Lewis Hamilton yesterday won his home British Grand Prix for the fourth year in a row, while Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel sustained a penultimate lap puncture that slashed his championship lead to a single point.
The Briton’s drive from pole to flag on an overcast afternoon was lonely, uneventful and dominant with Mercedes team mate Valtteri Bottas finishing 14 seconds behind to secure the one-two.
Hamilton became only the third driver, after his late compatriot Jim Clark and Frenchman Alain Prost, to win the British Grand Prix five times and the first to take four successive victories at Silverstone.
Photo: Reuters
Romain Grosjean on Saturday risked the wrath of the stewards at the British Grand Prix when he hinted that their decision not to penalize Lewis Hamilton for blocking demonstrated double standards.
The Frenchman claimed he lost three-tenths of a second in his Haas when he was held up behind Hamilton, in the early stages of the third qualifier, in which the three-time champion went on to claim pole position.
“Maybe, if it was another driver, the sanction would have been something,” he said. “And it does feel sometimes like there are two types of decisions.”
The stewards had decided that there was no case for Hamilton to answer after examining video and data following the session, but Grosjean was not satisfied.
“I know that there is a world title going on at the front, but we are in a position where we actually fight as hard as the boys at the front — and I was impeded today,” Grosjean said. “We’ve put a lot of work in and, yes, I lost 0.35 seconds in two corners. If, next time, I have to get my front wing in his rear diffuser to show that I have been impeded...”
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff responded by appearing to accuse Grosjean of double standards himself.
Grosjean’s past record includes several incidents in which he was judged to be the cause of accidents, and a ban in 2012 for causing a major multiple collision at the Belgian Grand Prix.
“There are some drivers that moan all the time,” Wolff said. “They just continue moaning. I don’t want to comment.”
Wolff’s Haas counterpart, Gunther Steiner, backed his driver’s views.
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
‘SU-PENKO’: Hsieh and Ostapenko face a rematch against their Australian Open final opponents, the same duo Hsieh played in last year’s Wimbledon semi-finals Taiwanese women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei and Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko on Wednesday survived a near upset to the unseeded duo of Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, setting up a semi-final showdown against last year’s winners. Despite losing a hard-fought opening set 7-6 (7/4) on a tiebreak, the fourth seeds turned up the heat, losing just five games in the final two sets to handily put down Cirstea and Kalinskaya 6-3, 6-2. Nicknamed “Su-Penko,” the pair are next to face top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in a reversal of last
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
Taiwanese tennis veteran Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) and her Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko finished runners-up in the Wimbledon women's doubles final yesterday, losing 6-3, 2-6, 4-6. The three-set match against Veronika Kudermetova of Russia and Elise Mertens of Belgium lasted two hours and 23 minutes. The loss denied 39-year-old Hsieh a chance to claim her 10th Grand Slam title. Although the Taiwanese-Latvian duo trailed 1-3 in the opening set, they rallied with two service breaks to take it 6-3. In the second set, Mertens and Kudermetova raced to a 5-1 lead and wrapped it up 6-2 to even the match. In the final set, Hsieh and
RSS