I’ll Start with Formula 1 and Lewis Hamilton’s second win on the bounce at Hockenheim in Germany. Hamilton led the race from Pole and only lost the lead because of McLaren’s tactical mistake of not pitting Hamilton during the safety car period after Timo Glock hit the pit wall on lap 36. Nearly every other team pitted both their drivers but McLaren elected to only pit Kovalainen. Hamilton needed to build up a gap of 25+ seconds after the restart but could only manage 20 seconds before having to pit putting him behind Piquet Jr and Massa when he came out of the pits. But luckily Massa wasn’t really at the races yesterday and put up very resistance when Hamilton cruised upto the back of his Ferrari. Next target was rookie Piquet Jr who didn’t put up any resistance at all allowing Hamilton loads of room at the hairpin to make his move. Hamilton had only handful of laps to complete to take the race win and as we have come to expect, the Briton didn’t make any mistakes. Nelson Piquet Jr brought his Renault home in second nine places ahead of his more experienced double world champion team mate Fernando Alonso. Felipe Massa secured third for Ferrari ahead of a hard charging Nick Heidfeld in fourth. Heikki Kovalainen brought the second McLaren home in fifth ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen. Robert Kubica brought the second BMW home in seventh followed by Sebastian Vettel in his Toro Rosso. Again Red Bull’s #2 team has outperformed the #1 team which won’t please Dietrich Mateschitz. Lewis Hamilton now has a clear lead over his rivals, Raikkonen and Massa in the world championship after this race. Fellipe Massa is four points behind and Kimi Raikkonen is seven points behind after all three drivers started the German GP on equal points! I think that McLaren have stolen the march on Ferrari and are the clear #1 team after this race; but things change quickly in F1!
Things aren’t so rosy for English cricket fans. On day three England failed to make any real inroads into the Proteas batsmen allowing two batsmen to make centuries. Ashwell Prince fell just short of 150 runs falling on 149 after facing 284 deliveries. AB de Villiers did even better hitting 174 from 381 deliveries including 19 fours. England eventually bowled out South Africa for 522 as day three neared it’s conclusion. England need 319 to even equal South Africa’s first innings target and as things stand at the time of writing. England are 171 for 6 wickets. The only innings of note so far was Alistair Cook who made 60 before falling victim to Kallis. The other innings of note was James Anderson who was put in as a night-watchman and hit a resolute 34 before being caught LBW by Steyn. Basically it’s down to Andrew Flintoff and Tim Ambrose to bat out the rest of today and the whole of tomorrow. It’s time to do the rain rain dance again as that is the only way that England will avoid going 1 – 0 in the series. I just hope that England can make South Africa at least bat again to win!