Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time in qualifying for the Turkish Grand Prix, but he will not start from pole position due to a grid penalty for switching engines. His Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas, who finished second, will start on pole, alongside Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. Hamilton will start from 11th due to a 10-place penalty. Charles Leclerc of Ferrari was fourth, and Pierre Gasly of AlphaTauri was fifth.

Hamilton’s Mercedes team was concerned about engine reliability in the remaining seven races, so they decided to install the new engine – their fourth, one more than the regulations allow – at a track where they hope their championship leader can come through the field and limit the points loss to his title rival Verstappen.

The British citizen stands a good probability of succeeding. He’s been fast all weekend, taking the lead in both of the first two practice sessions, and he finished second in a GP2 race here in 2006 after recovering from a spin that dropped him to 19th place.

Verstappen successfully mitigated the damage caused by the installation of a new power unit by gaining second place after starting last on the grid, while Hamilton took a two-point lead. Red Bull, who had led the constructors’ championship early in the season, is now 33 points behind Mercedes.

source : Guardian sport

Village funeral, pervaded by sheer garrullous, local women who had wailed noisily, only that moment the deceased was to be interred. Few old men, and young men of whom with their youthful energy, the earth was excavated and the dead was buried. Delicious aroma oozing through the air; mourners nibbling their food, and relatives treading about with  laced-up faces and swollen eyelids. And at the back of the house, the witch doctor's smoke soaring on the horizon to block the cloud, lest rain disrupt the ceremony.

"I'm having the suspicion that chika was murdered"

"Murdered...what did you mean by murdered?"

"Obinna, my instinct does not deceive me. That Osita guy killed chika".

"Oke, stop it...that's a false accusation. You and I know that our brother was never murdered by any person, neither did his friend Osita kill him. They both had accident and osita was only lucky to survive it, yet he sustained injuries all over his body" pointing to Osita who was eating under a canopy and also nodding to the highlife music that was now gradually suppressing the grief-stricken ambience. "see those wounds in his head, how then did he kill chika?" asked obinna

"How are we supposed to know if he was the one that cause the accident?'' Asked Oke " You don't know what people are capable of doing. Why is it that he only sustained injuries while our brother died? Look at the way he's eating food and even nodding to the music in his friend's funeral; didn't that shows he's celebrating chika's death?"

"Oke, I can't make sense out of what you're saying. Chika was only a friend to Osita and a blood brother to us, yet I have eaten, you as well have eaten. So why are you against osita eating food in his friend's funeral? If you are drunk then go inside and sleep. You see this impression you are creating right now, just count me out of it." 

He left angrily to the room to inform Rose, their elder sister, about oke's folly. But Just as he's about to speak, it came a deafening commotion outside that made him ran out with Rose in tow.

"Oh no! Oke why, what has come over you...stop" Rose cried, as they meet Oke throwing steady punches on the helpless Osita, whose former wounds was now spouting blood as a result of the recent batters.

"He killed my brother...yes, he killed my brother" Oke told the three men who had seize him , firmly that he could not get to Osita again, "Leave him for me, he must be drunk" said obinna,  grappling Oke on the shirt, pulling him along, towards the room. Then Oke gave obinna that thrust that compelled him landing on his buttocks. The mourners began to bellow at him for such an act of insanity. Rose voice could be heard screaming as obinna stood up and in retaliation, he gave Oke a wallop in the nose. And suddenly, as if the heaven was punctured, rain began to pour down with a heavy wind that instantly brought all canopies to the ground. Mourners ran helter skelter as the torrential down fall continues even more ferocious. That was actually the catastrophe that the witch doctor had emphatically warned Rose about its possible doom.

"My medicine is against fight, against rancour. I only work in a family where peace subsist to the core. The household does not quarrel while my medicine is at work, quarrels will cause nothing but disaster and catastrophe. But in absence of rancour, rain will never disrupt the funeral, only sun will blaze."The witch doctor had told Rose when he was invited to impede the cloud from letting the rain down the earth. And Rose'd as well warned Oke and Obinna, but now reverse was the case.

The whole village was already flooded yet the rain wouldn't cease. Rose had resorted to crying out her eyes, Obinna and Oke were now seated in the parlour, totally drained  and with that look of self-rebuke while their legs were chilling in the fooded room.

"This is what you both got for the entire village on your brother's funeral" mumbled Rose.

Ugwueze Junior-Francis Kyrian

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