Oscar Piastri on Sunday put Australia on top of the Formula One world championship for the first time since 2010, but the McLaren driver said he was still a long way from where he wanted to be despite his Saudi Arabian Grand Prix victory.
As he told reporters after the barrage of celebration fireworks had subsided over the Red Sea and the business of packing up had begun in the paddock, there was a lot more winning to do.
“I’m not that bothered by the fact that I’m leading the championship, but I’m proud of the work and the reasons behind why we’re leading the championship,” he said with his usual calm.
Photo: AP
“Melbourne wasn’t a great start to the year in terms of results, but from the moment I’ve hit the track this season, I felt like I’ve been in a good place,” he said.
Piastri, who started the season with ninth in his home race after spinning off, was already the first repeat winner of the season and Sunday’s success made him the first to take back-to-back victories.
He has now won three of the five races and leads teammate Lando Norris by 10 points, after starting the evening three behind.
The last Australian to lead the championship was Mark Webber, now the 24-year-old Melburnian’s manager, at Red Bull in 2010.
Meanwhile, four-time world champion Max Verstappen, who started on pole and finished second for Red Bull, bit his tongue to stay out of trouble after clearly disagreeing with stewards over a costly five-second penalty for a first corner incident.
He and Piastri raced into the corner, with Verstappen running wide and staying ahead before being penalized for leaving the track and gaining an advantage.
Team principal Christian Horner said the penalty was harsh, producing a photograph for reporters to back up his argument.
“I don’t know where Max was supposed to go at that first corner. We’ve lost the race by 2.8 seconds, so it’s tough,” he said.
Verstappen was reluctant to talk about it.
“Start happened, Turn One happened, and suddenly it was lap 50. It just all went super-fast,” he said when asked for his take on the start. “The problem is that I cannot share my opinion about it, because I might get penalized also, so it’s better not to speak about it.”
Verstappen was ordered to do “work of public interest” after swearing during a Singapore Grand Prix news conference in September last year.
College basketballer Kaitlyn Chen has become the first female player of Taiwanese descent to be drafted by a WNBA team, after the Golden State Valkyries selected her in the third and final round of the league’s draft on Monday. Chen, a point guard who played her first three seasons in college for Princeton University, transferred to the University of Connecticut (UConn) for her final season, which culminated in a national championship earlier this month. While at Princeton, Chen was named the Ivy League tournament’s most outstanding player three times from 2022 to last year. Prior to the draft, ESPN described Chen as
Robinson Cano spent 17 seasons playing in the MLB in front of all kinds of baseball fans, but he said there is something special about his stint with the Mexican Baseball League’s Diablos Rojos. He is not alone. The league last week opened its 100th season, aiming to keep an impressive growth in attendance that began after the national team’s surprise run at the 2023 World Baseball Classic, and is already surpassing some first-division soccer clubs. After finishing third in the 2023 tournament, many casual fans, some of them soccer enthusiasts disappointed after Mexico were eliminated in the first round in the 2022
Arne Slot has denied that Darwin Nunez was dropped from Liverpool’s win against West Ham because of a training-ground row with a member of his coaching staff. The Liverpool head coach on Sunday last week said that Nunez was absent from the 2-1 victory at Anfield, having felt unwell during training the day before, although the striker sat behind the substitutes throughout the game. Speculation has been rife that the Uruguay international, whom Slot criticized for his work rate against Wolves and Aston Villa in February, was left out for disciplinary reasons. Asked on Friday to clarify the situation, Slot said: “He
In-form teenager Mirra Andreeva on Thursday crashed out of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, Germany, after going down in straight sets to fellow Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova in the last 16. World No. 7 Andreeva, who already has two titles under her belt this season, lost 6-3, 6-2 against the 22nd-ranked Alexandrova in just over an hour. The 17-year-old Andreeva had defeated her elder sister Erika in the previous round on Wednesday, but Alexandrova quickly took control as she claimed her fourth win over a top-10 player this season. The 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva in February became the youngest winner of a WTA
RSS