Lewis looks set for happy Anniversary
MOTORSPORT: Lewis Hamilton continued his dominance of the new Formula One season by finishing fastest in second practice for the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix.
Hamilton saw off Valtteri Bottas by 0.176 seconds at Silverstone after the Finn went quickest in the morning running.
Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo was third in the order, while Sebastian Vettel broke down in his Ferrari during the closing stages following an engine failure.
Mercedes have won all of the races staged this season, and their stranglehold on the sport looks set to carry over to tomorrow’s fifth round.
Hamilton finished the final track action of the day eight tenths clear of Ricciardo, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in fourth, 0.831 sec back.
Racing Point’s Lance Stroll was the only other driver to end the running within a second of Hamilton’s pace.
Hamilton holds a 30-point lead over Bottas at the championship summit as he chases a recordequalling seventh world title – and on the evidence of yesterday’s running appears set to extend his margin. Vettel was once the closest championship challenger to Hamilton, but the four-time world champion is enduring an arduous campaign.
And he suffered a fresh setback here when he was forced to pull over with smoke pouring out the back of his Ferrari.
Vettel, who finished a lowly 10th at Silverstone last weekend for the British Grand Prix, was only 14th – 1.6 sec adrift of Hamilton – when he parked his stricken car in the closing minutes.
Vettel’s team-mate Charles Leclerc finished seventh, one spot behind Nico Hulkenberg who is back in the Racing Point cockpit this weekend as Sergio Perez remains sidelined with coronavirus.
Elsewhere, British driver Lando Norris, fourth in the standings ahead of tomorrow’s landmark grand prix, was eighth, one place ahead of Mclaren team-mate Carlos Sainz. George Russell finished 16th for Williams.
SNOOKER: Mark Williams shrugged off the challenge of his fellow former champion Stuart Bingham to book his place in the quarter-finals of the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible. A break of 75 saw the 45-year-old Welshman ultimately seal a 13-11 victory despite dropping 9-8 behind the 2015 winner in the opening frame of the session.
Two successive frames including a break of 90 put Williams back in command, then a further 74 nudged him back in front after Bingham briefly levelled. Bingham fought back again with a superb break of 48 bringing the score back to 11-11, before Williams seized a second chance to move ahead again and ultimately clinch the match.