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maltatoday WEDNESDAY 25 APRIL 2018 21 Sport TENNIS FORMULA 1 Sharapova eyes more grand slam glory MARIA Sharapova will not settle for lower-tier titles af- ter making her comeback last year and the former world number one is determined to add to her five grand slam crowns. The 31-year-old Russian returned from a 15-month doping ban at the Stuttgart Grand Prix last April and Sharapova has since won one title, the Tianjin Open, after inconsistent performances and injury problems. She is back in Stuttgart this year and plays Caroline Gar- cia in the first round later on Tuesday. "When you've experienced grand slam victories, it's ab- solutely natural to have that goal in your mind," Sharapo- va told CNN. "It would be silly for me to say my goal for this year is to win a lower-tier tournament because I strive to be on the big stage and to win on the big stage. "I've experienced it, and I know what it's like and I want that feeling again. I continue to work for that." Sharapova, who won her last grand slam title at the 2014 French Open, has no plans to retire. "I haven't set a time table for myself, but I've always said that I would do it on my own terms... " she said. "I'd love to play in another Olympics, but I don't know if that will happen and at this point in 2018, I don't re- ally want to know. I want to keep going and I want to keep working and see where that takes me." FIA to present pit stop solution to F1 teams FIVE unsafe releases from pit stops in three Grand Prix weekends. The FIA vowed to investigate. Now the govern- ing body's F1 Race Director Charlie Whiting is set to pre- sent his possible solution to teams in the coming weeks… McLaren were fined for re- leasing Stoffel Vandoorne's car in an unsafe manner dur- ing practice in China. That came after Kimi Raikkonen had two incidents in Bahrain, including one which saw him inadvertently knock over and break the leg of one of his me- chanics. In Australia, Haas suffered two unsafe releases to make five in total during race week- ends in 2018, while McLaren's Fernando Alonso had a wheel fitted incorrectly during pre- season testing. "We can introduce a few things to improve, to de- crease the likelihood of mis- takes," said Whiting. "We have learned something. We need to again analyse things to en- sure things that we do, we do it precisely to make sure every- one follows that. "[The challenge is] decid- ing which bits need to be au- tomated and which bits need to be operated by a human. I think I have a clear idea on what we might need to do for the future but I will be dis- cussing it with the teams in the coming weeks I say." Pit stops have advanced dra- matically in recent years, with teams able to fit new tyres and get their drivers back out in a matter of seconds. The systems that control when the driver is released from a stop are individual to the teams and semi-auto- mated, with the mechanic on the wheelgun pressing a but- ton when his change is com- plete. When all four wheels are done, the driver is given a green light. Each team ap- points a mechanic who can override the system. One solution to improve the procedure would be to man- date using two wheel gun sen- sors – a system some teams are already operating. One sensor measures the torque, which can judge whether the nut has been tightened correctly, and the other monitors the position of the nut and would therefore identify if it has been cross- threaded – as happened to Haas twice in Australia. "I don't think there's any rea- son to standardise [the sys- tem]. We need to make sure among other things that there is no possibility for the guy to give the OK until those two conditions have been met," said Whiting. "Some teams have a torque sensor on the gun and they have a position sensor. If you only have the torque sensor, you can gun the nut on and it can be cross-threaded and it'll show the required torque but it won't be tight, which is what happened to both Haas cars for example and the McLaren on Friday [in China]. "So some teams have got that as well as a position sensor, so if it gets to the re- quired torque and it hasn't moved the right amount, then it says it's not done. "So you're using two sensors in order to tell the operator that it's actually done up. Then he presses the button, the jack drops and the car goes."