Hamilton Cruises to the Checkered Flag in Singapore

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Singapore. Lewis Hamilton produced a masterful drive to win Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix ahead of Timo Glock and Fernando Alonso as Jenson Button got more points on the board to shore up his championship lead.

Starting from first on the grid, Briton Hamilton led from start to finish in difficult driving conditions to take the checkered flag in his McLaren, 9.6 seconds ahead of the Toyota.

It was his second win of the season, after Hungary, and the 11th of his career.

Spain’s Alonso, who won here last year in controversial circumstances when Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately crashed, brought some cheer to Renault with a hard-fought third to make the podium again.

That left Germany’s Sebastien Vettel to take fourth but it could have been much better.

The Red Bull driver was second and in a close-fought battle with Hamilton, but after pitting for a second time on lap 39, exited too quickly and incurred a drive-through penalty.

At least he finished one place ahead of championship leader Button, but with just three races left in the season, the gap between the two drivers is 25 points and Vettel’s chances of catching the Briton are disappearing.

Button now has 84 points with his Brawn GP teammate Rubens Barrichello 15 behind after ending sixth here under the lights.

Heikki Kovalainen in the second McLaren finished seventh and BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica was eighth.

The Brawn pair now look certain to deliver the constructors’ championship to their eponymous team chief, Ross Brawn, in the outfit’s first season, with one of them likely to be crowned world champion.

The front row of the grid was always going to be decisive on the bumpy Marina Bay street circuit, where overtaking is difficult, and Hamilton made the most of starting on pole.

Nico Rosberg got past Vettel to be in second and Alonso had a storming start, powering to fourth from fifth.

Hamilton made no mistakes, though, protecting his lead to cruise to a well-deserved victory.


Agence France-Presse

Hamilton Cruises to the Checkered Flag in Singapore

Indonesia's Hendra and Markis Shine at Tokyo Badminton Tourney

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Indonesia's Hendra Setiawan (left) and Markis Kido react after defeating compatriot Rian Sukmawan and Yonathan Suryatama Dasuki in the men's doubles final. (Toru Hanai, Reuters)

Either way the drought was over. The only question left on Sunday was who was going to hoist the trophy in Tokyo.

In the end it was men’s doubles world No. 1 team Markis Kido and Hendra Setiawan topping compatriots Rian Sukmawan and Yonathan Suryatama to put an end to the country’s eight-month Super Series title drought in the Japan Open final match on Sunday.

Markis and Hendra won 21-19, 24-22 to clinch the title.

Mixed doubles Nova Widianto and Liliyana Natsir picked up the country’s last Super Series title at the season opener in Malaysia in January.

“This is the moment I’ve been waiting for,” Markis told the Jakarta Globe in a text message. “We finally ended our title drought in Japan. I’m very happy.”

Japan marks the second title of the year for the pair after winning the Asian Championship crown in South Korea in April. The team had been sidelined for most of the season while Markis battled a knee injury and high-blood pressure.

In the men’s singles final, Indonesia fumbled the chance to leave Tokyo with another title when Taufik Hidayat lost 21-15, 21-12 to China’s Bao Chunlai.

Bao was simply too much for the Athens Olympic gold medalist, who seemed to lack his normal luster.

“I played patient. That’s why I won,” Bao said. “I expected it would be a tougher match, so I was surprised that I won in two games.”

Tokyo marked Bao’s fourth title of the season, following victories in the German Open, the Asian Championships and the Singapore Open.

China took two more Super Series titles with big wins in the women’s singles and doubles.

Wang Yihan retained her title after an easy win over compatriot Wang Xin, 21-8, 21-9. Wang said she had improved in every aspect of the game — strokes, physical strength and control of the shuttlecock — since she won her first Super Series victory in Tokyo last year.

Wang picked up her fifth crown of the season, with previous wins coming from the All England, German Open, Swiss Open and Macau Open.

China’s Ma Jin and Wang Xiaoli silenced the home crowd by defeating seventh seed Miyuki Maeda and Satoko Suetsuna, 21-19, 21-18.

But the biggest upset of the tournament came when unseeded Songphon Anugritayawon and Kunchala Voravichitchaikul of Thailand downed sixth-seeded Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Christinna Pedersen of Denmark, 13-21, 21-16, 22-20, in the mixed doubles final.

“I’m very happy, because this is the first time we won a title outside our country,” Songphon said.

He added that they were following in the footsteps of compatriots Sudket Prapakamol and Saralee Thungthongkam, who won the Japan Open mixed doubles final in 2005.

The next Super Series events are the Hong Kong Open and the China Open in November.

Indonesia's Hendra and Markis Shine at Tokyo Badminton Tourney

Renault Race-Fixing Scandal Raises Concern for F1’s Future

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For the last month, Formula One has been traumatized by allegations from a back-of-the field driver that last September’s Singapore Grand Prix was fixed by a crash prearranged by the Renault racing team that enabled its lead driver to leap from a midfield position to an upset victory.

Many in the sport fear that if the allegation is proven it could be the equivalent of the 1919 World Series for Formula One: a scandal that tops all previous upheavals and one that rocks the already shaky finances of the sport, threatening billions of dollars of investment by some of the world’s largest auto companies and corporate sponsors.

Those fears appeared to be confirmed on Wednesday when the British-based Renault racing team — financed at a cost of $300 million a year by the Paris-based Renault company — announced it would not contest the race-fixing allegation when Formula One’s governing body, the International Automobile Federation (FIA), convenes a tribunal to hear the allegations in Paris on Monday.

“The Renault Formula One team will not dispute the recent allegations made by the FIA concerning the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix,” the team said in a statement.

The statement said the two men alleged to have set up the crash, both veterans of past championships, have left the team. Flavio Briatore, a 58-year-old Italian, was the team’s managing director, and Pat Symonds, a 55-year-old Englishman, was the team’s engineering director. In Paris, the federation announced it would go ahead with the tribunal. Possible penalties include banning Renault from the sport.

The day’s developments represented the greatest crisis in the history of a series that has cast itself as the pinnacle of international motor sport, and as a showcase for aerospace-style, groundbreaking technologies that Formula One insiders believe give their series an edge over the more tightly restricted, cost-conscious engineering formulas of Nascar and the Indy Car series that dominate American racing.

Formula One’s stability had been deeply shaken before this scandal by other occurrences, including a $100 million fine imposed on Britain’s McLaren-Mercedes racing team two years ago after it was found to have obtained secret technical documents from Italy’s Ferrari team .

Briatore announced last week that he had launched a lawsuit in France that said the crash allegations were part of an attempt by 24-year-old driver Nelson Piquet Jr. of Brazil and his father, Nelson, to “blackmail” the Renault team into keeping the younger Piquet as one of its two drivers. The younger Piquet was fired midway through this year’s 17-race schedule.

The Singapore race last year came close to the end of his first season in Formula One, when he was under heavy pressure from his team after a series of lackluster performances that had included crashes and an inability to match the speed of his teammate, Fernando Alonso of Spain, twice a winner of the Formula One championship with Renault.

Soon after his last race with Renault, the two Piquets approached the FIA with their allegations, details of which have been leaked in recent days to reporters covering Formula One, along with transcripts of FIA interviews with those involved. The two Brazilians said the younger Piquet had been told at a Singapore meeting with Briatore and Symonds that they wanted him to crash at a narrow spot on the track, shortly after an unusually early refueling stop by Alonso.

The plan, the Piquets said, was for debris from the crash to slow the field behind the safety car, allowing Alonso to seize the lead as the early front-runners made their own refueling stops.

As millions of television viewers around the world saw, Piquet crashed on the 14th lap of the nighttime race, after Alonso’s refueling stop on the 12th lap, bringing out the safety car. Alonso went on to win, as he did three weeks later in the Chinese Grand Prix, where there have been no suggestions of race fixing. Nothing in the leaked FIA documents showed Alonso was aware of the plans for the crash, and he has declined to comment, pending the Paris tribunal.

According to the leaked FIA documents, the younger Piquet said he was “in a very fragile and emotional state of mind” when he was asked to crash, because Briatore had refused to say whether his contract would be renewed for 2009.

Symonds was quoted in the documents as saying it was the younger Piquet who had raised the possibility of a crash. At another point, he was quoted as having told FIA investigators: “I have no intention of lying to you. I have not lied to you, but I have reserved my position just a little.”

For Formula One, the potential impact runs beyond the risk that Renault will be forced out of the series, or that Renault will quit the sport. The Paris tribunal will hear claims that the Renault managers organized the crash to snatch a victory that would persuade Renault bosses in Paris, looking for cost savings in the midst of a worldwide slump in car sales, not to pull out of Formula One.

Renault Race-Fixing Scandal Raises Concern for F1’s Future

inter draw with barca in league champions

[postlink]https://gustav-javamedia.blogspot.com/2009/09/inter-draw-with-baeca-in-league.html[/postlink]Inter hold Barcelona in drab stalemate

MILAN, Italy (AFP) – Inter Milan held title-holders Barcelona to a 0-0 draw in their Champions League Group F opener at the San Siro on Wednesday in a match which failed to live up to pre-match hype.

The game was billed as a clash between Samuel Eto'o and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, both playing against the team they left only two months ago, but neither they nor talents such as Lionel Messi and Xavi could break the deadlock in a turgid stalemate.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for such a big match between two European heavyweights so early in the competition it was a cagey affair dominated by defences.

But that suited Inter boss Jose Mourinho.

"It's the beginning of the competition, it's the first match. It's not an easy group, it's no joke," he said. "There are other groups that seem like a joke and one without a single national champion, in ours there are four champions.

"It's a good point against the European champions who at the moment play the best football in Europe.

"I'm happy with the way we played, with the concentration. Defensively the game went well."

Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola said his team needed to create more to win the game but did not point the finger of blame at Ibrahimovic, who had a largely quiet game.

"Maybe we didn't have many chances but it's never easy to play against Italian teams. There's nothing more to it, we just didn't have many chances," he said.

"Ibrahimovic did well, he had a good chance in the first half. Less so in the second but it's never easy and he kept trying so I'm happy with him."

Barcelona were quickly into their running, passing the ball around confidently.

Messi needed only two minutes to work some space on the edge of the box but his shot was too close to Julio Cesar in the Inter goal.

The Spaniards were dictating play and Brazilian international Dani Alves released former Inter striker Ibrahimovic on eight minutes with a simple diagonal crossfield ball.

It was the chance the big Sweden forward must have been dreaming of in the build up to the game as he sought to silence the critics who jeered him on his return to the club he walked out on in the summer.

His first touch to control the ball on his chest was exquisite but the grandstand finish he craved did not materialise as he sliced his right-foot volley high and wide.

Alves was finding acres of space down the right as Sulley Muntari failed time and again to track him and the Brazilian picked out Messi with a cross but the little Argentine wizard's header lacked power.

It was almost the half hour mark when Inter managed to gain a foothold in the game and a long ball released Diego Milito who turned inside Gerard Pique but shot too close to Victor Valdes.

Moments later Eto'o teed up Wesley Sneijder but the former Real Madrid midfielder couldn't keep his shot down.

Barcelona should have gone in front on 41 minutes as an inch perfect Xavi chip over the defence picked out Alves, but his first touch took him backwards and he opted to play the ball back to Kader Keita rather than shoot, with the Malian midfielder screwing his effort well wide.

In the last minute of the half Messi cut in off the right wing in typical fashion but Cesar was equal to his shot.

Inter started the second half well with Sneijder firing just wide on 47 minutes but Barcelona quickly re-asserted control without creating more than a half chance.

Inter were still lively on the counter-attack and Eto'o released Milito on 66 minutes but the Argentine hesitated before setting up substitute Dejan Stankovic whose shot dipped just over.

Barcelona finally created a gilt-edged opportunity when Thierry Henry's scuffed shot on 73 minutes squeaked through to the edge of the six-yard box where both Messi and Alves ran onto it.

But the Argentine, over-stretching, nicked the ball off the better-placed Brazilian's foot and cleared the cross-bar.

inter draw with barca in league champions