Max Verstappen led from lights to flag at last weekend's Styria GP. EPA
Max Verstappen led from lights to flag at last weekend's Styria GP. EPA
Max Verstappen led from lights to flag at last weekend's Styria GP. EPA
Max Verstappen led from lights to flag at last weekend's Styria GP. EPA

Austrian GP: Verstappen boxing clever by doing just enough to keep Hamilton out of range


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Max Verstappen delivered something of a masterclass in Styria last Sunday.

The young Dutchman led from lights out to the chequered flag to put world champion Lewis Hamilton on the receiving end of the type of emphatic defeat he is used to dishing out.

But for all Verstappen’s solo superiority this race it is unlikely to have a starring place in the history books. And perhaps it should.

Those days are always the ones people remember: Hamilton’s final corner genius in Brazil 2008, Jacques Villeneuve's move on Michael Schumacher in Jerez 1997 or Mika Hakkinen’s dive inside the German at Les Combes in 2000.

But the truth is that championships are built on other days. Days when a golfer makes a difficult chip from the rough to rescue par or a footballer’s well-timed tackle prevents a goal. Or by a lonely boxer jogging the gruelling miles to peak fitness.

Or, indeed, on days like this, when the young Red Bull ace did as much as was needed and no more.

Red Bull have an edge, of course they do. But the race could have gone wrong in a million ways. Verstappen ensured it did not.

He leapt off the grid ahead of Hamilton who’s Mercedes usually makes the better start. First hurdle overcome. On the next lap he put himself out of DRS range. Second hurdle vaulted.

The Styrian GP was a 71-lapper but by the sixth time around the young Dutchman was 2.6 seconds clear of Hamilton and already cruising. Another landmine dodged. By the stops on Lap 26 the difference was over five seconds.


In F1 parlance that means ‘long gone’.

The public perception is that the driver in front sets the pace and the pursuers are desperately trying to catch him.

But sometimes it’s the other way around. The guy ahead isn’t racing as fast as he might but just fast enough to stay ahead, or in this era, to stay out of DRS range. If Hamilton fired in a fast lap, Verstappen replied in kind. If he relented, so did the Dutchman.

After all you get 25 points whether you win by one second or one kilometre.

In June 2002 I was in Montreal for the Grand Prix and settled down to taste the atmosphere as (Canadian raised) Lennox Lewis fought Mike Tyson for the world heavyweight title.

Lewis was bigger, faster, in better shape and, in truth, Tyson sluggish, complacent and past his best. Lewis was six inches taller and, crucially, had a reach 13 inches longer.

Arguably he could have beaten Tyson sooner but he just jabbed with his left, staying out of reach, and used his superior weaponry until he found the decisive blow in the eighth. By then Tyson was a spent force.

So with Verstappen. He had more but he just kept firing in the jab. Taking it steady.

After the tyre stops Hamilton upped the pace to see if anything would give. But the gap remained the same, give or take: 4.1s, 3.9, 4.0, 4.2, 4.4, 4.4, 4.4, 4.5, 4.8, 4.8.

Verstappen wasn’t racing away. Perhaps there was the question of tyre wear but, in truth, he just didn’t need to.


In any case, the Mercedes Hamilton was driving wasn’t good enough to ask serious questions of its rival.

So unrelenting was Verstappen’s pace that the man who never gives up, gave up.

On Lap 58 the difference, which had grown in tenths, suddenly began to leap by half a second or a full second each time around. In the next seven laps the gap leapt five seconds.

Then three laps from home Hamilton surrendered any thoughts of victory and grabbed at the only morsel likely to slip from Red Bull’s table on this dominant day – the single point for the fastest lap.

Afterwards Mercedes boss Toto Wolff manfully admitted this was the first time in eight years his team had no answer to the pace of a rival.

And there was a collective intake of breath up and down the paddock as he revealed Mercedes had stopped development on this year’s car to focus on the radical rule changes of 2022, although it was later denied.

So Mercedes were left reeling, from the worst series of defeats in the turbo-hybrid era.

But just like that day Lewis and Tyson went toe-to-toe in Memphis, sometimes a fighter is shifting his weight under the impact of a staggering blow but others he is just swaying with the force to clear a path for the devastating counter punch.

The%20specs
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The Settlers

Director: Louis Theroux

Starring: Daniella Weiss, Ari Abramowitz

Rating: 5/5

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The essentials

What: Emirates Airline Festival of Literature

When: Friday until March 9

Where: All main sessions are held in the InterContinental Dubai Festival City

Price: Sessions range from free entry to Dh125 tickets, with the exception of special events.

Hot Tip: If waiting for your book to be signed looks like it will be timeconsuming, ask the festival’s bookstore if they have pre-signed copies of the book you’re looking for. They should have a bunch from some of the festival’s biggest guest authors.

Information: www.emirateslitfest.com
 

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology, a digital system in which data is recorded across multiple places at the same time. Unlike traditional databases, DLTs have no central administrator or centralised data storage. They are transparent because the data is visible and, because they are automatically replicated and impossible to be tampered with, they are secure.

The main difference between blockchain and other forms of DLT is the way data is stored as ‘blocks’ – new transactions are added to the existing ‘chain’ of past transactions, hence the name ‘blockchain’. It is impossible to delete or modify information on the chain due to the replication of blocks across various locations.

Blockchain is mostly associated with cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Due to the inability to tamper with transactions, advocates say this makes the currency more secure and safer than traditional systems. It is maintained by a network of people referred to as ‘miners’, who receive rewards for solving complex mathematical equations that enable transactions to go through.

However, one of the major problems that has come to light has been the presence of illicit material buried in the Bitcoin blockchain, linking it to the dark web.

Other blockchain platforms can offer things like smart contracts, which are automatically implemented when specific conditions from all interested parties are reached, cutting the time involved and the risk of mistakes. Another use could be storing medical records, as patients can be confident their information cannot be changed. The technology can also be used in supply chains, voting and has the potential to used for storing property records.

NO OTHER LAND

Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal

Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham

Rating: 3.5/5

Results:

Men's wheelchair 800m T34: 1. Walid Ktila (TUN) 1.44.79; 2. Mohammed Al Hammadi (UAE) 1.45.88; 3. Isaac Towers (GBR) 1.46.46.

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Company%20profile
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?

The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.

Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.

New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.

“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.

The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.

The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.

Bloomberg

The Sand Castle

Director: Matty Brown

Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea

Rating: 2.5/5

Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

Specs

Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
On sale: Available for pre-order now
Price: On request

The specs
  • Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
  • Power: 640hp
  • Torque: 760nm
  • On sale: 2026
  • Price: Not announced yet
Jetour T1 specs

Engine: 2-litre turbocharged

Power: 254hp

Torque: 390Nm

Price: From Dh126,000

Available: Now

Updated: June 30, 2021, 3:29 AM`