Lewis Hamilton has accused Max Verstappen of dirty driving after scraping home to a controversial victory against his title rival at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, levelling the scores ahead of the final race of the season.
Lewis Hamilton has won a chaotic and controversial Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after crashing twice with title rival Max Verstappen to zero the championship with one race remaining.
The first-ever race in Jeddah ended acrimoniously, with the warring title rivals accusing each other of dirty driving and toxic tactics after three standing restarts, two red flags and a string of virtual safety cars that stretched and shrunk the gap between the leaders throughout before Verstappen waved Hamilton into the lead after intervention from race control.
The grand prix started tamely, with Hamilton leading teammate Valtteri Bottas easily off the line to hold Verstappen in third, but the calm lasted only nine laps, when the first safety car was deployed to clean up Mick Schumacher’s high-speed crash at Turn 22.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton has eased his way to pole position after championship leader Max Verstappen smashed his car at the death of a thrilling qualifying hour in Saudi Arabia.
Lewis Hamilton topped second practice at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after the session was truncated to clean up a high-speed crash by Charles Leclerc crash.
The session had settled into a rhythm of long-run simulation with five minutes remaining in the hour when Leclerc lost control of his Ferrari through the rapid Turn 22 bend. The rear of his car stepped out as he navigated the left-hander, spinning the car backwards into the barriers in a 120mph smash.
Leclerc thankfully emerged unscathed but winded, though the car was substantially damaged, precipitating a long night for the Ferrari mechanics.
Continue reading on RACERMercedes’ Lewis Hamilton set the early benchmark at the first-ever Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, topping first practice ahead of title rival Max Verstappen.
In a busy but controlled exploratory first sample of the circuit, Hamilton waited until late in the session to find pace with a new set of soft tires, setting a time of 1m29.786s to end the opening practice hour atop the time sheet.
Championship leader Verstappen was only 0.056s slower than Hamilton, but his practice performance was eye-catching more for his flurry of confidently aggressive early laps on the hard tire, the best time of which was less than 0.2s slower than his ultimate lap.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen leads by eight points, but Lewis Hamilton has all the momentum. With two rounds to go, who will claim the 2021 world championship? Featuring Nate Saunders from ESPN.
Red Bull Racing is scrambling to keep Max Verstappen’s title campaign alive against Lewis Hamilton, who’s found form just in the nick of time.
With the Formula 1 title to be decided by a two-race showdown between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, we’re joined by Ben Hunt, F1 journalist from the Sun newspaper in the UK, to look at how Hamilton has dragged himself back into contention, Mercedes’s late-season surge, and the escalating tension between rival team principals Toto Wolff and Christian Horner.
We pay our respects to Sir Frank Williams, and in a preview of the final two rounds of the season we catch up with Autosport F1 reporter Luke Smith to talk about his alleged passion for maple syrup and AFL football.