FORMULA 1 HEINEKEN GRANDE PRÊMIO DE SÃO PAULO 2022 - Race Results
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FORMULA 1 HEINEKEN GRANDE PRÊMIO DE SÃO PAULO 2022 - Sprint Race Results
FORMULA 1 HEINEKEN GRANDE PRÊMIO DE SÃO PAULO 2022 - Top 10 Qualifying Results
¹ Grid penalty
This year has been shaping up to be a strong one for central bank gold buying. This is despite the official absence from the buy side of central bank gold powerhouses such as Russia and China. Instead, there has been a noticeable trend of a diverse group of central banks who are not regular gold buyers, deciding to step up and make substantial gold purchases over short periods of time. Thailand, Hungary and Brazil First up in Europe was the central bank of Hungary, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB), which stunned the gold market in early April, when it announced that it had bought 63 tonnes of monetary gold during March 2021. Next up in Asia was the central bank of Thailand, Bank of Thailand, which revealed that over the two months of April and May 2021, it had added a total of 90 tonnes of gold to its reserves, specifically 43.5 tonnes during April, and another 46.5 tonnes in May. And now most recently, the attention has moved to South America, where IMF data submitted by Brazil’s central bank, the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB), reveals that after adding 11.7 tonnes of gold in May, the Brazilian central bank bought another 41.7 tonnes of gold in June, making a 2-month buying total of 53.5 tonnes of monetary gold. This now boosts Brazil’s gold reserves to a claimed 121 tonnes and puts South America’s largest economy in 32nd position in the sovereign monetary gold holding rankings. These three sets of gold buying from Thailand, Hungary and Brazil now make this trio the top 3 central bank gold buyers so far in 2021. In the case of Thailand, 2021 was the first time since 2011 that the Bank of Thailand had made a substantial purchase of gold. In the case of Hungary, the 2021 purchase was only the second time it had entered the market for many years (the other time being Hungary’s large gold purchase of 28.4 tonnes in October 2018). In the case of Brazil, 2021 was the first time since 2012 that the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) had gone out and purchased gold, and at 53.5 tonnes, was BCB’s largest gold purchase since the year 2000.
Brazil’s Gold Reserves – No Transparency And then it suddenly struck me. No one seems to know very much at all about Brazil’s sovereign gold reserves. Look on the main pages of the BCB website about Brazil’s gold reserves, and you will find nothing. For a top 3 purchaser of gold during year-to-date 2021, this seems very odd. For example, where are these gold reserves held and stored, and in what form? More importantly, where did the Banco Central do Brasil buy the gold that it claims to have bought so recently during May and June, and who was the seller? What were the BCB’s gold buying motivations in adding 53.5 tonnes? And critically, does Brazil lend out its gold and only hold ‘claims on gold’, or does it hold only allocated and unencumbered gold bars in set-aside accounts with foreign central banks? So I decided to put my questions to the BCB directly, whose headquarters are in Brazil’s federal capital in Brasilia. And this is where it gets interesting. For while Hungary’s central bank was very forthcoming in explaining why it purchased 63 tonnes of gold during March (and even published a press release and photos of the gold bars purchased), the same cannot be said of the Banco Central do Brasil. Lora Smith BIARRITZ, August 26 -- World leaders at the G-7 summit have agreed to help the countries affected by the huge wildfires ravaging the Amazon rain forest as soon as possible, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday. "We are all agreed on helping those countries which have been hit by the fires as fast as possible," he told journalists at the summit in the south-western French resort of Biarritz. Ahead of the gathering, Macron called on world leaders to hold urgent talks on the wildfires ripping through the world's largest rain forest, pledging "concrete measures" to tackle it. Although about 60 per cent of the Amazon is in Brazil, the vast forest also takes in parts of eight other countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. "This morning, Colombia called on the international community (to help), so we must help out," he said. "Our teams are making contact with all the Amazon countries so we can finalise some very concrete commitments involving technical resources and funding." Macron's bid to put the Amazon crisis high on the agenda at the G-7 angered Brazil's far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, who lashed out over what he sees as outside interference, denouncing the French leader's "colonialist mentality". Under intense international pressure, Bolsonaro agreed to send in the military to fight the fires. The army on Sunday deployed two Hercules C-130 aircraft to douse fires, as hundreds of new blazes were ignited ahead of nationwide protests over the destruction. Heavy smoke covered the city of Porto Velho in the north-western state of Rondonia where the defense ministry said the planes have started dumping thousands of liters of water. Swathes of the remote region bordering Bolivia have been scorched by the blazes, sending thick smoke billowing into the sky and increasing air pollution across the world's largest rain forest. Experts say increased land clearing during the months-long dry season to make way for crops or grazing has aggravated the problem this year. "It gets worse every year - this year, the smoke has been really serious," Deliana Amorim, 46, told Agence France-Presse in Porto Velho where half a million people live. At least seven states, including Rondonia, have requested the army's help in the Amazon, where more than 43,000 troops are based and available to combat fires, officials said. Pope Francis on Sunday also voiced concern for the rain forest, which he described as a "vital" lung for the planet. The latest official figures show 79,513 forest fires have been recorded in Brazil this year, the highest number of any year since 2013. More than half of the fires are in the massive Amazon basin, where more than 20 million people live. Some 1,130 new fires were ignited between Friday and Saturday, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The new data come as protesters plan to take to the streets across Brazil on Sunday, after thousands held demonstrations in the country and in Europe on Friday. Brazil - President Jair BolsonaroOSAKA, June 28 -- Retired military officer Bolsonaro entered office in January, with a promise to crack down on crime and ease gun control laws so that ordinary people can defend themselves. The 64-year-old right-wing politician, dubbed "Trump of the Tropics" for his radical comments, has been a vocal supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump. He also expressed skepticism about Chinese investment in Brazil during last year's election campaign, much of which he was forced to sit out after being hospitalized by a life-threatening knife stab to the abdomen in September. Bolsonaro is also known for praising Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, and for making remarks some have interpreted as racist. Hailing from Sao Paulo, he graduated from military academy and joined a paratrooper brigade. He decided to pursue a political career after being disciplined for advocating a rise in military salaries, in a column he wrote for a local magazine in 1986. He served as a lower-house member for seven consecutive terms from 1991 before being elected president. A Catholic with the middle name Messias, meaning savior, he has called the presidential post his mission from God. BUENOS AIRES, June 16 -- A massive failure in the electrical interconnection system left Argentina and Uruguay without power, according to reports by local media. According to Infobae, an Argentinian website, the country has been in the dark for more than an hour, and all trains are suspended. Electricity supplier company Edesur Argentina said in a tweet: "A massive failure in the electrical interconnection system left Argentina and Uruguay without power." "Never has anything like this happened before," Alejandra Martinez, a spokeperson for the company told Infobae. Local media in Argentina said the blackout ocurred at around 12:00 GMT (07:00 local time). Social media reports on the blackout were widespread. "Huge blackout in Argentina: the City, the Province of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe were left in the dark," a news agency posted on Twitter.
ROTTERDAM, May 1 -- This week sees the 25th anniversary of the Imola accident that took the Brazilian’s life and had a devastating impact not just on his millions of fans but on Grand Prix racing as a whole.
No doubt the Pope, like the Queen, receives many strange presents. But few can have been odder than the one that came his way the other day, when the family of Ayrton Senna presented a bemused-looking pontiff with a bust of the late Formula One champion. Skilfully executed by Senna’s sister, Bianca, the gift was timed to coincide with this week’s 25th anniversary of the accident at the Imola circuit that took the Brazilian’s life and had such a devastating impact not just on his millions of fans but also on grand prix racing as a whole.Much was always made of Senna’s occasional references to his religious beliefs, and a perceived aura of spirituality certainly marked him out from the general run of grand prix drivers. No one would have expected James Hunt or Nigel Mansell to say something like “If you have God on your side, everything becomes clear”. Senna gave the impression that although he had definitely been put on earth to race, he was also involved in a search for a higher purpose. Neither martyr nor saint Within his sport he was a man motivated by personal ambition, with a weapons-grade sense of entitlement that made him capable, for example, of taking revenge on Alain Prost by running the Frenchman off the road at Suzuka in 1990 with a cold-blooded and potentially lethal ruthlessness. Importing the tactics of the kart track to Formula One, he changed the rules of engagement in a sport whose drivers, although always ferociously competitive, had generally treated each other with chivalry. Away from the track, on the other hand, Senna tried to do good. He gave millions to charity, and a family-run foundation continues his work of educating poor children in Brazil. All of which goes to show that not much in life, even the character of a racing driver, is as straightforward as we might wish it to be. There was certainly nothing straightforward about the circumstances of his death on 1 May 1994 during the San Marino Grand Prix. A quarter of a century of analysis has failed to yield a definitive judgment on the events of the seventh lap of that race, although there is a general acceptance that – to put it simply – lowered tyre pressures caused his Williams FW16 to bottom on the rippled tarmac on the inside of the 190mph left-hander called Tamburello, throwing it out of control. The fatal head wound inflicted by a broken suspension part was the freakish consequence. The real complication comes in the fact that he died while trying to stay in front of a dangerous new rival. After the retirements of Mansell, Prost and Nelson Piquet, Senna found himself confronting the challenge of Michael Schumacher, nine years his junior, and no attempt to establish the cause of the accident can ignore the relevance of their head-to-head battle. It was Senna’s opinion, privately expressed but well documented, that Schumacher’s Benetton was benefitting from the continued use of banned electronic driver aids. That allegation, and others levelled against the German driver and his team during the course of the year, form the subject of a new book called 1994, whose author, Ibrar Malik, gathers new and old testimony from a variety of witnesses. Despite the profusion of anorak-level technical detail, not always clearly presented, there are no confessions and, in the end, no new and dramatic conclusions. The pictures tell the story Several people with access to Senna at Imola have described his troubled state of mind that weekend. The photographer Jon Nicholson was there, collaborating with his friend Damon Hill, the No 2 to Senna in the Williams team, on a book about the whole year. Nicholson had been at Interlagos for the first race of the season, in which Senna spun off in front of his home crowd in his debut with his new team, and at Aida in Japan for the second round, where he was shunted into an accident at the first corner.
The photographer knew that Senna, having left McLaren to join the team whose cars had dominated the previous two championships, was frustrated by the new car’s disconcertingly poor performance and by unexpected pressure from Schumacher. Nicholson had seen enough of the Brazilian during the weeks of testing and racing that spring to know that his state of mind was darker than usual even before the accidents of his young compatriot Rubens Barrichello, who came close to death on the Friday, and his friend Roland Ratzenberger, who lost his life on the Saturday. Nicholson took a lot of pictures that weekend. The one published here remained unseen until a few months ago, when he was sorting through his filing cabinets and found a box of negatives marked “Imola 1994”. It had been taken in the Williams garage on the Saturday, as Senna stood next to his car, preparing for the morning’s practice session. About to pull on his helmet over his flameproof balaclava, he was looking up at the timing screen suspended from the garage ceiling. The combination of posture and lighting give the photograph an ethereal quality that, with hindsight, seems to express something in the driver’s personality.
“I looked at it and shivered,” Nicholson told me. “It’s like Ayrton’s already vanished – as though he’s no longer of this world.” Barely 30 hours later, as the driver’s lifeless body was lifted into the sky by a medical helicopter and carried away over the wooded hills surrounding the circuit, the sport had lost not a saint but a flawed and forever fascinating hero. |
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