Lewis Hamilton on Sunday accused Formula One rival Sebastian Vettel of disgracing himself and deliberately driving into his car as a bitter clash between the two world championship rivals dominated the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo won in Baku after a chaotic race which saw Ferrari’s Vettel given a 10-second stop-go penalty when he steered into the back of race leader Hamilton’s Mercedes under safety-car conditions.
The four-time Formula One champion seemed infuriated with Hamilton after the British driver slowed on the exit of turn 15. After the initial collision, the German gesticulated angrily with both hands as he then pulled alongside his rival and hit the side of Hamilton’s car.
After his penalty, imposed by the stewards for dangerous driving, Vettel recovered to finish in fourth, one place ahead of his British rival.
The episode left Hamilton incensed.
“Deliberately driving into another driver and getting away pretty much scot-free as he still came fourth, I think that’s a disgrace,” the Briton told Channel 4. “Imagine all the young kids that are watching Formula 1 today and see that kind of behavior from a four-time world champion. I think that says it all.”
“If he wants to prove that he’s a man, I think we should do it out of the car face to face,” he said. “Driving dangerously, which in any way can put another driver at risk... we were going slow, if we had been going fast it could’ve been a lot worse. It definitely sets a precedent within F1, and it also does for all the young kids that are watching us drive and conduct ourselves. They’ve seen today how a four-time champion behaves and I think, hopefully, that doesn’t ripple into the younger categories.”
Hamilton began the race in pole and established himself as race leader, but his progress was stymied when he was forced to pit due to a loose head rest. While Vettel’s sanction saw him drop from second to ninth, he recovered to extend his championship lead over Hamilton to 14 points.
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