If Lewis Hamilton clinches a record eighth world title it would be in no small part due to Sunday’s against-all-odds win in Brazil, which he ranked as “the best weekend I have experienced in probably my whole career.”
On Friday night that looked a fanciful idea, when he was hit with disqualification from pole in Saturday’s sprint after the stewards had detected a minor infringement on his car.
Setting off 20th, he produced a vintage overtaking masterclass to take fifth, which dropped to 10th in the grand prix grid after a penalty for an engine change.
Photo: Reuters
With championship leader Max Verstappen on the front row alongside Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas on pole, a win looked improbable.
“Coming here 19 points behind, only one point ahead in the teams championship, we really needed a solid, solid result, but then obviously we had all these penalties,” he said.
“Mentally you can just think it’s over, it’s impossible, but then nothing is if you put your mind to it. That’s really why we just cultivated a positive mental attitude and went in fighting, guns blazing,” he added, after climbing the podium draped in a Brazilian flag, the Interlagos fans chanting his name.
Enjoying faster speed on the straights courtesy of his new engine, the 36-year-old picked off the cars in front of him one by one — only Bottas under orders to swap places proved light work for all the race-craft knowledge the seven-time world champion has accumulated.
Verstappen inevitably proved an altogether tougher assignment.
He maneuvered ahead of his archrival at turn four on lap 48, but Verstappen forced him wide to hold his position.
The stewards investigated and determined Verstappen had acted within the rules.
Another failed attempt followed before he succeeded on his third, at the start of lap 59.
While Hamilton played the diplomatic card when asked about Verstappen’s tactics, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff was livid by that and all the obstacles thrown at his team in Brazil.
“I think we’ve just had many, many punches in the face this weekend with decisions that could have swung either side against us or for us,” he said.
“It’s just something that I’m just angry about, and I will defend my team, my drivers to what comes. I’ve been always very diplomatic in how I discuss things, but diplomacy has ended today,” he added.
He described the decision to disqualify over a broken part on a rear wing “we couldn’t look at, couldn’t analyze” as “very harsh.”
Especially when Red Bull repaired a wing three times in parc ferme “without consequence,” he said.
Verstappen escaping a five-second penalty when it was only Hamilton’s quick avoiding action that prevented yet another collision between the pair was “laughable,” he added.
He did temper his anger with sympathy for the stewards who he said “have a difficult life anyway and they are only there to lose.”
Mercedes head to the upcoming Qatar Grand Prix in a far better position than when they arrived in Sao Paulo.
Hamilton has reduced Verstappen’s lead from 21 points to 14, and Mercedes lead the constructors championship by 11.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
RSS