Djokovic wary despite Wimbledon form, dominant Sinner faces Dimitrov
Djokovic, who has a record 25th Gland Slam singles title in his sights, meets Australia's Alex de Minaur while Sinner faces the talented Grigor Dimitrov.
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Five-time Grand Slam winner Iga Swiatek is the main attraction in a wide-open side of the women's draw as she takes on Clara Tauson.
'Complete' De Minaur concerns Djokovic
Djokovic was in supreme form as he demolished compatriot Miomir Kecmanovic 6-3, 6-0, 6-4 to the delight of his seven-year-old daughter Tara, who enjoyed a post-match celebratory dance with her dad.
But the seven-time champion is wary of the threat that lies ahead of him in the second week, even before potential meetings with Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, who has beaten Djokovic in each of the past two finals.
De Minaur was forced to pull out of a quarter-final meeting at Wimbledon with the Serb last year due to injury but gets another shot at glory against one of the sport's all-time greats.
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A two-time winner of grass court titles, the world number 11 has dropped just one set on his way to the last 16.
"He's playing the tennis of his life. He's definitely knocking on the door of the final stages of Grand Slams," said Djokovic.
"You're not super excited to play Alex de Minaur on grass, that's for sure, because he's so quick and he's a complete player."
Dimitrov not stressed by dominant Sinner
Jannik Sinner does not have the Wimbledon track record of Djokovic or Alcaraz, but the Italian has been the most dominant player in the men's draw in the opening week.
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The US Open and Australian Open champion has matched the men's Open Era record at Wimbledon for fewest games lost -- 17 -- in reaching the fourth round, set by Jan Kodes back in 1972.
Sinner is also yet to lose his serve this year at the All England Club, not that his next opponent appears daunted by that prospect.
"We're in the second week of Wimbledon. Let's have fun," said 34-year-old Dimitrov, who knows his days on the show courts at Grand Slams are numbered.
The Bulgarian appeared destined to be a future Wimbledon champion when he made the semi-finals in 2014, but has never progressed beyond the fourth round since.
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'Smooth' Swiatek finds feet on grass
A rare defeat at the French Open has helped Swiatek finally feel at home on the grass as the former world number one eyes just a second Wimbledon quarter-final on Monday.
Aryna Sabalenka beat Swiatek in the semi-finals at Roland Garros after the Polish player won four titles there in five years, but a slightly earlier exit gave her more time to adjust to the grass.
Swiatek reached her first grass-court final in Bad Homburg last week, after which she said there is "some hope" for her on the surface.
"This year on grass I had some moments where I just felt comfortable and I didn't have to think much. It was just pretty smooth."
A flurry of early exits for all of the top six seeds other than Sabalenka also means Swiatek could make the final without having to play another top-10 player.
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Motor Trend
12 minutes ago
- Motor Trend
Future and Past Collide—Confusingly, Excitingly—at the World's Best Car Meet
Uncertainty is everywhere in the automotive industry. On-again off-again tariffs, flat sales, the looming threat of Chinese automakers, and yes, electrification all present hurdles. Uncertainty on the latter—frequently conflated with automotive technological progress by enthusiasts—was top of mind for me at the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed. A ride-along over the weekend with Travis Pastrana in a 2025 Subaru WRX ARA24 and with Max McCrae in his uncle Colin's 1990 Subaru Legacy RS at the festival's Forest Rally Stage and watching the Festival's signature timed shootout has me thinking a bit differently about the march of progress. The 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed showcased automotive progress with Chinese EVs, rallying with Travis Pastrana in a Subaru WRX, and debates on electrification's impact. The event also highlighted new car debuts and significant Chinese automaker presence, reflecting industry shifts. This summary was generated by AI using content from this MotorTrend article Read Next Pastrana, to most Americans, needs little introduction. Some know him for his Hall of Fame motocross career, a fearless freestyle motocross X Games champ, stuntman from Nitro Circus, or as a NASCAR racer. But rallying and rallycross, now that he's retired from competitive motocross due to a frightfully long list of injuries (including, as he was quick to point out, a broken urethra), has long seemed to be his second love. Pastrana recently rejoined Subaru Motorsports USA where he's competing in the American Rally Association. At Goodwood, he took me for a ride in Subaru's Open 4WD WRX ARA24 car. These cars are heavily modified from stock WRXs, featuring restricted 2.0-liter turbocharged flat-4s good for 320 hp and 380 lb-ft of torque, running through a six-speed sequential transmission and mechanical differential to all four wheels. At each corner the stock suspension is swapped for new springs and dampers with a foot of travel and 15-inch wheels on gravel rally tires. Short of the hybridized million-dollar tube frame rally cars now running in the World Rally Championship, the open class WRX ARA car is about as bleeding edge as you can get in the rally world. The WRX ARA's runs—and those of the Toyota and Hyundai WRC teams— wouldn't be officially counted on the Forest Rally Stage, but the fact that the festival was posting times was enough to bring out the full competitor in Pastrana and the rest of the Subaru team as they sought to post the fastest time in one of their laps. Slower and wider than the Rally1 WRC cars (not to mention cheaper, too), the WRX ARA24 would have its work cut out for it. Our run was, in a word, quick. I have no idea of the time of our particular run, but Pastrana and the team would go on to post the second-quickest time on the course of the weekend at 2.33.2, just a couple seconds behind a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 (which the Subaru team was quick to point out cut the Gymkhana barrel out of its unofficial run). The car felt phenomenally fun from the passenger seat, seemingly reacting instantaneously to Pastrana's steering, braking, and throttle inputs, while the rally suspension soaked up the ruts, berms, and jumps on the course as softly as a dune runner might. Watching an elite athlete such as Pastrana work up close was equally fascinating, as he wielded the WRX like Shohei Ohtani does a baseball bat, or Connor McDavid does a hockey stick—using their tools' strengths to improve their individual performances and knowing when they might need to make up for any weaknesses in their equipment. While not yet quite as accomplished as his father Alister, grandfather Jimmy, or uncle Colin, Max McCrae has already set out to make a name of his own in the WRC's Group Rally2, where he runs a Citroen C3 Rally2. He was at Goodwood, however, helping honor the legacy of his uncle. That's where the Legacy RS comes in. In many ways both Colin McCrae's and Subaru's rally journeys began with this car, which was piloted to a second place finish in the 1992 Rally Sweden by Colin. Subaru would soon replace the Legacy with the Impreza, marking a direct lineage to Pastrana's WRX. On paper, it should prove a match for the modern ARA car. Simpler, and lighter than its modern descendant, it's powered by a 2.0-liter turbocharged flat-4 with 290 hp and 289 lb-ft of torque. But some of its other mechanicals are simpler, both in terms of how they operate and how they're manufactured. The Legacy lacks a modern anti-lag system and puts its power down through a five-speed dogbox manual transmission. Its all-wheel drive system also features permanently locked differentials that make low speed maneuvering difficult, and a hydraulic handbrake without the responsiveness of a modern unit. Despite the, uh, legacy of this particular Legacy, McCrae didn't take it easy on the car during our ride along with him. To be honest, I didn't get the sense that he could if he wanted to maximize its performance because nothing seemed to happen instantly or easily in the Legacy RS. On straights McCrae needed to manage the body's balance as the car skipped down the stage, gearshifts in a shift pattern the motorsports world has long moved past, and brakes without the feel or stopping power of their modern counterparts. In corners, McCrae had to balance the hydraulic hand brake, diffs, and also keep the engine in the sweet spot of its powerband where he could minimize lag. McCrae had to work twice as hard to get every last bit of performance out of that Legacy, which leaves less room for the driver to actually focus on driving and maximizing their own performance. Progress rears its head again during the Festival of Speed's headlining timed shoot out on Sunday afternoon, where competitors vie to post the quickest time up the 1.16-mile, nine-turn hillclimb. Last year the Subaru Project Midnight WRX, a highly modified WRX ARA rally car, built, like the rally car by Subaru Motorsports USA technical partner Vermont Sports Cars, with 670 hp designed to dominate on this single event and driven by Scott Speed came in second to a quad-motor electric Ford Supervan. This year, the team, facing a 2,000-plus horsepower quad-motor Ford F-150 Lightning Supertruck, expected the same results despite some changes based on Speed's feedback from last year. As Vermont Sports Cars technical director Yannis Loison told us, 'With [an] internal combustion engine only we'll never reach what [Ford has] with the EV. If we really want to compete against them, to try to beat them, we need a combo with [an] internal combustion engine and something electric.' Unfortunately for the Subaru Motorsports USA team, Loison proved prophetic. Despite improving by 1.04 seconds to 45.03 versus last year, the Ford truck still beat the souped-up Subaru, finishing in 43.22 seconds. And that's through no fault of Speed. Like Pastrana earlier in the WRX ARA car, in-car footage of Speed showed him methodically wringing every last ounce of performance out of Project Midnight, shaving grass on corners where he could, and narrowly skirting the unforgiving walls near the top of the climb on the unforgiving course. But the Supertruck, driven by Romain Dumas, made up for any disadvantage it might have in its weight with power, simply eliminating any straight in a blink while still somehow managing to carry high speeds through corners. In a lot of ways what the driving loving public and motorsports is going through in trying to figure out how much—if at all—to embrace electrification mimics what other sports have gone through as technology progressed. Professional baseball, when faced with introducing home run–friendly aluminum or composite bats, opted to preserve the tradition of wood bats instead. That makes it much more difficult for pros to hit home runs, and as an indirect result the league has tweaked the game's rules to improve offense. Professional hockey, meanwhile, allowed the introduction of aluminum and eventually composite sticks in the '90s. The long term result is a game that's faster, and more offensive, thanks to players who've since learned how to maximize the whippier, more responsive sticks and improve their own games. I'm not advocating one way or the other, but at some point we're going to have to decide collectively as driving enthusiasts whether we want to embrace the excitement and promise of new technologies or preserve the past in stasis. Other items from the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed The auto show is alive and well: Big international auto shows have been shrinking in significance for about a decade now, with COVID nearly decimating them entirely. The Goodwood Festival of Speed perhaps shows a way forwards for the future. The infield of the festival featured stands from the likes of BMW, Ford, Honda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lotus, MG, Renault, and more, where folks could hop in and out of cars back-to-back. In between, they could enjoy hillclimb runs, festival food and drinks, live music, shopping, and kid play areas. Some automakers even took the opportunity to debut new cars, such as the 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 6 N and Ioniq 6 N Performance, Honda Super EV concept (a little Kei-sized city EV), and the Porsche Cayenne Electric, and run them up the hill for the public. Where else can you see a new car debut and hit the road in the same day? Goodwood, that's where. Hot commodities: When it comes to the infield auto show–like section of Goodwood, we think the three individually most popular vehicles were the Ioniq 6 N, the Renault 5 E-Tech, and the Renault's sporty cousin, the Alpine A290. Hyundai's large display featured both new Ioniq 6 N iterations front-and-center and there was never a time we walked by where they weren't surrounded by throngs of people. Even the tech talk Hyundai did on the cars seemed well-attended. The Renault and Alpine, meanwhile, are stylish Volkswagen Golf–sized EVs that look stellar in person. Well-proportioned outside, inside they featured high quality body-colored textile seats and accent stitching, and even an optional baguette holder on the Renault version. The Renault 5 E-Tech has 40 and 52 kWh battery packs and up to 150 hp from a single front-mounted motor with up to 249 miles of range on the generous WTLP cycle. The sportier Alpine A290 keeps that 52 kWh pack and ups power to 217 hp in its hottest configuration, dropping to 236 miles. The Renault starts at around $30,000, while the Alpine nearer $46,000, though both notably include British VAT. Foreign journalists we've spoken to adore driving both cars. The Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming! With the United Kingdom officially out of the European Union, its own automotive industry in distress, and the Chinese looking for more markets for their EVs, BYD, Chery, Geely, SAIC, Xiaomi, and Xpeng had a sizeable footprint at Goodwood. SAIC, which owns MG, has had a growing presence on UK roads for years and its booth, headlined by a bumblebee-yellow Cyberster, was packed all weekend. Ditto Lotus' (owned by Geely), with the Electre and Emiya, swamped. Even brands without a British legacy had the public's attention. Xiaomi and XPeng ran cars up the hill (MG did, too). BYD's Denza luxury brand's booth had a DJ and electric violinist playing all weekend and featured a steady line of folks who wanted to sit inside the luxury D9 van. Chery also had a clever way to get folks into their cars. It provided a fleet of Jaecoo and Omoda SUVs—both from two new export-only brands—to shuttle folks to and from parking lots and around the sprawling grounds. We asked one driver, an older gentleman driving an Omoda 5 compact PHEV SUV, about his perception of Chinese EVs. He responded, 'That's the question, isn't it? My friends and I have been talking a lot about that, and we've come to the conclusion that they're perfectly alright.' According to the BBC, one in 10 new cars sold in the UK thus far this year are Chinese. MG and Polestar represent the bulk of those sales.
Associated Press
20 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Lottie Woad joining pro ranks in women's golf after nearly winning Evian
LONDON (AP) — Top-ranked amateur Lottie Woad announced Tuesday she will turn professional, two days after nearly winning a major title. The 21-year-old Englishwoman followed her victory by six shots at the Women's Irish Open on the Ladies European Tour on July 6 by finishing in third place — just one stroke off the pace — at the Evian Championship on Sunday. She didn't win any prize money at either tournament because she was amateur. However, her good finish at the Evian secured enough points to seal LPGA Tour membership through its Elite Amateur Pathway. It means she is ditching her college career at Florida State University with one year left. 'I am very excited to announce that I have decided to turn professional,' she wrote on social media. " I'm delighted to have secured a(n) LPGA card through the LEAP. 'I'm also happy to accept membership of the Ladies European Tour for 2026. Thank you to everyone who has helped me get to this position.' Woad is set to make her first start as a pro at the Women's Scottish Open next week. The British Women's Open, the final major of the year, is at Royal Porthcawl starting July 30. ___ AP golf:
Car and Driver
26 minutes ago
- Car and Driver
Travis Pastrana and Rhianon Gelsomino Teach Us the Art of Co-Driving
Colin McRae, Tommi Makinen, Walter Rohrl. Motorsports fans are familiar with those legendary names. But while rally drivers receive the fame and glory, they don't do it alone. Seated beside them as they slide across loose gravel, launch over jumps, and rocket through dense forests are the co-drivers. These underappreciated motorsports heroes allow those brave drivers to navigate tricky rally stages at full speed. To learn more about what it takes to be a co-driver, we talked with Rhianon Gelsomino, co-driver for Subaru's Travis Pastrana, before strapping in next to the American daredevil for a ride through the tight and twisty rally course at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the Subaru WRX ARA25. There are many paths to becoming a co-driver. Some, like Gelsomino, grow up in a rally-driving family and learn through immersion. "My dad was actually one of Australia's best rally drivers," Gelsomino told us as we waited to clamber into the WRX ARA25. "So I've come up with rally in my life, and my two brothers are rally drivers as well." When her family needed someone to call out the notes for their races, she took the opportunity to ride shotgun. Others train specifically for the job. Her husband, Alex Gelsomino, served as the late Ken Block's co-driver for 17 years and perfected his skills through a rally co-driver school in Italy as a teenager. Rhianon and Alex now lead a co-driver school through Dirtfish, among the top rally schools in North America. "That's how we encourage co-drivers to start learning the right way," she explained. Subaru Rhianon Gelsomino and Travis Pastrana at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Sometimes co-drivers start out behind the wheel before switching to the support role. "A lot of times it would be a driver that runs out of money," Gelsomino said. "With co-driving, you need a suit, helmet, boots, and you can co-drive, whereas the driver needs a car." When drivers begin hitting budgetary constraints in the famously expensive world of motorsports, she suggests they shift their focus. "Learn to be a co-driver, learn what rally is, and then change over to driving when you have the budget," she said. This also helps drivers gain a better perspective of what their co-driver needs to do their job properly. Although the co-driver doesn't actively steer the car with their hands, they do steer it, in a sense, with their voice, and their ability to communicate quickly and clearly with the driver is critical to a good result. That communication ultimately comes down to building trust between the teammates, as even the smallest mistake at over 100 mph on a narrow rally course can lead to a catastrophic accident. The first step is simply getting to know one another. "I make sure I learn a lot about them," said Gelsomino. "What car they're driving, what experience they have, what crashes they've had, what note system they use." Before the rally, the driver and co-driver do a reconnaissance drive of the stage at a much slower speed, and the driver takes notes that the co-driver will then read out when they tackle the event at full speed. "If they're not writing good notes, I can't do my job properly either." Subaru Before Gelsomino joined Pastrana in the Subaru WRX ARA25 for the American Rally Association, she competed in the World Rally Championship. "I'd learned a lot of things about video analysis and pace notes," she explained. "One big thing I worked on with him is using technology to his advantage." She showed Pastrana the benefit of recording their reconnaissance run, or "recce" as it's known among the competitors. "We record it because then we watch it at double speed together to rehearse the stage after the recce, to simulate it." Trading knowledge and preparing together is key to solidifying that trust in the car. "When you've done so much work rehearsing, that trust is built," she said. But some of it is also just innate. "We also have very similar personalities, he's like a brother to me. You find a bond," she explained. "Some people you don't, and you don't tend to continue working with them. You spend hours together, so you want to get along with the person, and you want to enjoy it." The other component to success is ensuring that you're speaking the same language. Every driver has their own style of taking notes. "In America, most drivers who use a one-to-six system, which is one will be a hairpin and a six will be flat out," Gelsomino detailed. "And they'll either say number or a direction: six left or left six, depending on which way they are going." But not everyone follows the same formula. "My brother, who I've done most of my rallies all over the world, he's a one-to-10 system." Subaru Then there are the "accessory words," which give the driver extra context on how to set up for the upcoming corner, and the "trigger words" that warn of big adjustments. The former might include "into" to connect a string of tightly packed corners, or "hug" to tell the driver to keep close to the inside of the corner instead of taking a more traditional racing line. The latter covers phrases like "caution, brake, and max flat." Luckily, when we rode alongside Pastrana on the short Goodwood rally stage, we weren't asked to read out notes. The jovial Pastrana had already completed several runs and was well-versed on the course, all the better since, as we soon discovered, it's quite the challenge to keep up. The launch off the line was violent despite the slick surface underneath, and as the Subaru WRX ARA25 surged forward, its nose pointed skyward, making it hard to judge or position relative to the upcoming turns. Those corners come at you fast, one after another. Pastrana's hands worked just as fast, whipping the steering wheel left and right, shifting gears, and yanking on the handbrake. The forces on your body are intense, from the grab of the harness under braking to the dramatic squat and dive that the long-travel suspension allows, and the feeling of constantly being sideways yet still going straight. As we scythed through the trees, we tried bracing for the corners ahead and keeping an eye on the narrow dirt route, but everything happened so quickly, we could only just hang on. The rapid two-and-a-half-minute run up the 1.5-mile course illustrated the impressive skills required of both rally drivers and co-drivers. Not only were we blown away by Pastrana's artful car control, as he chatted casually over the radio with a big grin on his face, but the immense speed demonstrated the challenge of co-driving, thinking several corners ahead, reading out each direction clearly, and timing it perfectly. Rally is truly a team sport, and while the drivers are the ones whose names get plastered onto video game covers, they couldn't do it without their co-driver beside them. Caleb Miller Associate News Editor Caleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan.
