Germany’s Nico Rosberg won the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday to end teammate Lewis Hamilton’s run of five successive victories and cut the Briton’s championship lead to 17 points with one race remaining.
Hamilton took the checkered flag 1.4 seconds behind after setting the fastest lap, with Mercedes breaking F1 records with 11 one-two finishes and 30 podium placings in a season.
“It was a great weekend,” said Rosberg, who started on pole position after lapping fastest in qualifying at Interlagos.
Photo: AFP
“There’s still all to play for. I just need to keep this going now,” added Rosberg, whose win made up for last weekend when he started on pole in Texas and lost to Hamilton.
The final race at Abu Dhabi on Nov. 23 will offer double points for the first time, with 50 for the winner, but Hamilton only needs a second-place finish to wrap up his second title. The Briton has 334 points to Rosberg’s 317.
Mercedes’ victory equaled the record of 15 in a season held jointly by Ferrari and McLaren, with Rosberg now on five to his teammate’s 10.
The two Mercedes drivers were in a race of their own on a sunny Sao Paulo afternoon
Hamilton’s only scare came on lap 28 as he pushed to gain an advantage when Rosberg pitted, spinning and skidding off at turn four. That slipup cost him 7 seconds and a chance to win.
After he pitted, the 2008 champion steadily narrowed the gap until the Silver Arrows were just half a second apart, but Rosberg never allowed him to get close enough to make a move.
“It was an amazing race,” said Hamilton, despite missing out on his hope to become the first British driver to win six races in a row.
Brazilian Felipe Massa returned to the podium in front of a cheering crowd with third place for Williams, 41 seconds behind despite a stop-go penalty for speeding in the pitlane.
Massa had only himself to blame when he pulled in to the McLaren pits instead of Williams’.
“I’m so happy with the race, not happy with my mistakes today,” he said. “I stopped in McLaren [garage] because they changed our garage this race and we are a lot more in the middle and McLaren with the similar color... I thought it was our garage.”
McLaren’s Jenson Button came fourth, Red Bull’s quadruple world champion Sebastian Vettel was fifth, while Ferrari duo Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen were sixth and seventh respectively. Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg placed eighth, McLaren’s Kevin Magnussen ninth and Finland’s Valtteri Bottas took the last point for Williams.
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