Russell

Russell Brand has appeared in court for the start of his rape and sexual assault trial.

The 51-year-old comedian and actor has been charged with three counts of rape, three charges of sexual assault and one allegation of indecent assault, which are alleged to have occurred between 1999 and 2009.

The trial at Southwark Crown Court in London, which could last up to 10 weeks, has now begun with the process of jury selection.

Brand pleaded not guilty to the charges during pre-trial hearings.

The comedian and actor arrived at court wearing a grey suit and sunglasses, accompanied by his wife Laura.

There was a large media presence at the court for the start of the trial, which is expected to last up to 10 weeks.

Max Verstappen’s sprint race win was ​Dutchman’s first of any kind in Singapore as he finished ahead of Lewis Hamilton.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won a wet and wild Singapore Grand Prix sprint race on Saturday after George Russell crashed his Mercedes while leading at the end of the opening lap.

Four-time Formula One champion Verstappen held off Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton to win by 2.50 seconds, with Charles Leclerc third as the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri touched and spun on the final lap while in fourth and fifth.

A heavy shower 10 minutes before the scheduled start meant a delay of 30 minutes.

All cars began on intermediate tyres, with some sectors of the Marina Bay Street Circuit much drier than others as the field embarked on two formation laps behind the safety car.

The eventual standing start saw Russell start on the front row alongside pole-sitter Verstappen and it was the Englishman who got away better.

His lead was short-lived as he lost control after touching a treacherous white line on the final bend of the opening lap. He slid sideways into the pit lane wall, bringing out a safety car.

It was another setback in a season of bad luck for Russell, who will start from the back of the grid in Sunday’s Grand Prix because of engine penalties.

“It was a miscalculation,” Russell told Sky Sports. “Came through the corner, had more battery deployment than I thought, pushed me a little bit wider than I hoped and went on to the white line.

“Silly mistake. Big consequences.”

It left Hamilton, who had a brilliant start from sixth on the grid, in second place, having leapfrogged Ferrari teammate Leclerc and the two McLarens.

The big beneficiary of Norris and Piastri’s “papaya spat” on the last lap was championship leader Kimi Antonelli, who inherited fourth place in his Mercedes having started seventh on the grid.

Fifth was RB’s Liam Lawson, sixth was the Haas of Oliver Bearman, seventh was Audi’s Nico Hulkenberg and Norris got going again to limp home in eighth and round out the points scorers.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won an incident-packed sprint race at the Singapore Grand Prix after Mercedes driver George Russell crashed out of the lead.

Russell was leading in tricky conditions, with half the track dry and half wet, when he got a little too wide at the final corner at the end of the first lap.

He lost control of his Mercedes, which spun across the track into the inside wall, before bouncing back again to the outside, the rest of the field somehow avoiding him.

A final-lap collision between the McLarens as Lando Norris tried to pass Oscar Piastri at Turn Five promoted Russell’s team-mate Kimi Antonelli to fourth place.

In combination with Russell’s retirement, that extends the Italian’s championship lead to 89 points.

More to follow

Verstappen’s pole lap appeared to be further confirmation of Red Bull’s resurgence after his dominant win in Malaysia but he faces an investigation for overtaking under yellow flags shown before the first session was stopped for the Perez incident.

The four-time champion said he had not believed pole was possible before qualifying.

“We have some difficulties with the car in ride, as we know,” he said, “but at least when we went to the soft tyres (in the final session), it made the car a bit more stable in places where before you were a bit unsure.

“I did not expect this but you take it, I’m happy for sure. Qualifying tomorrow is still the main goal and for us the start is always a critical point but at least a positive end to our day.”

Russell’s performance compared with that of Antonelli raises further doubts about the efficacy of the Mercedes upgrade introduced in Malaysia.

It was their biggest car update since the Canadian Grand Prix in May but team boss Toto Wolff said at Sepang that it had appeared to take them backwards rather than forwards.

Mercedes split the car spec here in Singapore in an attempt to better understand its performance but Antonelli ended the session 0.573secs behind Russell.

The Briton said: “As a team there is still nothing telling us it isn’t working but it’s all driven by the stopwatch and, yeah, the stopwatch hasn’t been great for the upgrade yet. Maybe tomorrow’s a different day.”

Antonelli, who leads the championship by 84 points going into the weekend, said: “Already FP1 I was struggling and there is still a lot to understand about this package. Really the car is very difficult, very unpredictable, very difficult to put a lap together. It’s a shame. I was coming with high hopes but so far it has been very difficult.

“It’s going to be a difficult weekend unless we can pull something out tomorrow. Other than that it is going very tricky. I don’t really see where we can find 0.7secs but you never know.”

Wolff said before sprint qualifying: “The new car seems to be a little more tricky to drive. Not saying it’s necessarily slower, because there will be goodness in it, but maybe we haven’t just found a way of putting it all together and tuning it. The older car is a bit more stable, grippy, but that is really just one data point.”

Leclerc was 0.243secs off pole, and ruing what he said was Ferrari “losing a little bit of our raw performance” in the past three or four races.

However, he added: “Still I feel there is potential in the car and maybe tomorrow we can be there or thereabouts in fighting for pole.”

Hamilton said: “We did a slightly different run plan to the others. It was my choice, but I think we got that wrong. But ultimately, the car was very oversteery on that lap. If the rears [tyres] are not ready or they are overheating, it’s difficult to say. But it was very snappy and oversteery in the lap overall.”

Verstappen, who chose not to do a soft-tyre run because rain was forecast and he wanted to prioritise race preparation, said his day had been a “decent start” and “positive”.

Technical director Pierre Wache added: “We were not very optimistic starting the weekend. The main aspect was to evaluate the package we put in Baku in different type of corners than low speed.

“It looks to be working better than the previous package. Relative performance is difficult to judge but we were surprisingly happy with where we were today.”

Mercedes drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli were only seventh and eighth fastest in terms of headline times as they evaluated a major upgrade on their car, the team’s first since the Canadian Grand Prix in June.

Russell said: “I’m feeling the downforce in some of the corners but with this amount of tyre overheating and degradation that trumps everything. So we just need to get on top of that overnight,. That’s more of a set-up rather than the upgrade itself and go from there.’

Asked whether he could compete for pole position on Saturday, Russell said: “Currently, Verstappen looks very fast and the race pace of the McLaren looked very quick but never say never.”

The Briton trails Antonelli by 66 points in the championship after his victory in Azerbaijan last weekend.

On the race simulation runs, Verstappen also looked like the car to beat, taking stint length and tyre wear into account.

But the top four teams all looked to be in close company after a day evaluating tyre wear in the tropical temperatures and on an abnormally abrasive track, where F1 cars last raced in 2017.

Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly were ninth and 10th.

Three drivers have grid penalties. Hadjar will drop five places from his qualifying position for exceeding the permitted number of engine parts.

And Arvid Lindblad of Racing Bulls and Alpine’s Franco Colapinto will be at the back, the Briton for engine penalties, and the Argentine because of a 10-place engine penalty on top of the five-place penalty he was given for causing a crash at a restart in last weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

F1 has returned to this track, regarded as one of the best layouts among the new generation of circuits that came on stream at the end of the last century and into this one, because of the circumstances around this year’s calendar.

The Bahrain and Saudi Arabia races were cancelled at the beginning of the year as a result of the war in the Middle East.

But Bahrain were keen to hold their race and Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa negotiated to hold the race in Malaysia.

A bunch of Bahraini-related activities are being held at the track, while the trophy presented will be the Bahrain Grand Prix trophy and rosewater rather than champagne will be sprayed on the podium.

George Russell wins Azerbaijan Grand Prix for eighth career F1 victory and first since the Austrian Grand Prix in June.

George Russell held off Red Bull’s four-time world champion Max Verstappen to complete a lights-to-flag win in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix for Mercedes, with teammate Kimi Antonelli limiting the damage to his championship lead by finishing fifth.

Russell took the flag 0.196 seconds ahead of the flying Dutchman, who started eighth but crossed the line nearly side-by-side with his Mercedes rival after two safety car phases turned a cruise into a fight for survival for the Briton.

Frenchman Isack Hadjar, who was handed a contract extension by Red Bull earlier this week and had missed the last three races with a wrist injury, completed the podium on his racing return.

The win around the Baku street track was the eighth of Russell’s career, the third of the season and his first since the Austrian Grand Prix at the end of June.

It allowed him to close the gap in the overall standings to Italian championship leader Antonelli by 15 points to 66 after 15 rounds.

“It’s amazing to be back on the top step of the podium,” said Russell.

“Every race since the (summer) break I’ve gone from strength to strength and I feel more like myself again.”

Antonelli had started 16th after a rare error saw him crash out of Friday’s qualifying.

His drive on Saturday was less like his Monza charge — where he went from 19th to first — and more of a slow-burn recovery.

Charles Leclerc took fourth for Ferrari ahead of the 20-year-old Italian. His seven-time world champion teammate Lewis Hamilton was sixth.

Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad finished seventh. Esteban Ocon took eighth ahead of teammate Oliver Bearman in a double points finish for Haas.

Carlos Sainz rounded out the top 10 for Williams.

Russell appeared on course for a comfortable win as the race unfolded with few incidents of note in the opening stages.

Piastri moved up from third on the grid to second by passing Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc at the start but the Australian lacked the pace to chase Russell, who edged away into a comfortable lead.

Behind, Piastri soon found himself holding off Hadjar, who won an early battle with McLaren’s Lando Norris and then passed Leclerc to challenge the McLaren.

Meanwhile, Verstappen was making his way up from eighth place after a qualifying session in which a cascade of problems had prevented him qualifying second to Russell.

By lap seven, he was past Hadjar into third place after the Frenchman did not fight him.

The three cars circulated together in a stalemate, with no-one able to pass and the teams all waiting for the expected accident that would lead to a safety car and a cheap pit stop.

That happened on lap 30, when Williams’ Alex Albon crashed at Turn Five.

On the restart, six laps later, Verstappen passed Piastri into Turn One to move into second place.

But the race was almost immediately put back under caution after a pile-up at the first corner caused by Alpine’s Franco Colapinto, who cannoned into team-mate Pierre Gasly, who in turn clattered into Norris.

Behind them, the two Racing Bulls also came together, Arvid Lindblad tipping Liam Lawson into a spin, leading to a sarcastic response from the New Zealander on the radio.

That put Verstappen on to Russell’s tail for another restart but the Briton handled the situation coolly, accelerating early and catching the Dutchman somewhat unawares.

He was unable to shake Verstappen, who was always about 0.5secs behind but never quite close enough to try a move into Turn One, the only significant overtaking place.

There was one last chance for Verstappen on the final lap.

Valtteri Bottas crashed his Cadillac at Turn 15, and after backing off for the yellow flags, Russell lost his turbo which in turn cost him electrical boost.

Verstappen closed in on the run to the line and there was just 0.196secs between them as they crossed the line, the closest green-flag finish to a grand prix since the 2002 United States Grand Prix.

Russell has now finished on the podium in three of the four races since the summer break and asked what has changed for him since then, he said: “I think it’s just having more experience with this new driving style I’ve adopted and every race since the break I feel like I’ve gone from strength to strength. I feel more like myself again.”

Leclerc was somewhat taken aback by Mercedes’ superiority, saying that the position was what he expected but the gap most definitely was not.

At the bottom of the top 10, there was finally some good news for Williams, for whom Carlos Sainz achieved the team’s first top 10 qualifying performance of the year.

Williams have introduced a new chassis this weekend which has brought them down to the weight limit for the first time this season, after being as much as 25kg over at the start of the year.

Along with some additional developments, it appears to have produced a big step forwards, although the caveat is that Baku is a track that suits the characteristics of the Williams car and does not expose its weaknesses.

Team-mate Alex Albon did not manage to secure a tow in the second part of qualifying, and was “anyway struggling with straight-line speed all session”, and was 13th, just under 0.4secs behind the Spaniard.

Antonelli’s error came on his second lap of the first session.

He turned into the first corner too early, and the left front wheel clouted the inside wall, breaking the suspension.

He initially tried to get the car back to the pits but was told by engineer Peter Bonnington to park up.

“Let me try,” Antonelli pleaded, before Bonnington told him that either the track rod or upright was broken and there was no way Mercedes could fix that in the time they had to turn the car around before the next session.

Antonelli had been on the back foot all Friday trying to catch up time lost to a hydraulic problem that had stopped his car on track halfway through first practice, and was not repaired until halfway into the second.

It was Antonelli’s first major mistake of the season since he crashed heavily in final practice at the first race of the season in Australia.