World championship leader Lewis Hamilton continued to dominate with a sizzling lap yesterday to secure pole position for the inaugural Russian Grand Prix in Sochi.
The 29-year-old Briton, winner of the past three Grands Prix, was fastest with a late lap at the new Sochi Autodrom to finish two-10ths of a second clear of his Mercedes teammate and title rival Nico Rosberg.
The German, 10 points behind Hamilton in the championship with four races remaining, pushed hard to catch him, but was almost overhauled by Finn Valtteri Bottas in the final seconds, with the Williams driver only missing out on a front-row start when he slid off circuit at the penultimate corner.
Photo: Reuters
It was Hamilton’s seventh pole this year and the 38th of his career, and for the Mercedes team another front-row lockout, their ninth of the season ahead of today’s race in which they can clinch the constructors’ crown, ending Red Bull’s four-year reign as team champions.
“Pole is a great place to start and the team have done a great job,” Hamilton said.
Briton Jenson Button recovered from an undistinguished showing in yesterday morning’s final free practice to take fourth place on the grid alongside Bottas.
Local favorite Daniil Kvyat claimed a rousing fifth place for Toro Rosso, to the delight of a capacity crowd in the Olympic Park circuit. It was the 20-year-old Russian’s best qualifying performance.
Australian Daniel Ricciardo struggled to take seventh in the leading Red Bull, but teammate and four-time champion German Sebastian Vettel failed to make the cut for the top 10, dropping out in Q2 in 11th place.
Qualifying took place on a beautiful late summer’s day in the Black Sea resort, in contrast to the lashing rainstorms a week earlier in Japan, where Frenchman Jules Bianchi suffered his life-threatening injuries on Sunday last week.
The two Mercedes men were soon on top with solid laps as the scramble to survive the first cut began. Bottas was soon on their heels, but Felipe Massa struggled with fuel pressure problems and was eliminated in 18th place.
Among those to go out with the Brazilian was Briton Max Chilton in the sole Marussia.
Rosberg was swiftly on top in Q2, but after a fast Bottas lap, Hamilton romped clear again in another demonstration of his pure speed and talent, his supremacy accentuated as four-time champion Vettel failed to make the top-10 shootout.
As the German dropped out, both Toro Rossos went through.
With 125 points at stake in the remaining four Grand Prix of the season — including 50 at season-ending Abu Dhabi — Rosberg said every race was important.
“Lewis was quicker all weekend and I have to accept it, but front row is still good,” Rosberg said. “The track is so smooth on tires, it’s completely different from anything else we’ve had.”
Bottas said he did not know how close he was to the pole.
“Maybe I took it a little too hard on the tires at the start of the lap. I risked too much in the last corner and went wide,” Bottas said.
“It’s not nice to make a mistake, but Mercedes have been very fast in the last sector all weekend and maybe I lost one place,” the Finn added.
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