Lewis Hamilton roared to victory at the Chinese Grand Prix, but was then hit by a furious blast from Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg as their long-running feud re-erupted yesterday.
In a race which finished under the safety car, the Briton made it two wins out of three races this year, with Rosberg second and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel third.
Rosberg, who reacted angrily to his near-miss in Saturday’s qualifying by snapping at mechanics, at one point demanded that Hamilton speed up as Vettel closed in behind him.
Photo: AFP
“I wasn’t controlling his race, I was controlling my own race,” Hamilton said when asked about team orders to pick up his pace. “I had no real threat from Nico the whole race.”
“It’s interesting to hear from you Lewis that you were just thinking about yourself,” Rosberg said. “Driving slower than was really necessary at the beginning of stints opened up the opportunity for Sebastian to try to jump me. It compromised my race.”
Hamilton extended his record number of wins in China to four, but victory was overshadowed by his latest spat with Rosberg.
Vettel, who stunned dominant Mercedes to win in tropical Malaysia two weeks ago, took third behind Rosberg with the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen fourth.
Hamilton was cruising almost five seconds ahead of Rosberg until Max Verstappen’s Torro Rosso stopped on the pit straight two laps from the end, bringing out the safety car.
“The safety car at the end wasn’t helpful for anyone because it’s an anti-climax,” said Hamilton, whose only trouble of a near-flawless weekend was an overheating cockpit.
Starting from pole, Hamilton darted aggressively into turn one and he picked up the pace over the second half of the race.
Twenty laps in, Rosberg told his team: “Tell Lewis to speed up.”
Hamilton, who had been protecting his tires, obliged and quickly established a comfortable gap over the German.
Vettel failed to produce another upset as Mercedes resumed normal service.
“We tried everything we could today,” said the four-time world champion. “We were able to put some pressure on them, especially in the beginning of the race. “Towards the end they were just too quick.”
Williams drivers Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas finished fifth and sixth respectively.
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