George Russell believes that gravel on the track from team mate Kimi Antonelli’s off in Sprint Qualifying could have caused damage that brought his own session to an early close at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Neither Mercedes featured in the final phase of Sprint Qualifying on Friday, with Antonelli dramatically spinning into the gravel at Stavelot in SQ1. As he recovered to the track, stones were scattered across the asphalt.
Antonelli exited the session in last place and, while Russell was able to escape in fifth, his afternoon came to a close in SQ2, where he could manage only the 13th fastest time.
Confident that the Mercedes has strong underlying pace, Russell said: “In Q1, I ran over all of that gravel when Kimi went off. For the rest of that lap, it felt terrible, and the next lap, it felt terrible. Then my lap in SQ2 felt terrible.
“We saw some damage on the car. We need to see if that’s the reason, because obviously, it’s a big shock to be out in SQ2, and the gap was so big. I’m sure there’s a reason for it.”
Sharing Russell’s confidence that a poor Friday does not mean Mercedes is out for the count in Belgium, Antonelli said: “The car felt good over the lap, so I’m definitely confident for tomorrow, and we’ll just try to reset and look forward to tomorrow.”
As for his off, Antonelli was left searching for answers, adding: “It was actually a pretty decent lap.
“I was around P4, and it just was weird because I lost it completely on exit and I just need to check. Maybe it was a gust of wind, but it was quite weird, the way I lost the car.”
With one eye on the potential for wet weather on Sunday, Antonelli said: “It’s going to be important tomorrow to do a good quali, and then Sunday might be wet, so a lot of opportunities, but we’ll focus on tomorrow [for now].”
“It’s been a positive start to our Sprint weekend here in Spa. Oscar secured a deserved Pole position, taking a step from the Medium to Soft tyre in SQ3 with a strong lap that capitalised everything available in the car this afternoon.
“Lando extracted a bit less from the Soft tyres in SQ3. However, it’s good to have him also starting in the top three, where he will be able to fight for a win in the Sprint and valuable championship points.
“We will now turn our focus to tomorrow’s competitive sessions. We are only at the end of Friday, the competition is close, and the weather is also likely to play a role. We have a very interesting weekend ahead.”
Celtic have brought left-back Kieran Tierney back to the club after his Arsenal contract expired, while recently capped Scotland goalkeeper Ross Doohan and forward Callum Osmand have also signed on free deals.
Hayato Inamura and Shin Yamada have arrived from the J-League, with Benjamin Nygren making it six incomings overall.
However, even before the heavy loss against Ajax, Rodgers stressed the need for further transfers, particularly in forward areas.
“I think we still have some work to do,” he said. “I think the players that we have in the building have been very, very good in pre-season so far but, like I say, we have still work to do in the market.
“I think it’s very clear where our gaps are – in our frontline, where we need support and I’m very confident that we’ll be able to do that before the market finishes.”
Kyogo Furuhashi’s goals were never truly replaced when he left for Rennes in January and with Nicolas Kuhn departing to Serie A side Como, further goals and assists have been taken out of Rodgers’ forward line.
Kyogo scored 85 goals in 165 Celtic appearances, while Kuhn contributed 21 goals and 15 assists last season alone.
Portuguese winger Jota is out with a long-term injury and there are doubts over whether Adam Idah has the attributes to lead the line in high-stakes matches.
Rodgers has consistently said over the past 18 months or so he doesn’t want squad fillers, he wants players that raise the ceiling of his squad.
The Celtic boss insists he is “very confident” of quality coming through the door, but it remains to be seen who those players will be.
Max Verstappen believes that losing out on Sprint pole position for the Belgian Grand Prix was “not a big surprise” as the Red Bull driver finished half a second behind pace-setter Oscar Piastri.
The four-time World Champion split the two McLaren drivers at Spa-Francorchamps during the Qualifying session, and will start alongside Drivers’ Championship leader Piastri for Saturday’s 15-lap Sprint.
Piastri and McLaren team mate Lando Norris dominated proceedings on Friday, topping FP1 and all segments of Qualifying between themselves as Verstappen proved to be their only realistic challenger.
Even armed with a low-downforce set-up to take advantage of the numerous high-speed sections, Verstappen believes the outright gap to Piastri will make it difficult to beat him in the Sprint.
“Being P2 between them I think is a really good result for us and I do think we maximised,” said Verstappen post-session.
“I enjoyed it out there, the lap itself was fine, was good. Of course the gap is very big but it’s been big already from FP1 so that’s not a big surprise. We just have to focus on ourselves and work on the balance of the car, try to go faster.
“When you’re almost five tenths off I don’t think going faster or slower on the straight is going to matter a lot. We just have to do our own race and see what we can do.”
Red Bull brought numerous upgrades to Spa this weekend, including a new front suspension and cooling system packages, but with only one Free Practice session before Sprint Qualifying, Verstappen was unsure of their potential.
“It’s always difficult in a Sprint weekend to say exactly what they do of course but when you look at the gap, it’s not what we want right?” he said. “But we keep improving, keep trying to find more performance but other teams do the same thing so that’s just how it goes.”
Team mate Yuki Tsunoda failed to reach the final segment of Sprint Qualifying, finishing SQ2 down in 12th having failed to match Verstappen for another weekend.
“I missed out by six hundredths, I think that obviously it’s very tight,” Tsunoda explained after the session. “Just like usual, is a very tight session and each detail counts.
“I tried my best, I think obviously every driver has it where you look back at some bits and bobs we can improve as usual. At least I know that it’s something I can improve but at the same time, missing out like this, it’s frustrating.”
Watching stage 19 of the Tour de France in a freezing La Plagne, just beyond the finish line, everyone was counting down the kilometres until Tadej Pogačar would launch his usual stinging attack. Would it be 5km to go? 3km? Even 1km? He has the speed.
Thymen Arensman had attacked early on the climb to La Plagne, but was only around 20 seconds ahead of Pogačar, who was in a group with Jonas Vingegaard, Florian Lipowitz and Oscar Onley for most of the final effort. 20 seconds is the kind of gap that at another race, or earlier in this Tour, Pogačar would have eviscerated with one of his trademark moves. This is the man who seemingly wants to win as much as possible, that we all thought could win seven at this Tour after he won four of the first 13.
However, it didn’t happen. Pogačar, too, was counting down the kilometres, but for a different reason, hoping that the pace he was setting would be enough to deter Vingegaard from attacking behind him, half-assuming that they might catch Arensman anyway, but the Dutchman held them off, to win his second stage of this race.
“I don’t know, I was counting down the kilometres from the end,” Pogačar said in his post-stage press conference. “Arensman went super good, I was hoping that I could set the pace I could feel comfortable with, and then if somebody attacked I could still accelerate, that’s why I had to set such a pace. Arensman went stronger. I had to set the rhythm, so in the end, I was happy with how we rode today. The mountains are done.”
He argued he was still going for the stage, but seemingly he didn’t account for a rider going better: “No one wanted to pull, I attacked and then I was thinking maybe me and Jonas could go to the top. I tried to set a rhythm, and Arensman was stronger.”
The bare truth is, Pogačar is seemingly exhausted. It has been 19 stages of hard racing, which the world champion raced from the off. Perhaps this is a mature performance, a defensive ride where he didn’t need to do any more. He came into the stage leading the race by 4:26, and ended it leading it by 4:24, with no big climbing days left. This is mission accomplished, even if it is not the norm from Pogačar.
“I’m obviously tired,” he said. “It’s not been an easy Tour. People attacking me from left and right, from day one until the end. Being focused, motivated. The priority is the yellow jersey, so I was counting down the kilometres because I was going with my pace and hoping that nobody would attack from behind, and that’s it. Sometimes you just count down the kilometres.”
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“Everyone is tired,” his UAE Team Emirates-XRG team manager Mauro Gianetti echoed. “We saw again today, they were well-matched, so again it was a late battle between him and Vingegaard, because I think Jonas was probably thinking ‘I hope he attacks early so I can pass Arensman’, and Tadej was perhaps thinking the same thing: ‘I hope Vinegaard is going to attack early so we can catch Arensman’. But in the end, neither one attacked, and Arensman won on merit.”
“Every time anyone accelerated, they remained together, so it’s difficult to analyse this,” he continued. “I think Vingegaard is also growing maybe. When we see the gap, he’s [Pogačar’s] good. He’s in the yellow jersey. The objective is the Tour, and tomorrow is not an easy stage also. You need to think long term. Jonas and Tadej both were without a teammate at the bottom of the climb, and everybody is tired. Even Sunday in Paris is not the classic stage, so day by day.”
Pogačar has won four stages, meaning he now has 21 at the race. It’s feasible he could win in Paris on Sunday, with its ascents of Monmartre like the Olympic road race course, but it also seems likely that the 26-year-old has done his racing at this year’s race.
“I am already satisfied with yellow,” Pogačar explained. “I don’t feel super energised right now to think about Sunday’s racing. It’s a really hectic parcours, so I think it’s going to be a tough one. We will see what happens. Tomorrow is possibly more of an important day.”
Saturday’s stage 20 is not an easy day, but it looks ripe for a breakaway, with four classified climbs, 2,916 metres of climbing in 184.2km. It should be controlled, however. Four minutes is enough, now.
Pogačar doesn’t need to win any more, his fourth yellow jersey is secure, and he has won almost everything he has wanted to this year. It’s a surprise when he doesn’t win, that’s all, that’s the extent of his domination. The Slovenian has won the Tour de France, more or less. That’s all that should matter.
“I can’t wait for it to be over,” he said the day before, on Thursday. The good news is, it almost is. Two stages left.
Lewis Hamilton was left visibly frustrated after qualifying in 18th place for Saturday’s Sprint in Belgium following a session-ending spin.
While Ferrari brought a significant upgrade package to Spa-Francorchamps, seven-time champion Hamilton was unable to feel the benefits on Friday, shaking his head when asked if the new suspension had made the SF-25 more drivable.
An error on his opening lap of SQ1 had left the Briton with work to do on his final effort, but a spin at the final chicane as the chequered flag fell sealed his position on the penultimate row.
Asked what had happened in the session, Hamilton said simply: “I spun.”
Pressed on whether rear locking had caused the incident, he added: “Yeah. The first time in my career.”
Attempting to find some form of positivity, Hamilton reflected: “Tomorrow’s a new day. Obviously, I’m massively frustrated. A lot of work has gone in and to be there is not great. Hopefully, tomorrow is going to be better.”
On the other side of the garage, Charles Leclerc positioned his Ferrari on the second row of the grid, although the 0.768s margin to pole left him with conflicting emotions.
“The feeling was pretty good which, to me, it’s a mixed feeling,” said Leclerc. “On one side, I’m happy that the car feels better and, on the other, even if the car feels pretty good, we are still seven tenths off, which is a huge amount of time.
“Yes, it’s a long track, but it’s still a big amount of time. So there is a lot of work to be done.
“We just need to add grip to this car at the end of the day. I don’t think we do anything particularly wrong, but we just need more grip that we don’t seem to have for now.”
India clinched their first gold medal at the FISU World University Games 2025 after Parneet Kaur and Kushal Dalal claimed the compound mixed team archery title in Essen, Germany, on Friday.
The same event will feature at the LA 2028 Summer Games with compound archery set for its Olympic debut.
The Indian pair scored an impressive 157 to edge out the Republic of Korea’s Park Yerin and Seunghyun Park by three points in a closely-fought final.
The South Korean team led 78-77 at the halfway mark but the Indian duo steadily pulled ahead over the final two stages.
This was India’s third compound archery medal at the 2025 World University Games, held in Rhine-Ruhr.
In the compound men’s team final, the Indian trio of Kushal Dalal, Sahil Rajesh Jadhav and Hritik Sharma narrowly missed out on gold, going down 232-231 to Turkiye’s Batuhan Akcaoglu, Yunus Emre Arslan and Yakup Yildiz.
India had led 117-114 at the halfway mark but the Turkish trio stormed back in the third stage with a run of three 10s and three Xs, while India managed three 9s.
Meanwhile, the Indian women’s compound team of Parneet Kaur, Avneet Kaur and Madhura Dhamangaonkar secured the bronze medal with a dominating 232-224 win over Great Britain.
With three medals secured in archery on Friday, India’s medal tally at the World University Games rose to five.
Parneet Kaur and Kushal Dalal are also through to the semi-finals of the compound individual events and will aim to add to their medal haul on Saturday.
Kushal Dalal will take on compatriot Sahil Rajesh Jadhav in the semi-finals while Parneet Kaur will be up against South Korea’s Kim Sooyeon
The 32nd edition of the biennial FISU World University Games is being held from July 16 to 27 across six cities in Germany. Around 300 Indian athletes are competing.
India’s best-ever performance at the World University Games came in Chengdu 2023, where the country finished seventh overall with 26 medals, including 11 golds – eight of which came in shooting. However, shooting is not part of the World University Games 2025.
