Lewis Hamilton claimed the Formula One title on the last lap on Sunday, making a pass on the final turn to take fifth place in the Brazilian Grand Prix and beat race-winner Felipe Massa by a point in the season standings.
The 23-year-old McLaren driver needed to finish fifth or better at Interlagos to ensure he would become F1’s youngest-ever champion.
He was in sixth place until passed Toyota’s Timo Glock on the last turn. Fernando Alonso was 24 when he won the title in 2005 with Renault.
PHOTO: EPA
“I am speechless,” Hamilton said. “It’s been a long journey in which I had the support of many people. My team did a fantastic job during the entire year and we sacrificed ourselves a lot. I am happy for having achieved this for all of us.”
Ferrari’s Massa won Sunday’s race in front of his home crowd, but it wasn’t enough to erase the seven-point lead Britain’s Hamilton held entering the season-ending race.
He needed to win and keep Hamilton out of the top five or place second and hope Hamilton finished outside of the points to become the first Brazilian season champion since the great, late Ayrton Senna in 1991.
Massa won in 1 hour, 34 minutes, 11.435 seconds at the Interlagos track. Alonso was second for Renault, 13.298 seconds behind, Kimi Raikkonen took third and Sebastien Vettel was fourth.
“I think it was the most incredible race I ever saw in my life,” Massa said. “So many things happened. It was a crazy race.”
“Unfortunately we missed by one point, but that’s racing. We need to be proud. The race was just perfect, we did everything just fantastically,” he said.
Hamilton’s title comes a year after he missed out by one point despite entering the final race with a seven-point lead over eventual champion Raikkonen of Ferrari.
A second meltdown loomed when Hamilton fell to sixth place Sunday after being overtaken with two laps to go by Toro Rosso’s Vettell, who also passed Glock.
Glock held onto fifth place until the last turn when he was forced to slow in the pouring rain because he was still on dry tires. Hamilton took his chance, moved into fifth place and finished the season with 98 points.
He became the first British F1 champion since Damon Hill in 1996, although for a few moments it wasn’t clear whether Hamilton or Massa had won the championship with both pit teams celebrating.
Hamilton had a long embrace with his father, Anthony, and both were apparently crying. He then kissed girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger, a singer with The Pussycat Dolls pop band.
He said he didn’t know if he had won the championship when he crossed the finish line.
“I was shouting, ‘Did I win? Did I win?”’ Hamilton said. “Then they told me when I was on the corner and I was ecstatic. It’s a dream.”
Massa, who started from the pole position, wept profusely on the podium.
Cautious from the start, Hamilton avoided the problems that cost him the title in Brazil last year, putting together a consistent run that kept him in the top five during most of the race.
He fell to seventh at one point, but quickly recovered, at least until the rain began to fall with five laps to go, forcing most of the leading cars to change into wet tires.
Hamilton’s pace slowed considerably, as other drivers were able to keep pushing.
“I was very comfortable before it started raining,” Hamilton said. “Then it began drizzling and I did not want to take any risks. Then he [Vettel] passed me and I was told I should stay in front of him. I could not believe it. Then, in the last corner, I passed Glock.
“It was one of the most difficult races of my entire life,” he said.
Heavy rain in South America’s biggest city on Sunday forced organizers to delay the start by 10 minutes.
The rain soon stopped, but the track was wet and most teams changed into wet tires.
All the front-runners made it through the first corner without a problem, with Massa leading and Hamilton in fourth. But a first-turn crash involving Red Bull driver David Coulthard, in his last race, forced the safety car to come out.
Hamilton was slowed by Trulli coming out of the pits, falling to seventh place. He quickly moved up to sixth after Trulli spun in front of him, and then passed Force India’s Giancarlo Fisichella on lap 17 to get back to fifth.
The Briton maintained his position after the second round of pit stops. With Vettel out of sequence after choosing to put on dry tries earlier than other drivers, Hamilton moved up to fourth again and was in a safe position until the downpour.
It started raining lightly with 12 laps to go, and more strongly with seven left. Hamilton came into the pits with five laps remaining, and Massa a lap later.
Hamilton was unable to make a move on Vettel but bided his time to pounce on Glock, who was struggling to stay on the track.
Massa’s win gave Ferrari the constructors’ champion, with McLaren failing to win that title since 1998.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS