there on my own and everybody else was still going out and I couldn’t do anything anymore. Very strange,” he said.
Hamilton attempted to get pole position for what would have been the third consecutive time this season, but his McLaren could not match a Mercedes car which is tailor-made for the China circuit and its very long straight. Rosberg’s final time was a full half-second faster than Hamilton’s.
However, the true test for Mercedes will come in today’s race. The team had also exhibited a quick pace in the Australian and Malaysian qualifiers, but were subsequently well off the pace in both the races. Mercedes has been trying to remedy its rapid tire degradation since then and today’s race will be a test of that work.
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