Hamilton wants real Bahrain battle with Vettel

Mercedes favourites

MANAMA, April 12, (RTRS): Lewis Hamilton is keeping his fingers crossed that he and Ferrari rival Sebastian Vettel can have a proper battle in Bahrain on Sunday after last year’s race did neither of them any favours.

Vettel, now joint leader of the Formula One championship with Mercedes’s Hamilton after two races, was unable to start the 2016 grand prix at Sakhir due to an engine failure on the formation lap.

The German, who had qualified third behind the then-dominant Mercedes drivers, has been alongside Hamilton on the front row so far this year.

“It (the title battle) is going to go right down to the end of the season, and I hope there’s nothing mechanical that will come in between our sheer battle through ability,” said Hamilton after winning in China last weekend.

“I really, really hope it’s just an out and out fight through stubbornness, through mental stability, through fitness, composure...,” he added.

Vettel, a four times world champion with Red Bull, and triple champion Hamilton have 43 points apiece after one victory and second place each.

Unless both draw a blank, the deadlock

Karl-Anthony Towns had 26 points and 12 rebounds, while Andrew Wiggins overcame a 1-for-11 start to finish with 18 points for the Minnesota. But the Timberwolves again struggled to get stops down the stretch and Wiggins missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer as they lost their fifth straight game.

Lakers 108, Pelicans 96 In Los Angeles, Metta World Peace scored a team-leading 18 points during what might have been his final home game for the Lakers, and Los Angeles extended its late-season winning streak to five games with a victory over New Orleans.

World Peace made his 840th career NBA start and hit four 3-pointers while scoring all of his points in the second half, thrilling his younger teammates and setting off chants of his name from the Staples Center crowd.

Although he hasn’t announced his retirement, the 37-year-old veteran of 17 NBA seasons got several standing ovations down the stretch.

Cheick Diallo scored 19 points for the Pelicans, who lost their fifth straight while playing without big men Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins.

Kings 129, Suns 104 In Sacramento, California, Buddy Hield scored a career-high 30 points and Ty Lawson had his first career triple-double, getting 22 points, 12 assists and 11 rebounds as Sacramento beat Phoenix.

The Kings never trailed, scoring the game’s first nine points, leading by 19 at halftime and keeping a double-digit lead the entire second half.

Ben McLemore, Willie CauleyStein and Georgios Papagiannis all had 13 points for the Kings. Skal Labissiere and Anthony Tolliver had 12 points apiece. The Kings snapped a two-game losing streak, beating the Suns for the third time in four games this season.

Tyler Ulis had 27 points and Marquese Chriss scored 22 for Phoenix. Leading scorer Devin Booker was given the night off as the Suns finished 24-58. must be broken on Sunday at a desert circuit where both are two times winners and returning in rather better mood than they left last year.

There is a real sense of anticipation about the emerging scrap between two great rivals with a huge determination to win and no less mutual respect of each other’s talents and achievements.

“He is at his best and he is phenomenally quick,” Hamilton said of Australian Grand Prix winner Vettel. “Ferrari are at their best in years. We’re at our best as a team, and I feel like I’m at my best.

“The ultimate fighter always wants to go up against the best battle he can have because then when you come out on top, it’s so much more satisfying. I love this fight.” Last year’s race in Bahrain does not hold great memories for either of the current Mercedes drivers, either.

Hamilton made a slow start from pole and collided on the first lap with the Williams of Valtteri Bottas, his new team mate this season, who was punished by stewards for his move. Bottas, who has

MANAMA, April 12, (RTRS): Fernando Alonso will miss this year’s Monaco Grand Prix, the most glamorous race on the Formula One calendar, to compete in the Indianapolis 500 on the same weekend in May, McLaren said on Wednesday.

The Spaniard, a double world champion, said he wanted one day to emulate Graham Hill, the late Briton who won the Formula One title, Indy and the Le Mans 24 Hours sportscar race in the 1960s.

The appeal of competing in the “greatest spectacle in racing” will only have been increased by his Hondapowered Formula One team’s current woes - McLaren is last in the championship after two races without

replaced last year’s winner and retired world champion Nico Rosberg, will not want reminding of that as he seeks to move on from a spin behind the safety car that cost him points in China.

Mercedes should be favourites, after

a point. “I’ve won the Monaco Grand Prix twice, and it’s one of my ambitions to win the Triple Crown, which has been achieved by only one driver in the history of motorsport,” Alonso said in a team statement released ahead of this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix.“It’s a tough challenge, but I’m up for it. I don’t know when I’m going to race at Le Mans, but one day I intend to. I’m only 35: I’ve got plenty of time for that.” McLaren will enter the 101st edition of the Indy, on May 28, with a Honda-engined Indy car run by Andretti Autosport, owned by former McLaren driver Michael Andretti, in the old papaya orange livery of the 1970s.

It will be the first time in 38 years

winning the last three races at Sakhir, but Ferrari are sharp on strategy and have shown they flourish in hotter conditions.

“I think they will be very, very quick in the next race but there’s a lot of straights there as well and we’ve obviously got, Italy’s team competes during the qualifying match in the Men’s Team Pursuit at the World Track Cycling Championships in Hong Kong on April 12. (AP)

that McLaren have competed at The Brickyard. They won at Indianapolis in 1974 and 1976 with Johnny Rutherford, while Hill did so in 1966.

The other Formula One champions to have won at Indy are Britain’s Jim Clark, American Mario Andretti, Brazilian Emerson Fittipaldi and Canadian Jacques Villeneuve.

Alonso is out of contract with McLaren at the end of the season and speculation has risen about whether he will see out the year at a team that have slipped far from their glory days. The second most successful team in the sport after Ferrari, in terms of race victories, have not won anything since 2012 and has been well off the pace since starting a

I think, still the strongest power unit on the grid,” commented Hamilton.

“So I think that will come into play, for sure.” The race will also see the return of Sauber’s Pascal Wehrlein, who has missed two races due to fitness issues,

new partnership with Honda in 2015.

“I’ve never raced an IndyCar car before, and neither have I ever driven on a super-speedway, but I’m confident that I’ll get to grips with it fast,” said Alonso, who will fly to Indianapolis immediately after his home Spanish Grand Prix.

McLaren said they would name a replacement in due course for Monaco, a tight and twisty circuit which promises to be trickier than usual with the 2017 cars wider than before.

Britain’s 2009 world champion Jenson Button, a former Monaco winner, remains contracted to McLaren despite handing over his seat to Belgian rookie Stoffel Vandoorne last year.

and of former commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone, attending a race for the first time since his ouster by Liberty Media. The 86-year-old Briton told Reuters that a Vettel v Hamilton battle was win-win for the sport.