Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo won the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday, but Mercedes hogged the headlines after Lewis Hamilton accused championship-leading teammate Nico Rosberg of deliberately running into him on the second lap.
Hamilton retired with a damaged car, but Rosberg — blamed by his bosses and booed by the crowd on the podium — finished second to extend his lead to 29 points with seven of the 19 races remaining.
The victory, on a surprisingly dry afternoon at a circuit famed for rapid changes in conditions, was Ricciardo’s second in succession and third of his first season with the reigning Formula One champions.
Photo: AFP
It was also his team’s second consecutive win in Belgium after four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel triumphed last year and set off a run of nine in a row.
Finland’s Valtteri Bottas was third for Williams, with compatriot Kimi Raikkonen finishing fourth for Ferrari — the first time he has beaten Spanish teammate Fernando Alonso this season — and Germany’s Vettel placing fifth.
“It’s been a really good day for us on a track we didn’t expect to get maximum points from, so yeah, it’ll keep us smiling for a while,” said Ricciardo, who led for much of the race — unlike his previous wins.
Photo: Reuters
Still, his endeavors were almost a sideshow to the major talking point: a further stirring up of already troubled waters at Mercedes.
The two teammates had been expected to dominate the race after qualifying on the front row, but the intense rivalry between them blew up in Mercedes’ face.
“We just had a meeting about it and he basically said he did it on purpose. He said he did it on purpose,” Hamilton told reporters after a post-race meeting with Rosberg and bosses. “He said he could have avoided it. He said: ‘I did it to prove a point.’”
Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff slammed the incident as “absolutely unacceptable.”
“Lap No. 2 of a long race and a crash between two teammates — we have often discussed the situation and it happened today,” he told the BBC. “You don’t try to overtake with the knife between your teeth in lap No. 2 and damage both cars.”
The team’s non-executive chairman, F1 legend Niki Lauda, was also fuming.
“It is unacceptable. If these things happen at the end of the race, when they are fighting for the win then you discuss it, but in the second lap to hand the victory to Red Bull,” the former champion said.
“I thought they were clever enough to know that, but obviously they aren’t,” Lauda said.
Hamilton had passed pole-sitter Rosberg at the start, but his race was effectively over moments later when the German tried to retake the lead in a misjudged move that could prove extremely costly for his British teammate.
Rosberg’s front wing made contact with Hamilton’s rear tire and punctured it, leaving the former champion to nurse his car back to the pits in a trail of tire debris.
“Nico hit me. Nico hit me,” Hamilton exclaimed over the car radio.
He rejoined the race a minute adrift of Rosberg. After complaining that he had no downforce and repeatedly asking the team to save the engine, the Briton was recalled to the pits five laps from the end and retired.
Some of the debris from the tire’s carcass later snagged on Rosberg’s radio mast, flapping in his face as he tried to clear it away at 300kph.
Mercedes have been struggling to keep the peace between the evenly-matched teammates since the start of the year and arrived at Spa after another incident in Hungary last month, where a “team orders” controversy left Rosberg aggrieved.
Hamilton had started last in that race and finished third, with Rosberg going from pole to fourth and complaining that his teammate had not let him through.
Then, as on Sunday, Mercedes made clear their support for Hamilton and they will have their work cut out again in the days ahead.
“This is a decisive moment in the battle between the two of them and for the team,” Wolff said.
Lewis is very upset, we kept him out there for a long time with a damaged car. He will recover quickly. It is going to be handled,” he added.
Rosberg has 220 points to Hamilton’s 191, with Ricciardo moving closer on 156.
Mercedes remain comfortably in front in the constructors’ standings with 411 points to Red Bull’s 254.
Cheng Chen Chin-mei on Saturday beamed broadly as she hoisted a 35kg weightlifting bar to her waist, dropped it and waved confidently to the enthusiastic crowd in a competition in Taipei. Cheng Chen, 90, has been pumping iron since last year, encouraged by her granddaughter to take up the sport after she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She credits the regimen with helping to fix her posture. Three generations of her family were among a couple of hundred people watching Cheng Chen and 44 others aged 70 or older in the weightlifting competition. In the three-round event, Cheng Chen lifted as much as
‘BOWLINE’ AND ‘ARCTOS’: Roy Quaden was hit on the head by a boom, while Nick Smith was struck by the main sheet and thrown across the boat amid rough seas Two sailors have been killed in separate incidents in the treacherous Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, officials said yesterday, as a string of yachts retired in powerful winds and high seas. One of the crew members, 55-year-old Roy Quaden on Flying Fish Arctos, was hit on the head by a boom as the fleet raced down the New South Wales coast, race organizers said. The other man, 65-year-old Nick Smith, was struck by the main sheet aboard Bowline and thrown across the boat, said David Jacobs, vice commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. “Unfortunately, he hit his head on the winch, and
Novak Djokovic is confident he can still win Grand Slams, starting at the Australian Open, with the Serbian launching his bid for an unprecedented 11th title and record 25th major crown in Brisbane, Australia. Top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka, who is gunning for a third Melbourne Park trophy, joins him at the Queensland Tennis Centre from Sunday to Jan. 5 in a stellar women’s field. The next season gets under way tomorrow with the mixed-teams United Cup in Perth and Sydney, headlined by world No. 2 Iga Swiatek in her first tournament since revelations that she served a one-month doping suspension. It
Liverpool on Thursday powered seven points clear at the top of the Premier League as the title favorites survived a scare in their 3-1 win against Leicester City, while Bruno Fernandes was sent off in Manchester United’s dismal 2-0 defeat against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Erling Haaland missed a penalty as crisis-torn Manchester City failed to end their dismal run with a 1-1 draw against Everton, but it was United’s travails and Liverpool’s remarkable run that took center-stage. Arne Slot’s side were shocked by Jordan Ayew’s early strike at Anfield, but the leaders recovered their composure to equalize just before the interval through Cody
RSS