18/7/2026

SPORTS SATURDAY | JULY 18, 2026

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Spa blow for Norris

then Red Bull, have caught eyes with a novel “Macarena” rear wing that features a top flap rotating through 180° in straight-line mode for more speed. McLaren have also been experimenting with some thing similar. Verstappen’s team boss Laurent Mekies told the BBC that Red Bull had found a problem with the wing in tests after Silverstone. The 28-year-old driver said after this month’s British GP, the race before Spa, that “while turning into the cor ner, the rear wing is not fully attaching, and you lose a lot of downforce for that. You just spin off the track.” “At this point, it’s super dangerous because I could have really hurt myself two times. I was lucky in Austria; I was lucky here. But that’s why you get fed up with it.” Verstappen’s French teammate Isack Hadjar, who did not experience the same problems, said he hoped the ditched wing could return soon. Leclerc favours Mercedes in Spa FO R MULA ONE leaders Mercedes are still the favourites for tomorrow’s Belgian GP despite Ferrari winning two of the last three races, Charles Leclerc said yesterday. The Monegasque won at Silverstone this month after seven-times world champion teammate Lewis Hamilton triumphed in Barcelona in June. Mercedes have won the other seven rounds, with championship leader Kimi Antonelli taking five succes sive victories. “For me, Silverstone and Spa are two tracks that will suit Mercedes a lot better,” Leclerc told reporters at Spa Francorchamps, the scene of his first F1 win in 2019. “At Silverstone, it was honestly a surprise for us also to be strong. But we were also lucky on the Sunday because Kimi was probably as strong as what we expected. So, yeah, I think in Spa Mercedes is still the favourite.” Antonelli said of his Belgian prospects: “Our car has been quick at every race, so for sure I’d expect us to be up there. But Ferrari were also very strong at Silverstone. “It was a surprise, but to be fair, we always kind of expected them to be up there because, especially when it comes to qualifying, they seem to find some extra time. So definitely we think they can be up there this weekend.”

PIT LANE

F1 champ hopes grid penalty does not ruin his weekend

Racing home for Spain FE R NANDO ALON S O’ S main focus for the Belgian Grand Prix weekend will be making sure he gets home in time to watch Spain play Argentina in the World Cup final on Monday (3am Malaysian time). The Spanish driver’s Aston Martin team have been Formula One backmarkers this season, struggling to fin ish races and scoring just one point from nine rounds. Belgium, the last race before Aston Martin introduce a major chassis upgrade with an improved engine still to come, could mark a low point before things start to improve. In 2010, the last time a Formula One race coin cided with football’s biggest match, Alonso was at Ferrari and fighting for wins. “It will be different. As we don’t expect much this weekend,”two-time world champion Alonso told report ers at Spa-Francorchamps. “The main focus on Sunday will be to get home and watch the match, to be honest. It’s going to be tricky because we are flying back home,” said Alonso. “So maybe again on Sunday the second half will be probably the moment that I will watch the game. And the first half, just miss it.” Argentine Franco Colapinto, who races for Renault owned Alpine, and Spaniard Carlos Sainz at Williams will face similar problems. Max reverts to old rear wing R ED B ULL have reverted to a conventional rear wing for tomorrow’s Belgian GP after four-time world champion Max Verstappen suffered successive high-speed crashes in Austria and Britain. The Dutch driver slammed the behaviour of his car’s wing at Silverstone as “super-dangerous” after he crashed out while chasing third place.

F ORMULA ONE world champion Lando Norris hoped to salvage something from his Belgian Grand Prix weekend despite being hit with a 10-place grid penalty after McLaren changed his car’s power electronics unit. “I hope it’s not the end of my week end before it’s started,” the Briton told reporters yesterday. “I am still confident we can have a good weekend.” Norris started last year’s race at Spa Francorchamps on pole position, with teammate Oscar Piastri winning, but McLaren have been off the pace this sea son and are third overall behind leaders Mercedes and Ferrari. Drivers are allowed three power elec tronics units per season and the change exceeds the limit, triggering the manda tory penalty. McLaren said the first unit suffered a terminal failure in China in March, leav ing Norris unable to start that race. The second unit was fitted for the Japanese GP, also in March, but had to be withdrawn for remedial work after issues in free practice. It was repaired but then suffered a terminal issue in Monaco practice in June. “While the power electronics unit we installed in Japan, and have used in every session since Miami, has worked reliably, Mercedes-AMG

High Performance Powertrains has since introduced a series of reliability fixes,” the team said. “However, in order to take advantage of these improvements, we must incur a 10-place grid penalty on Lando’s car in order to take a new unit. “We have chosen to do this in Belgium, a circuit where overtaking is relatively more prevalent, as opposed to the following two events in Hungary and Zandvoort (Netherlands),” the team added. McLaren said they planned to use this fourth unit for the remainder of the season. “It won’t be made easier by the grid penalty but that is because we have been unlucky losing different bits, the engine, the power unit or the controls,” said Norris, who has a Belgian mother, of tomorrow’s race. “I am on the back foot in terms of a spare parts point of view but that is out of my hands. That’s life, you’ve got to take it on the chin. This is a better track to take the penalty than the next two.” Piastri will have the latest Mercedes engine without penalty due to not suffer ing the same issues on his car. McLaren are the last of four teams with Mercedes engines to get the latest edition, due to their own schedule. – Reuters

“We’ll go back to the old one and then see whenever the latest, or new one, is ready again to be used for us,” he said at Spa Francorchamps yesterday. Ferrari, and

Soudal Quick-Step’s Tim Merlier (front) sprints to the finish line

to win the 12th stage of the Tour de France yesterday. – AFPPIC

Tour sprint king Merlier strikes again

B ELGIAN sprint star Tim Merlier trebled up at the Tour de France yesterday as he won the 12th stage in a chaotic and crash-marred dash for the line. The Soudal-Quick Step rider edged out Dutchman Olav Kooij and fellow Belgian Jasper Philipsen to claim his third stage win of this year’s Tour, and sixth overall. And he said this win was a bit more special because his partner Cameron and three-year-old son Jules were at the finish line to watch him. “It gave me some motivation,”said Merlier, who brought his son with him to the winner’s podium. “He’s still young, but maybe he’s going to remember this one later on also. We can show it later.” It was yet another disorganised sprint made even worse when Colombian Fernando Gaviria hit

tomorrow we need to survive as best as possible because then Saturday and Sunday are the bigger days for the GC (general classification). “Tomorrow we will see what happens but I think the best for us would be to save some energy for Saturday and Sunday.” Former world champion Pedersen, who announced on Wednesday night that he would retire after his home World Championships in 2029, finished second to Philipsen in the green jer sey competition in 2023. But he currently leads the standings by 40 points from Biniam Girmay, with Philipsen and Merlier within another 10 points. However, Pedersen received a warning from race commissaires for squeezing Philipsen into the barriers at the day’s intermediate sprint. – AFP

chance, and at least I still managed to finish in the top five, so I can be happy,” he said. “Today might have been my last chance on the Tour. Maybe we’ll have another opportunity on stage 17.” Reigning champion Tadej Pogacar finished safely in the pack at the end of the 179km stage from the Magny-Cours motor racing circuit in Nevers to Chalon-sur-Saone. He maintained his overall lead of more than three-and-a-half minutes to two-time former champion Jonas Vingegaard. He said he was planning to keep his powder dry on the 205km-long hilly stage from Dole to Belfort ahead of back-to-back mountain tests over the weekend. “It’s gonna be a hard day for us as a team but

the deck, bringing down several other riders, including the stage 11 winner Soren Waerenskjold. Alpecin Premier Tech once again tried to set up Philipsen for the victory but Merlier, as he had done twice before in this 113th edition of the Tour, found a route through the traffic and powered home to take the chequered flag. Stage five winner Kooij was pushed into sec ond place for the second day in a row. With no other obvious sprint stages left at the Tour, everyone was desperate to give this one a crack. Milan Fretin tried to follow Philipsen’s sprint train but was passed by other fast-finishing riders and came home in fifth. “I don’t think I have any regrets today. I took a