Lewis Hamilton has won the last four races on the Formula One calendar. Alejandro Garcia / EPA
Lewis Hamilton has won the last four races on the Formula One calendar. Alejandro Garcia / EPA

Monaco Grand Prix last chance for F1 season to take a twist



Formula One desperately needs a different winner at the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend to maintain any semblance of suspense.

Championship leader Lewis Hamilton goes for his fifth straight win, with the F1 season taking on an air of inevitability, just like last season when Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull dominated with crushing ease by winning the last nine races, and 13 from 19 overall.

With Mercedes unmatchable for speed, Hamilton looks like he could beat even those incredible numbers, with four-time defending champion Vettel rapidly drifting away from contention.

“The last few races have been just incredible. I honestly never expected I’d win four consecutive grands prix in my career, and I’d love to continue that run here,” Hamilton said. “The car has been strong at every race so far, and I’m sure it’ll be the same in Monaco, so we should be set for an entertaining weekend.”

Although Hamilton leads teammate Nico Robserg by only three points, that is because Hamilton retired from the season-opening Australian GP with engine trouble. Rosberg won in Melbourne, meaning Mercedes have won every race so far, and it looks like being a straight contest within Mercedes as to who wins the title.

“The championship battle is very close, and to regain the advantage at my home race would be fantastic,” said Rosberg, who grew up in Monaco and won his maiden F1 race here last year. “So I’ll be pushing harder than ever to make that happen.”

Vettel is down in fourth spot overall, and already 55 points behind Hamilton, the 2008 champ. His more realistic contest is getting the better of his new teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, who is just six points behind him.

Rule changes have blighted Red Bull Racing, who are unable to generate the same speed as before, and beset by technical glitches.

Besides switching to a 1.6-litre V6 turbo engine instead of last year’s 2.4-litre V8 engine, the rule changes focus on boosting cars’ energy recovery systems, which generate energy from braking and through waste heat from the engine. F1 has also lowered fuel to 100 kilograms per race, down from 160 kilograms, increased the car’s weight, and forced alterations to gearboxes, exhaust, wings and nose height.

Mercedes have made a far smoother transition, and are a mammoth 113 points clear of Red Bull and 131 ahead of Ferrari in the constructors’ championship.

“More than any other 2014 race, I think this event will show us the most pronounced difference between ‘old F1’ and the new formula we have,” said McLaren driver Jenson Button, the 2009 F1 champ. “There’s far less of an aerodynamic influence here; it’s just about bolting as much to the car as possible in a bid to find grip - so I think the engine’s influence will be greater.”

Over the past 12 months, only three drivers have won a race: Hamilton, Rosberg and Vettel. Some contrast to two years ago, when there was a different winner in the first seven races.

The last time F1 was so predictable was when Alain Prost, Gerhard Berger and Ayrton Senna won all the races during an 18-race period in 1987-88.

A season with just two winners, however, would be a first.

“If you look at the performance now, you wonder if it (winning all the races) could happen, but then you know there are 14 races to go,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff told Autosport. “We haven’t had conditions in the race like safety cars at the wrong time or thunderstorms. Also they (the drivers) didn’t touch yet. So it’s much too early.”

Whoever gets pole position in Monaco usually wins, given how hard it is to overtake on the narrow, sinewy circuit, so Mercedes, who have also grabbed every pole, are odds-on to make it six consecutive wins.

“You cannot afford to make one single mistake, because you would easily crash into the railings. Overtaking is only possible with taking an extreme risk,” said Vettel, who won from pole position here in 2011. “The best place to overtake is before the harbor chicane when we exit the narrow tunnel at 300kph and race towards the first gear chicane. Other than that, it’s all about patience in Monaco.”

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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: ARDH Collective
Based: Dubai
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Sector: Sustainability
Total funding: Self funded
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Dubai Bling season three

Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed 

Rating: 1/5

The Sand Castle

Director: Matty Brown

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

Rating: 2.5/5

Libya's Gold

UN Panel of Experts found regime secretly sold a fifth of the country's gold reserves. 

The panel’s 2017 report followed a trail to West Africa where large sums of cash and gold were hidden by Abdullah Al Senussi, Qaddafi’s former intelligence chief, in 2011.

Cases filled with cash that was said to amount to $560m in 100 dollar notes, that was kept by a group of Libyans in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

A second stash was said to have been held in Accra, Ghana, inside boxes at the local offices of an international human rights organisation based in France.

Game Changer

Director: Shankar 

Stars: Ram Charan, Kiara Advani, Anjali, S J Suryah, Jayaram

Rating: 2/5

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

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Favourite book: ‘The Art of Learning’ by Josh Waitzkin

Favourite film: Marvel movies

Favourite parkour spot in Dubai: Residence towers in Jumeirah Beach Residence

WHAT IS GRAPHENE?

It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were experimenting with sticky tape and graphite, the material used as lead in pencils.

Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But when they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.

By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.

In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 

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