Briton George Russell overtook Dutchman Max Verstappen by a tenth of a second to win the Azerbaijan Formula 1 Grand Prix, which witnessed several accidents at the Baku Circuit on Saturday, narrowing the gap with his Mercedes colleague, Italian Kimi Antonelli, at the top of the world championship.
Russell started from first place and succeeded in achieving a difference of 11 seconds, before the safety car periods caused Verstappen to approach in his Red Bull car directly behind the Mercedes car.
Verstappen chased Russell to the finish line, and came close enough on the last lap to launch a final attack at turn fifteen, but the Briton was able to maintain the lead and move away from the Dutchman.
“The last lap was fast,” Russell said after the end of the race. It was very close. After yellow flags the extra payment advantage is lost. "I thought he was going to pass me by."
As for Verstappen, who had a distinguished race, he dealt with the matter calmly, saying: “In the last lap, George lost the advantage of extra propulsion and I approached him, but that was not enough.”
The Frenchman of Algerian origin, Ishak Hajjar, another Red Bull driver, came in third place, while Monogasi driver Charles Leclerc of Ferrari came fourth.
As for Antonelli, who was ahead of Russell by 81 points before the race, but started from sixteenth place after suffering an accident in qualifying, he was able to advance among the competitors to finish the race fifth.
The race witnessed two prominent accidents in the middle. On the thirty-fifth lap, Thai Alex Albon collided with his Williams car into the wall, which required the safety car to enter and regroup the racers.
When the race resumed, Argentine Franco Colapinto tried to advance from the inside, but did not find enough space when entering the next corner. His wheels locked and his car slid sideways, pushing his French Alpine teammate Pierre Gasly towards Briton Lando Norris (McLaren), causing the three to slide out of the track together.
Albert delos Santos, the Asian junior champion, delved into weightlifting after the death of his father and coach Alvin, using the sport that brought them together as an escape to overcome grief. On Saturday, the 20-year-old Filipino honored his father after he climbed to the podium at the Asian Games in Nagoya, winning a bronze medal in the 70-kilogram competition.
He thus continued a strong family legacy in weightlifting, as his parents were members of the national team, while his sister Desa represented the Philippines in Jakarta eight years ago.
“My sister participated in the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, and being here now is like a complete circle,” he said at the Fukiage Hall in Nagoya. My father also lived in the nineties. This is a legacy he left to me.”
Alvin delos Santos, a medalist at the Southeast Asian Games in the 1990s, died of liver cancer in March, leaving his son Albert grief-stricken before the World Junior Championships in Egypt. “Since my father passed away, I have dedicated myself to training,” Delos Santos said.
In the evening of the weightlifting competition, Indonesian Rahmat Erwin Abdullah won gold in the 75-kg category, ahead of Thailand's Wiravun Wichuma, who won silver and runner-up at the Paris Olympics in the 73-kg category, and North Korea's Ri Chung Song, who won bronze.
The Brazilian club Chapecoense returned to the site of its 2016 plane crash in Colombia on Friday, ten years after the accident caused by the plane carrying the team running out of fuel, to attend a memorial service for the 71 victims. Only six people out of 77 on board survived, in one of the worst tragedies in football history, which occurred on the night of November 28, 2016.
