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2016 Japanese Grand Prix | Hamilton faces the beginning of the end

We're told the Japanese mamushi viper haunts the undergrowth around Suzuka. If the pit viper attended the weekend's Japanese Grand Prix, it avoided human visitors but it put a nasty bite on Lewis Hamilton's championship hopes. The Briton, lined up second on the grid next to Mercedes-AMG Petronas teammate Nico Rosberg, flubbed his start. By the end of Turn 1 Hamilton was in eighth. Hamilton didn't suffer alone. The beginning of the race was a melee; many of the leaders got caught out either by the damp track or by having to swerve around slow starters. Only Mercedes' Nico Rosberg and Red Bull's Max Verstappen took off clean. The German rolled up another lights-to-flag victory despite the pass-happy race happening behind him. Rosberg was as unbothered by the Dutchman in second place as he was by the official Formula 1 camera feed. Verstappen didn't have much work to do until the final ten laps of the race. Thanks to the Mercedes team's strategy – or Ferrari waiting too long to pit – Hamilton got up to third on Lap 36 of 53. Unable to make a DRS-enabled pass on Verstappen down the front straight toward the end of the race, the Mercedes driver took a creative line through Spoon corner. Closing in down the back straight, Hamilton jinked inside to try a pass through the final chicane. Verstappen moved over in the braking zone while Hamilton was still behind him, closing the door on the move. Hamilton protested over his team radio, but seemed resigned to a third place finish after the incident – he didn't try any more passes in the final laps. The Ferrari duo of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen crossed the line fourth and fifth, respectively, in recovery drives after penalties. The scuderia tried an aggressive final stint after Hamilton successfully undercut Vettel in the pits. Ferrari put Vettel on the soft-compound Pirellis so he could hunt the Mercedes, but after a few laps of close pursuit the tires gave up and Vettel fell back. Daniel Ricciardo couldn't get comfortable in his Red Bull the entire weekend. The Aussie finished where he started, in sixth place. Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg followed the Red Bull home in two-up formation for Force India, Williams doing the same in the final two points-paying positions with Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas. Rosberg's 23rd career victory – his ninth of the season and first ever in Japan – puts him 33 points ahead of Hamilton in the Driver's Championship with four races left.

1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona could be world's first great 'condo find' [w/video]

Barn finds are the absinthe of the collector car world right now. They're highly intoxicating and a bit of the 'flavor of the month.' An actual barn isn't necessary, just some form of out-of-the-way long-term storage that involves a car being out of circulation for a long period of time, remaining complete with the time-capsule-like detritus of their slumber-yellowed newspapers, vintage eight-tracks or real pay dirt like a telex printout from Howard Hughes or a receipt from the Playboy Club. RM Auctions has just announced perhaps the first 'condo find' in a 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona coupe that had been stored in a Toronto condominium building for a quarter century. Like any good barn find, this Ferrari is still covered in a layer of thick dust (the removal of which would likely devalue the car considerably) and still has a cartridge entitled "Disco Rock" shoved in its original eight-track player. And while the one and only owner's taste in music may have been questionable, his taste in cars wasn't. The Daytona was the last front-engine V12 two-seater Ferrari produced during the so-called Enzo-era, when founder Enzo Ferrari was still in command of the company. With its 172 mph top speed, a Daytona was famously used by Dan Gurney and Brock Yates in setting a coast-to-coast record of 35 hours and 54 minutes to win the first Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash in 1971. An impulse trip to the Geneva Motor Show in the same year by a Toronto businessman saw him purchase the Daytona where he spent a month touring Europe before sending the car back to Canada on the Queen Elizabeth II. He drove it for eighteen years and put a whopping 90,000 kilometers – 56,000 miles – on the car prior to putting the car up on blocks in a condo garage before a trip to Asia that he anticipated would last just six months. The car remained in that spot until November 14, 2014. The car that originally sold for $18,000 in Geneva, Switzerland in 1971 is expected to bring in excess of $600,000 at RM Auction's Amelia Island sale in March. Carwash not included. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Berlinetta Chassis no. 14385 Body no.

2015 Japanese Grand Prix is a little Mercedes, a lot of zen

Just one week on from the issues in Singapore Mercedes-AMG Petronas appeared to have solved its clamp problems and everything else. Daniil Kvyat at Infiniti Red Bull Racing took the two Free Practice scalps on Friday, but when it came time for qualifying the front of the grid looked really familiar: Mercedes' Nico Rosberg took his second pole position of the season, Lewis Hamilton next to him in second. Kvyat had a hand in that, too, the Russian getting into a big accident in Q3 when he put two wheels on the grass heading into the hairpin and veered into the tire wall so hard that he flipped. That ended qualifying before a number of drivers had a chance to improve their times, Hamilton among them. That's how Valtteri Bottas got in third for Willliams ahead of Sebastian Vettel fourth for Ferrari. Felipe Massa had the second Williams in fifth, ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in the second Ferrari. Daniel Ricciardo lined up sixth for Infiniti Red Bull Racing, a team we're going to have to enjoy watching for the rest of the season since it might not exist come 2016. Romain Grosjean gave Lotus some good news by getting into eighth, the team so strapped for cash that it couldn't get into its hospitality area, so it held press conferences outside and ate at Bernie Ecclestone's Paddock Club. Sergio Perez took ninth for Sahara Force India, and Kvyat slotted into tenth after not setting a time. The Russsian's race would begin from the pit lane once his mechanics rebuilt his car. It wouldn't be a Formula One start lately without someone at the front having clutch problems. This time it was pole man Rosberg, whose power unit got too hot and put him a few horsepower down on Hamilton through Turns 1 and 2. That's half of how Hamilton took the lead from the lights going out, and the Brit kept it throughout the race. Rosberg, however, said his race was lost when Hamilton pushed him wide through Turn 2, a move Hamilton defended. Rosberg finished almost 19 seconds behind his teammate, a gap that probably isn't fully explained by that opening incident. Hamilton's race was so uneventful that we almost never saw him on camera – that is, we saw him so much less than we usually see him when he's out in front and unpressured that Nikki Lauda said he'd ask Ecclestone why the cameras avoided him. The conspiracy theory holds that FOM was punishing Mercedes for not supplying Red Bull with engines next year.