sprint

Great Britain’s Joe Truman said team-mate Matt Richardson’s withdrawal was “not ideal” and they had started “on the back foot” as they exited in the first round of the men’s team sprint at the World Track Cycling Championships.

Richardson was pulled from the competition on Monday amid allegations of misconduct.

The 27-year-old, who had also been expected to contend for medals in the individual sprint and keirin, said he would co-operate with a British Cycling investigation into the allegations.

His withdrawal overshadowed preparations for the event in Shanghai, though Britain’s women did secure silver in the team sprint.

Emma Finucane, who is Richardson’s partner, Sophie Capewell and Rhianna Parris-Smith finished fastest in qualifying, and beat France but lost to hosts China in the gold-medal race.

The men’s team – Truman, Ed Lowe and Harry Ledingham-Horn – finished fifth in the qualifying stage but were beaten by fourth-placed Australia in the opening round of head-to-head races.

“We came with a bit of a last-minute change, obviously,” said Truman. “We all said this morning we’re here just to ride our bikes.

“We’re on the back foot a bit but let’s just put our best foot forward, put a time on the board at the start of Olympic quali and we got a time to be proud of.

“None of us are riding in ideal circumstances but we’re professional athletes and so it’s what we train to do – we train to race when it’s not perfect – so I think we did OK. We’re looking ahead to the next couple of years and think we’re in a great spot.”

Elsewhere on day one, Britain’s women and men progressed as first and second fastest respectively in qualifying for the team pursuit events.

Meanwhile, Abigail Miller finished 17th of 24 riders in the women’s scratch race.

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.”