Fernando Alonso roared to a dominant victory in the Chinese Grand Prix yesterday to give Ferrari their first victory of the Formula One season.
In a dry race dictated by tire choices and frequent pit stops, the Spaniard beat Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen by 10.1 seconds to make amends for crashing out of the previous race in Malaysia.
Lewis Hamilton completed a trio of world champions on the podium with third place for Mercedes after the Briton started in pole position.
The win was Alonso’s second in China, where red is regarded as the color of good fortune, and his first since Germany in July last year. It was also the 31st victory of his career — taking him to fourth in the all-time list alongside Britain’s 1992 champion Nigel Mansell.
“The team did a perfect job with the setup of the car,” said Alonso, who is now third in the overall standings on 43 points after three races — six points behind Raikkonen and nine adrift of Red Bull’s triple world champion Sebastian Vettel. “It was a fantastic race for us from the start.”
Raikkonen had started second on the grid, but made a slow getaway and was immediately passed by both Ferraris. The Finn fell to fourth spot, before battling back through the many pit stops and despite a broken front wing.
Vettel finished fourth, just 0.2 seconds behind Hamilton after a thrilling chase to the checkered flag, with McLaren’s Jenson Button fifth to ensure five champions in the top five places.
“We’re not quite there yet, but we’re not so far away,” Mercedes principal Ross Brawn, whose team won in China from pole last year with Nico Rosberg, told Hamilton over the radio.
The Briton could at least feel buoyed with his second successive podium finish for the team he joined from McLaren at the end of last season, while Rosberg failed to finish.
There was more agony for Red Bull’s Mark Webber, who started from the pit lane after running out of fuel in Saturday’s qualifying session.
The Australian lasted just 18 of the 56 laps, pitting twice and breaking his front wing in a collision with the Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso of Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne.
The afternoon was in stark contrast to the previous Malaysian Grand Prix, which he led until Vettel ignored instructions from the pit wall not to overtake and denied him victory.
The feud between the teammates was the talk of the Shanghai paddock in the buildup to the race, but they never came close to racing each other, let alone being in a position for Webber to exact any revenge.
The nearest it came to any drama was when Vettel almost hit Webber’s loose rear wheel as he rounded the turn 14 hairpin and found it bouncing in front of him.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed