Daniel Ricciardo on Sunday lived his own Apollo 13 moment to emerge triumphant from what could have been a Monaco Grand Prix nightmare.
If Formula One’s showcase race was dull for his rivals, with the top six finishing in the position they started, the Australian wrestled gremlins for more than 50 laps of the unforgiving street circuit.
“He could have been in Apollo 13, I tell you, the way he was dealing with the issues today,” said team boss Christian Horner, referring to the troubled 1970 US lunar mission that ultimately got home safely.
The Red Bull driver reported a loss of power on lap 28, an issue serious enough for the team to consider telling him to stop the car and save the engine.
“The engine guys could see from the data that the MGU-K had stopped completely,” added Horner, referring to the part of the Renault power unit that recovers the energy generated while braking. “At that point there was talk in the background of retiring the car... my position was: ‘We’re leading the Monaco Grand Prix, we’ll run until this engine stops.’”
The failure of the unit meant that the car’s rear brakes were overheating and in danger of catching fire.
Informed over the radio that the situation would not improve, Ricciardo was told to wind the brake bias to the front of the car and lift off the accelerator in braking areas to generate cooling, and with all that, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was only a second behind.
The Australian kept his calm and carried on, easing off, but knowing also that the tight and twisty Monaco layout made it hard for anyone to pass unless he slowed dramatically.
“It was an incredible performance from him. Just extremely mature. I’m super happy for him, he really deserved this result this weekend,” Horner said.
The team boss congratulated Ricciardo over the team radio afterward by referencing Michael Schumacher in 1995 — a remark he later said was actually referring to the German’s drive in Spain in 1994 when he drove much of that race in fifth gear.
Ricciardo was simply relieved to get “payback” for the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix — a race he also started on pole, but that was wrecked by a botched pit stop.
“Two years in the making this, so I finally feel like the redemption has arrived,” he said.
“I felt a loss of power and I thought the race was done, and we got home just using six gears,” he added. “Thanks to the team we got it back. I’m stoked.”
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