Schumacher Clinches Title

Michael Schumacher made a late pass to win the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours and take his place in Formula One history.

Schumacher took the lead on the 68th lap Sunday, moving past Kimi Raikkonen’s McLaren-Mercedes when the Finnish driver’s brakes locked on a patch of oil, and held on to claim the victory and his record-tying fifth championship.

The German made the pass under a yellow flag, but McLaren-Mercedes did not challenge the move.

Schumacher, driving his backup Ferrari, finished in 1 hour 32 minutes 9.837 seconds and clinched the driver’s championship with six races remaining.

The triumph gave Schumacher an unbeatable 96 points in the standings and was his eighth victory in 11 races. No driver has won a season championship so quickly.

His fifth season title tied the record set by Argentina’s Juan Manuel Fangio, who won his fifth title in 1957.

Schumacher was humble when asked to compare himself to Fangio.

“What Fangio has done is not comparable to what we do,” Schumacher said. “The effort he had to put in to his team was probably a lot more than what we do today, so it’s not really fair to compare us.”

Schumacher spent much of the race locked in second place, first behind early leader Juan Pablo Montoya, then behind Raikkonen, who took second.

Raikkonen was followed by teammate David Coulthard, Montoya of BMW-Williams, his teammate Ralf Schumacher and Jenson Button of Renault.

Montoya won three points Sunday, putting him in second place in the standings with 34. Ralf Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello were tied with 32, and Coultard had 30.

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Ward Burton, stuck in a slump since winning the Daytona 500, overcame hazardous track conditions and a late caution to win the New England 300 at Loudon, N.H.

Burton, who had only two other top-10 finishes since winning the season-opening race, passed Matt Kenseth for the lead with 10 laps to go then held off Jeff Green by 3.230 seconds at New Hampshire International Speedway.

Drivers believed the track surface, which showed signs of coming apart during Saturday’s final practice session, began to split early in the race.

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Darrell Russell raced to his second top fuel victory this season, beating Cory McClenathan in the final of the NHRA’s Mopar Parts Mile-High Nationals at Morrison, Colo.

Russell had a quarter-mile run of 4.877 seconds at 301.07 mph, and McClenathan finished in 4.898 at 295.53.

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Ricky Carmichael won the 250cc division at New Berlin, N.Y., his division record-tying eighth consecutive victory in the AMA Chevy Trucks U.S. Motocross Championship Series.

James Stewart, a 16-year-old rookie, rode to his sixth 125cc victory.

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Cory Witherill of Santa Monica won an IRL Infiniti Pro Series race Saturday at Nashville Superspeedway. Jason Priestley finished sixth.

Tennis

Monica Seles overwhelmed Anna Smashnova, 6-4, 6-0, to help the United States sweep Israel in a best-of-five Fed Cup series at Springfield, Mo., and put the Americans back into the 16-nation World Group.

Lindsay Davenport beat Tzipi Obziler, 2-6, 6-1, 7-6 (1), the only time the Americans did not win in straight sets. In the series’ final match, Meghann Shaughnessy and Lisa Raymond, the world’s No. 1-ranked doubles player, beat Obziler and Hila Rosen, 6-3, 6-0.

The Americans, who have won a record 17 Fed Cup championships, lost to Austria earlier this year after team captain Billie Jean King dismissed Jennifer Capriati in a bitter dispute over practice rules.

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Juan Ignacio Chela upset French Open champion Albert Costa, 6-1, 7-6 (4), to win a rain-shortened Energis Open final at Amersfoort, Netherlands.... Carlos Moya beat qualifier David Ferrer, 6-2, 6-3, to retain the championship of the Croatia Open at Umag.... Mikhail Youzhny rallied from a three-game deficit in the fifth set to beat Guillermo Canas, 6-3, 3-6, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, in the final of the Mercedes Cup at Stuttgart, Germany.

Boxing

Felix Trinidad, 29, said at a news conference in Puerto Rico that he is retiring, three weeks after his father and lawyer had said the former middleweight, welterweight and super-welterweight champion would no longer fight.

Trinidad had a 41-1 record with 34 knockouts and took part in 21 title fights. His only defeat came against Bernard Hopkins in a middleweight title unification fight in September at Las Vegas.

Miscellany

The Avengers will play host to the Tampa Bay Storm on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. in an Arena Football League first-round playoff game to be televised by ESPN2.

A victory would send the fifth-seeded Avengers to a quarterfinal game against the fourth-seeded New Jersey Gladiators on Aug. 3 at East Rutherford, N.J.

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Barry Wagner caught three touchdown passes and the San Jose SaberCats (13-1) defeated the Carolina Cobras, 58-41, at Raleigh, N.C., to set an AFL record for regular-season victories.

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Jen Grubb and Monica Gerardo each scored, and Washington got a third score on an own goal by San Jose’s Kelly Lindsey to beat the CyberRays, 3-2, in a Women’s United Soccer Assn. game before 8,384 at San Jose.

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An unidentified man killed when he plunged from a railing at the new Seahawk stadium in Seattle during an open house Saturday was mentally ill and police said all indications are he jumped intentionally.