Beers and Bell, Sam and Amy ride to victory
BARCELONA: Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton seized pole position at the Spanish Grand Prix yesterday in a Mercedes onetwo that ended Sebastian Vettel’s bid for a fourth in a row.
The Briton, leading his Ferrari rival by four points after four races, put in two blistering final laps at an overcast Circuit de Catalunya to take the top slot in a track record one minute 16.173 seconds. Finnish teammate Valtteri Bottas was second, in 1:16.213, with Vettel third and 0.132 off the pace.
“I needed this pole, I haven’t had a pole for a while. It’s a Mercedes onetwo,” said Hamilton, whose last pole was in the Australian season-opener in March.
The four times world champion’s time, on a track that has been smoothed and resurfaced since last year, was nearly three seconds quicker than last year’s time of 1:19.149.
The Briton has now been on pole in Spain for three years in a row and four of the last five. Yesterday’s was the record 74th of his career and came at a track that has historically favoured the top qualifier.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen qualified fourth with the Red Bull pairing of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo lining up fifth and sixth for their first race since they collided in Azerbaijan two weekends ago.
Danish driver Kevin Magnussen qualified seventh for Haas, ahead of Spaniards Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz for Mclaren and Renault respectively. That marked the first time Sainz had outqualified German teammate Nico Hulkenberg this season and left Alonso as the only driver on the grid with a 5-0 record over team mate, Stoffel Vandoorne.
It was also the first time a Mclaren, now with Renault engines and with an eye-catching new nose and front wing, had reached the decisive final session this season. Frenchman Romain Grosjean rounded out the top 10 for Haas. New Zealand’s Brendon Hartley did not take part in qualifying for Toro Rosso after crashing in final practice.
His absence saved former champions Williams the embarrassment of filling the back row of the grid with Russian Sergey Sirotkin and Canadian Lance Stroll in 18th and 19th. – Reuters A MAJESTIC trio of stage wins for Team NAD 1’s Matt Beers and Nico Bell as well as dormakaba’s Sam Sanders and Amy Mcdougall, saw the two teams take home the men’s and women’s KAP sani2c titles respectively in Scottburgh yesterday.
Heading into the final fast 82km to the coast, the men’s contest had the potential to be a cracker with the chasing Team DSV pair of Arno du Toit and Gert Heyns needing to make up the four minutes that separated them from Team NAD.
The stage was neck and neck with three teams vying for a final stage title until Beers and Bell cut away from the chasing DSV duo as well as the PYGA/EURO Steel pair of Matthys Beukes and Julian Jessop – who were expected to fight it out for second.
As the Team NAD men cruised across the finish line for a perfect score over the three days, PYGA/ Euro Steel took advantage of an ailing Heyns which gave them slight consolation as they came across the line in second but still settled for third overall.
“Today we weren’t really expecting to win the stage and expected the other guys to do the racing but we ended up setting the pace through most of the day,” Bell said.
Having won in 2013, Bell was back for a spot on the top step of the podium. For Beers, a first win at the prestigious event bettered his second in 2017. The youngster was full of praise for his team-mate after their win. “After my second last year I really wanted a win here,” a relieved Beers said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better partner and it all went so smoothly for us.”
Despite a tough day in the saddle yesterday, Team DSV did enough to prevent too much damage to their overall time as PYGA/EURO Steel put the hurt in on the final stage.
“We knew that the PYGA guys would also want the stage win today but the NAD guys were just too strong. We managed to actually hang on to the NAD guys for longer and then I blew completely, but luckily we didn’t lose too much time in the end,” Heyns commented.
It was a strong three days from Heyns and Du Toit who might have come into the race with less hype surrounding them, however they put in three solid shifts that took them to a strong second place finish.
“We really enjoyed the last three days and it’s such a pleasure to be able to race on this route against such a strong bunch of riders,” Du Toit added. “Getting on the podium with Gert is great. We have been racing against each other since we were sprogs so to do it with him is the cherry on the top.”
As mountain biking has proven in the past, the race for the podium spots was still on the line on the final stage. A flowing, confident performance was what PYGA/EURO Steel needed and they did all they could on the final stage, but it wasn’t enough to cancel the four minutes that separated them and DSV.
“We didn’t really expect too much with Julian focusing on his exams at the moment,” Matthys Beukes said.
“I think he did quite well considering the circumstances and the fact he hasn’t been riding as much.
“To get a second place on the stage close to Julian’s home town is great and it means a lot to him.”
As the dormakaba pair of Samantha Sanders and Amy Mcdougall got further on in the race, they got stronger and pushed incredibly hard for a top ten spot.
Their third stage was another blitz but they had to settle for 13th overall on general classification but they did go home with a first sani2c title. With an advantage of over 52 minutes over the Team Bell pair of Hayley Smith and Andrea de Boer going into yesterday, dormakaba were racing themselves through the final 82km.
“Our sponsor Shaun (Frayne) put the challenge to us when we realised that competition might not be as strong this year,” Sanders said. “He likes to challenge us and we took him up on it and we might not have achieved that but we rode really well.”
For Mcdougall, getting that first win at the sani2c is a feat that she has been hoping to achieve for a while.
Line honours in the mixed category went the way of Cycle Nation – Bring it On’s Joanna van de Winkel and Marcel Rodrigues, but Team Garmin’s Yolandi du Toit and Ben Melt Swanepoel’s advantage was substantial enough to give them the overall title.