Verstappen atop podium as Mercedes fail
SPIELBERG(AUSTRIA): Max Verstappen made the most of a rare Mercedes double retirement on Sunday by claiming his first win this year, and Red Bull’s first at “home”, in an incident-packed Austrian Grand Prix.
The Dutch tyro grabbed victory after both Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas pulled up with power and gearbox failures respectively as their team’s run of four straight Austrian wins came to an abrupt end at the Red Bull Ring where the track temperature was 48 celsius degrees.
“It’s amazing to win in a Red Bull at the Red Bull Ring,” said Verstappen, who was supported by an “Orange army” of more than 20,000 fans.
“Very hard to manage the tyres, lot of blistering, but we manged to hang on,” he said.
The double-retirement was a first for Mclaren since the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix, which Verstappen won on his Red Bull debut after Hamilton collided with team-mate Nico Rosberg on the opening lap.
Hamilton was unhappy before his late retirement complaining to his team that “we’ve just thrown away a win,” by bungling the timing of a tyre change.
SURI, NITIN LEAD IN COMMONWEALTH CHESS
NEWDELHI: Local favourite Grandmaster Vaibhav Suri along with International Master S Nitin led the table with six points after round seven at the Commonwealth Chess Championship here on Sunday.vaibhav signed the peace treaty with top seed Deep Sengupta to take his tally to six points while S Nitin set aside his sixth round debacle against Vaibhav to beat national sub-junior champion Sankalp Gupta.