My Sporting Weekend 24th July 2011:
I didn't catch much sport this weekend due to the Tramlines Festival held in Sheffield, but Sunday saw the final stage of the 2011 Tour De France, with Mark Cavendish taking the stage victory along the Champs-Élysées, as well as winning the points classification, and the prestigious green jersey. This rounded off a fantastic tour for the 'Manx Missile' who won 5 stages and became the most successful Brit ever to ride in the Tour.
Earlier in the day we also had another Brit winner, with Lewis Hamilton taking the victory at the Großer Preis Santander von Deutschland (German GP). Hamilton made a good start from 2nd place taking the lead off Mark Webber before the 1st corner, and due to the cool track temperatures affecting tyre performance neither Mark Webber or Fernando Alonso could get the jump on him by trying to use the undercut that has worked so well at past races this season.
Sebastian Vettel had his worse finish of the season, in 4th, coming off the track on the 9th lap after driving over the wet white lines, and losing a lot of time to the leading 3 top drivers, which he couldn't catch up. But this didn't really hinder his attempt at a 2nd world championship as his lead over 2nd placed Webber was only cut by 5 points to 75.
In the late evening IndyCar made its 2nd Canadian stop of the season for the Honda Edmonton Indy, and after the shenanigans 2 weekends ago in Toronto, Sundays race started with Alex Tagliani taking a big chance going up the inside of the 5th corner, but he locked his breaks, hitting Graham Rahal and cutting his tyre. This sent Rahal off the track and as he came back on he spun and collected Paul Tracy, ending both their days and bringing out the 1st caution of the day.
After qualifying on pole Takuma Sato led the 1st 19 laps before losing the lead to Will Power, and then quickly lost 2nd and 3rd positions to Scott Dixon and Dario Franchetti respectably.
The 2nd full course caution came out on lap 25 after Mike Conway went up the inside of Oriol Servia and shunted him off the track, the restart then provided more action with the cars going 3 wide and Viso taking a dive up the inside of turn 5, damaging Dixon's radiator, but their was no need for the caution this time.
Soon after their was more action on turn 5 with Ryan Hunter-Reay spinning Sato out as he went up the inside of him, but they both kept going, and after pit stops re-jigged the field Power, Helio Castroneves and Franchetti, led the rest of the pack, as they battled for victory. Further back in the field JR Hildebrand made the best overtaking manoeuvre of the day as he went past Vitor Meira at the end of the long straight after getting in his slip stream.
After narrowly avoiding accident on the 2nd restart, Franchetti, finished 3rd, but Power's race was just as clean and took the victory after taking the lead off Sato early on, and Castroneves was 2nd.
Apart from the incidents centred around turn 5 the new Edmonton course layout didn't really provide that much overtaking action, and the race did seem to become tedious towards the end, especially as the 1st 3 positions didn't look like changing.
Sunday was rounded off with the final of the Copa America, and Uruguay taking a record 15th title as they beat a poor Paraguay team, 3-0, that had drawn all of their previous games, and never really looked like scoring.
Recent Results:
LV County Championship: Yorkshire: 239 & 260 (76.5 overs)
Lancashire: 328 & 194 (65.0 overs)
Lancashire beat Yorkshire by 23 runs
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