Australian Mark Webber won a sunny British Grand Prix yesterday for Red Bull to deny Fernando Alonso a second successive victory and slash the Ferrari driver’s Formula One lead to 13 points.
Alonso, the winner at Silverstone last year, had led from pole position, but was powerless to prevent Webber powering past six laps from the end and then take the checkered flag by three seconds.
The victory was the 35-year-old’s second of the season, after Monaco, and it left him with 116 points to Alonso’s 129 after nine of 20 races.
“Another great day for us and a great day for me to win here again. It is fantastic,” he said on the team radio, before being interviewed on the podium by triple world champion Jackie Stewart.
Webber’s Red Bull teammate and double world champion Sebastian Vettel was third on a dry track with the sun shining over the circuit after days of rain that had left the campsites waterlogged and approach roads clogged with traffic.
Brazilian Felipe Massa was fourth for Ferrari, ahead of the Lotus pair of Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean.
Jenson Button’s British Grand Prix jinx continued, before a predicted crowd of more than 125,000 people, with the McLaren driver failing to stand on the podium at his home race for the 13th year in a row.
The 2009 world champion, who has never finished higher than fourth at Silverstone, started 16th and ended up with only a point in 10th.
His teammate Lewis Hamilton, the 2008 champion, whose win that year remains the last by a British driver at home, was eighth after losing out to Michael Schumcher’s Mercedes in the closing laps.
Brazilian Bruno Senna was ninth for Williams.
Williams could have hoped for much more, but their Venezuelan driver Pastor Maldonado collided with Mexico’s Sergio Perez on lap 12, ending the Sauber driver’s race.
Stewards were due to rule on the incident, but Perez said they had to act.
“This guy will never learn if they don’t do something. He could hurt someone. Everybody has concerns about him,” Perez told the BBC.
For the first time in almost 36 years, a Parisian derby will be played in French soccer’s top flight when reigning champions Paris Saint-Germain FC take on the nouveau riche Paris Football Club (PFC) today. Not one of the players involved in today’s match — PFC’s 38-year-old third-choice goalkeeper Remy Riou is almost certainly not going to be involved — was born the last time there was a Parisian derby in Ligue 1. That was on Feb. 25, 1990, when Moroccan midfielder Aziz Bouderbala scored a brace as Racing Paris 1 beat PSG 2-1 at the Parc des Princes home that
BOUNCING BACK: Antetokounmpo had just returned from an eight-game injury absence last month, leading the Milwaukee Bucks to their third win in four games Giannis Antetokounmpo threw down the game-winning dunk with 4.7 seconds remaining to lift the Milwaukee Bucks to a 122-121 victory over the Charlotte Hornets and grab a slice of NBA history on Friday. The Bucks trailed by as many as 16 on their home floor, but Antetokounmpo scored 12 of his 30 points in the final quarter to help seal the win in a frantic finish that saw five lead changes in the final 45.7 seconds. The two-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) added 10 rebounds and five assists. It was his 158th regular-season game with at least 30 points, 10 rebounds and
Stan Wawrinka’s 40-year-old legs did not let him down over three-plus hours in his first singles match of a farewell tour yesterday. Three-time Grand Slam singles champion Wawrinka beat Arthur Rinderknech of France, who is ranked 29th to Wawrinka’s 157th, 5-7, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (5). The match went 3 hours, 16 minutes. Wawrinka last month announced that this year would be his last on the ATP tour. “Today was a tough battle ... it’s amazing to come here for the first time, to have so much support,” Wawrinka said yesterday. “Twenty years on tour, you kind of always play in the same place
Four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka yesterday got her season off to a winning start for Japan in the United Cup, after the UK’s Emma Raducanu pulled out of their singles clash with a fitness issue, while in Brisbane, Taiwan’s Latisha Chan and Wu Fang-hsien crashed out of the women’s doubles. In Perth, despite Osaka’s win, the UK took the match 2-1 with a deciding mixed doubles victory. Osaka was too strong for reserve and 276th-ranked Katie Swan, winning 7-6 (7/4), 6-1 as Raducanu watched from the sidelines. “I’m proud of how I fought,” Osaka said. “I’d never played here, it was tough.” Britain
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