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Ahead of the Dakar Rally, Audi Sport has put its Audi RS Q e-tron through its paces in the deserts of Morocco.

With its three driver crews, Audi pushed the car to its extremes to test its capabilities. Sven Quandt, team principal of Q Motorsport said that at times, the temperatures soared to over 40 degrees Celsius, which brought some new issues to light. He also said that sandstorms hampered the tests.

Andreas Roos, who oversees factory motorsport projects at Audi Sport, added that the team expects lower temperatures at the Dakar Rally. “Nevertheless, we deliberately went to Morocco to test our concept under the most extreme conditions,” he said. “Components for the MGU, for example, were basically not developed for use in high ambient temperatures, but the drivetrain and other components were also pushed to their limits, or even beyond the heat.”

• READ MORE: Fastest Audi drop-top sports car: R8 Spyder V10 Plus is lighter and more powerful

He also said the insights gained in Morocco were “invaluable” but admitted there was still a lot to do before the Dakar Rally, and there’s not much time left.

On the driver side of things, one of Audi’s main objectives in Morocco was to test a new cockpit configuration. The new modification was meant to provide the driver and co-driver with more space in the tight cockpit so the team can perform and communicate more effectively. In this regard, Roos shared that feedback was “positive”.

Audi Sports driver teams are as follows: Mattias Ekström/Emil Bergkvist (Sweden), Stéphane Peterhansel/Edouard Boulanger (France) and Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz (Spain). Peterhansel is regarded as the most successful Dakar driver of all time, with the record for the most wins (14) at the rally. Sainz, the father of F1 driver Carlos Sainz Jr, has won the Dakar Rally three times (2010, 2018, 2020).

The 2022 Dakar Rally is a 12-stage event that will take place from 2-14 January 2022. It will take place in Saudi Arabia, starting in Ha’il and ending in Jeddah — going through canyons, cliffs, coastline, and stretches of dunes. This will be the third time the event has been hosted in Saudi Arabia.

For more information about the Dakar Rally, click here.

For more motoring news, click here.

The post Dakar Rally: Audi Puts The RS Q e-tron to the Test in Morocco appeared first on LUXUO.

TORONTO – Paul MacLean is clutching an honesty gun and spraying a Toronto Maple Leafs front-office meeting room with truth bullets.

“They’ve got to help themselves somehow,” the wise advisor says. “They’ve got demons in their heads. They’ve got them in their car. They’ve got them under their f—ing beds. Everywhere they turn, there’s a f—ing demon.

“The biggest obstacle this team has is themselves.”

MacLean’s speech, captured in the All or Nothing docuseries, is being delivered to general manager Kyle Dubas and head coach Sheldon Keefe following consecutive overtime losses in games 5 and 6 of the 2021 playoffs and before the team’s tepid rollover in another Game 7.

The demons danced.

The players wept.

And the sport’s longest-suffering fans boiled.

Is it hubris or belief in the Maple Leafs’ quadruple-barreled top-end skill that keeps encouraging decision-makers in the mecca to run it back, now for a sixth time, with a core that dazzles in the leadup but fails when it matters?

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This spare-no-expense organization has lost its past five do-or-die playoff games (four Game 7s and Game 5 to Columbus in 2020).

In 2018, these Leafs blew three one-goal leads in Game 7 in Boston.

In 2019, they held three one-game leads over that same rival and still lost.

In 2020, they carried storybook momentum into a hometown bubble and got shut out 3-0 in Game 5 to the lower-seeded Blue Jackets.

In 2021, they had it locked up, didn’t they? Up 3-1 on the 18th-place Montreal Canadiens, their clearest path to the final four in sight, the Leafs bowed out by dropping three one-goal contests, two in OT.

Forget 1968 or 2013. The current core is 0-and-7 in opportunities to eliminate a post-season opponent.

No wonder swaths of Leaf Nation are approaching Wednesday’s season-opener (against the Habs, hey!) with a shrug and a “Wake me when it’s April.”

No wonder Dubas’s most important off-season target wasn’t a particular player, per se, but something more abstract: killer instinct.

“We’ve had moments and opportunities to put teams away, and we haven’t done that yet,” Dubas says.

“[We’re] trying to help our people and our staff and our coaches be at their best in moments when pressure comes, and I think we just have to lean into that. We can’t run from it. We can’t hide from it. We have to prepare each and every day, because that’s what it’s going to take. In order to get to those moments and be excellent in those moments, you have to live here every single day, in practice, in the gym. And be ready for when the light shines brightest.”

The off-season loss of workhorse and forechecker extraordinaire Zach Hyman hurts. The loss of the overworked Frederik Andersen, less so.

In rolling through a 5-1 preseason, outscoring the opposition (Montreal and Ottawa exclusively) by a whopping 23-10, buzz is gathering around bargain pickups Nick Ritchie, Michael Bunting, Ondrej Kase and David Kämpf.

Lacklustre special teams have been given a refresh in personnel, positioning and philosophy from new assistants Spencer Carbery (power play) and Dean Chenoweth (penalty kill).

“We saw how organized they are,” Ottawa coach D.J. Smith says. “They’re playing real hockey right now. They look motivated. They look like they’re on a mission. After their loss last year to Montreal, they look like they’ve come back with a purpose.”

Keefe claims his 2021-22 group is deeper than last year’s.

Yet the Maple Leafs’ most critical addition will not appear on a CapFriendly chart.

Renowned peak performance coach Greg Harden has worked with non-hockey champions Tom Brady, Michael Phelps and Desmond Howard on their mental game.

Now, Harden has set about banishing those ghouls frolicking between the ears of the Maple Leafs, meeting one-on-one with both players and coaches.

“You don’t hire somebody like Greg Harden. He decides whether or not he wants to come work for you. And we’re fortunate enough that you decided to join us,” Keefe says.

“He’s got great experience. Comes in with a fresh voice, fresh set eyes in terms of what’s happening here. He’s a guy that’s going to take his time to build relationships and let players know what he’s about and how he can help us.”

Jason Spezza describes Harden as “a straight shooter” who should help the players thrive in the sludge of the regular season. Harden has already aided captain John Tavares in pushing through the trauma of coming back to the game after his horrendous concussion in Game 1.

The mental side of athletics is critical, and the Leafs are taking pains to flip the script and remain sharp.

“Sometimes you get into your own mind, and sometimes it’s hard to dig yourself out of it,” admits Wayne Simmonds, who saw the benefits of taking to someone as a young player with the Flyers. “When you have a professional helping you out, and helping you navigate the way through the mental game, it makes it a lot easier.”

Absolutely, we’ll distract ourselves this winter with hyper-analysis of the $45.5-million power play. We’ll debate ad nauseam over whom should get the next start, Jack Campbell or Petr Mrazek, or who should occupy left wing on the top line.

We’ll calculate Auston Matthews’ campaign to snipe 50 or 60. We’ll monitor “own rental” Morgan Rielly’s contract year and Rasmus Sandin’s bid to break out and William Nylander’s penalty-kill debut.

Eighty-two games will be a long haul. And as sports nuts, we’re addicted to our distractions and our minutia.

Ultimately, however, the worthiness of this ship president Brendan Shanahan and Dubas have built will be judged on how it cuts through the turmoil of the post-season.

Matthews and Marner. Tavares and Nylander. Do they dominate? Or get dominated, again?

“We can’t change anything, unfortunately. That’s not the way it works,” Keefe says.

A rearview mirror is right there, fastened to the windshield, reflecting demons dancing on the tailgate. But the coach, like the rest of them, will do his damnedest to focus on the road ahead.

“All we can do is the work here today,” he states. “We have to be consistent in our habits, our details, our mindset, and — most importantly — our belief.”

EDMONTON — Tick, tick, tick…

Has the time finally arrived for the Edmonton Oilers? Are they finally legitimate Stanley Cup contenders, 31 years after the last parade down Jasper Ave.?

It’s a question we’ll fully explore here, on the eve of Edmonton’s 2021-22 season opener against Vancouver on Wednesday, but it’s also a query you won’t get a lot of help with from within the Oilers ranks.

They know — the players, the coaches, the management — that, like the Toronto Maple Leafs, whatever Edmonton accomplishes in the regular season won’t prove anything. After two years of second-place finishes in their division followed by first-round playoff exits, it is all about the playoffs for this team.

They know it. They just won’t say it.

“Right now, it’s all about the regular season. Then, it’s all about the playoffs. That’s the best way to put it,” said Leon Draisaitl, tap-dancing around the elephant in the room. “This league is too strong to think you can half(way) things and think you’ll just focus on the playoffs.

“Once we do that (qualify for the post-season), then it’s all about the playoffs, yes.”

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This is the first year under the Ken Holland-Dave Tippett regime that a trip to the Stanley Cup would not be an absolute shocker. Forget the roster for a moment, and look at it like this:

The Oilers will contend for first place in the Pacific Division this season, in what should be a two-team race with Vegas. It’s fair to say the Pacific should boil down to a second-round playoff meeting between the Oilers and Golden Knights that will leave Edmonton as slight underdogs, we would predict.

But there is less to choose between the two teams than there once was, and whoever comes out of the Pacific is, despite being the dark horse against Colorado, undeniably one series away from the Stanley Cup. If Vegas is a legit Cup contender, then so is Edmonton.

Like Toronto, the Oilers have to figure out Round 1 before we start talking about Round 4. We know it, they know it.

“The playoffs are always going to be a different animal, and we haven’t found a way to be successful there,” admitted Connor McDavid. “We’ve got to find a way … to realize that certain things have to get done a different way. We might have to score goals the hard way, and all those types of things.”

There are two ways this goes: Either the Oilers have made the appropriate changes to their depth players to crack the playoff code, or they haven’t. Looking at the additions to this lineup — Zach Hyman, Warren Foegele, Derek Ryan, a defensive-minded Cody Ceci to replace Adam Larsson, and a playoff whisperer in Duncan Keith — you can’t say that Holland hasn’t done his best to scratch that itch.

Depth and inexperience on the blueline was to blame for their playoff sweep at the hands of Winnipeg last spring. Goaltending had almost nothing to do with it, with three games going into overtime (one at 0-0), but we expect Holland to address that position at the 2022 trade deadline anyhow.

The GM has added several components to his depth, and a ton of playoff experience on the back end in Keith. The rest of the core –McDavid, Draisaitl, Darnell Nurse, Tyson Barrie, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins — have satisfied that age-old hockey rite of passage that a couple of sour playoff experiences represents.

There’s no law that says there can’t be another face plant, but Holland has armed his team with the necessary roster renovations to ensure that they can come at this thing from a different angle this time around.

“It’s definitely a different game. Guys dig in a little harder, the attention to detail goes way up. The officiating might change a little bit,” McDavid said of the post-season. “I can’t think of a sport that is so different, from a couple months to a couple months. You can only experience it by playing in it.”

We’re not into excuses, but the bubble loss to Chicago was a bit of a one-off in our eyes. Four months of inactivity and then — boom! — a playoff series? It was unique.

Last spring against Winnipeg gave us a true reading of where this team was, however. The Jets were strong against McDavid and Draisaitl, refused to let the Edmonton power play beat them, and left it up to the rest of the Oilers to get the job done.

Winnipeg was deeper and more playoff experienced, winning game after game that hung in the balance. The Jets managed to find that key tie-breaking goal four games in a row, where Edmonton could not.

No one in Edmonton thinks that was a fluke. Rare, that a team could dominate the analytics in a series the way Edmonton did, yet be swept? For sure.

But not a fluke.

“It sounds cliché, but it is a learning experience,” said McDavid, who we forget is still just 24, with 21 playoff games under his belt. “You have to go through it, and learn. You look at all the teams that have (won) — you do have to go through it, and earn it. Kenny (Holland) talks about it a lot, how before their great teams (in Detroit), they lost a couple of times where maybe they shouldn’t have.”

That’s exactly where Edmonton is today, with ex-GM Peter Chiarelli’s fingerprints almost completely removed from the project.

This is Holland’s roster now. Tippett has had two seasons to sculpt a team in his visage.

McDavid and Draisaitl aren’t kids anymore, at 24 and 25 years old. And the supporting cast is bigger, better and more experienced.

After being closed for 30-some years — that fluke run in 2006 aside — the Stanley Cup window is open once again in Edmonton.

Open it wide. This fan base could use the fresh air.

BROSSARD, Que. — It’s an eight-year, $63-million bet on potential, but one the Montreal Canadiens were smart to make before getting into a dragging negotiation with Nick Suzuki.

This player’s upside is sky-high. No centre the Canadiens have dressed over the last three decades has had more of it. And in just two seasons with the team, Suzuki has already offered plenty of evidence he’ll reach it.

The London, Ont., native, who came to the Canadiens in the 2018 trade that sent former captain Max Pacioretty to the Vegas Golden Knights, debuted with 13 goals and 41 points in 71 games during the 2019-20 season. He followed that up with 15 goals and 41 points in 56 games during the 2020-21 season.

It was after Suzuki led the team with four goals and seven points in 10 games of the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs that Montreal general manager Marc Bergevin referred to him as a piece to build around for the next decade, and it was after he did it again in 2021 — this time with seven goals and 16 points to help bring the Canadiens to within three wins of the Cup — that Bergevin decided to basically make that a reality.

“We are very happy to secure Nick’s services for the next eight seasons,” read the GM’s statement in the release announcing the deal.

So are Suzuki’s teammates.

After the deal was announced on Monday morning, Canadiens assistant captain Brendan Gallagher said Suzuki has “earned everything given to him” and described him as a leader and a complete player who is consistent, stronger than he looks, intense and well-respected by everyone in the organization.

Tyler Toffoli, who previously played alongside Anze Kopitar and Jeff Carter in their primes with the Los Angeles Kings before suiting up next to an emerging Elias Pettersson with the Vancouver Canucks, told Sportsnet at the onset of training camp that his linemate with the Canadiens is as good a centreman as he’s ever been coupled with.

On Monday, Toffoli called Suzuki’s new contract, “an easy decision for Berge and everyone else here.”

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It’s a deal that buys four years of unrestricted free agency from the player, one that includes a limited no-trade list, a $4-million signing bonus in year one and $3-million bonuses in each of the final two seasons, and it’ll pay Suzuki more than any Canadiens forward has earned on any given deal over the team’s 112-year history.

Suzuki said signing it was a dream come true after a month-long negotiation started with Bergevin reaching out to his agents and ended after only “a bit of back and forth.”

“It was something both sides wanted,” he added. “I love Montreal and playing here for the Canadiens. Look forward to the next nine years. It’s huge for me and my family, and I’m really happy it all worked out.”

Suzuki said he joked with his brother Ryan, who plays for the Carolina Hurricanes, that securing $63 million was “like I was playing (EA SPORTS) NHL ’20 and I just gave myself whatever contract.”

For this season, the 22-year-old will likely be among the best value players in the game — making $863,000 with the possibility of triggering bonuses that will see him max out at $1.325 million in this final year of his entry-level contract.

Suzuki’s new deal should be a bargain down the road, too, even if it’s a bit rich for now.

Had he waited until next off-season to negotiation a three- or four-year deal, he’d have been unlikely to earn as much as his annual average salary of $7.875 million on this new deal — even if he had continued along the same progression line he’s been on since entering the NHL. Pettersson has produced .93 points per game to Suzuki’s .65 and he just signed an extension worth less ($7.35 million) per season over the next three.

But when Pettersson comes out of that deal a year away from becoming an unrestricted free agent, he’ll hold the hammer to secure a huge raise — especially with hockey-related revenue, which took a huge hit during the pandemic, expected to rebound fully by then and inflate player salaries from that point forward.

That’s the type of situation the Canadiens have avoided by getting Suzuki signed now.

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As coach Dominique Ducharme intimated with his comments on Monday, they didn’t need to wait longer to know they’d be looking at a much more expensive deal down the road.

“We believe in his progression,” Ducharme said. “We’ve already seen a lot from him looking back, but we believe he’s going to keep growing as a player and a leader.”

The coach described Suzuki as a cerebral player who exhibits his hockey sense both with and without the puck, as a reliable defensive player who showed up to this year’s training camp with a more explosive skating stride and a bit more meat on his bones, and as an even-keeled person who won’t allow the pressure of a big-money contract to affect his performance.

“It’s the reason the organization gave it to him now,” Ducharme said.

It was a better route to take than leaving Suzuki unsigned and exposed to a potential offer sheet next summer.

Had the Canadiens felt as certain about former third-overall pick Jesperi Kotkaniemi, they’d have not lost him that way to the Carolina Hurricanes just weeks before beginning negotiations with Suzuki.

But that deal’s done, and so is this one.

Suzuki, who was drafted 13th overall by Vegas in 2017, took all the right steps to earn it. He punctuated an amazing junior career with 16 goals and 42 points in his last 24 playoff games with the OHL’s Guelph Storm. He rose from fourth line to first line all within his first season with the Canadiens. He emerged as a star when the games mattered most.

Because of it, the Canadiens have wisely bought wisely what should be the best years of Suzuki’s career from him.

And they have to feel good about Suzuki’s confidence he can deliver them.

“I feel like I know who I am as a player, I feel like I know what I can bring,” Suzuki said. “I feel like I can help the team win in any situation, whether it’s scoring or defensively.”

His potential to do it all at an elite level is the wager the Canadiens made, and they’re likely to be compensated for it.

It’s tempting to gloat a little.

After all, the Brooklyn Nets have called Kyrie Irving’s anti-vaxx bluff. Following weeks of cajoling and coddling and respectful nodding about the all-star point guard’s “personal views” when it comes to refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the organization that is on the hook for his $35.3 million salary — only to be faced with prospect of having him work part-time — finally said “enough.”

If he doesn’t want to play by the rules of the land — and in this case, not the team’s rules, not the NBA’s rules, but the rules that everyone else in New York City (and several other municipalities) must live with — he can just stay home.

In New York City you need proof of vaccination to enter indoor gyms — including Barclays Center, the home of the Nets, and Madison Square Garden, the home of the Knicks. There was some wiggle room when it was determined the Nets’ practice facility was a private business and thus exempt, raising the spectre of Irving practising with the team and playing road games other than visits to The Garden.

But in the end the Nets decided that, for all of Irving’s gifts, it wasn’t worth the trouble. If he wasn’t willing to sacrifice for them, they weren’t going to accommodate him either.

“… after thorough deliberation, we have decided Kyrie Irving will not play or practice with the team until he is eligible to be a full participant,” Nets general manager Sean Marks said Tuesday afternoon in a written statement. “Kyrie has made a personal choice, and we respect his individual right to choose. Currently the choice restricts his ability to be a full-time member of the team, and we will not permit any member of our team to participate with part-time availability. It is imperative that we continue to build chemistry as a team and remain true to our long-established values of togetherness and sacrifice.”

Editor’s note: With overwhelming consistency, research has shown vaccinations against COVID-19 are safe and effective. Residents of Canada who are looking to learn more about vaccines, or the country’s pandemic response, can find up-to-date information on Canada’s public health website.

In an age where those with sufficient fame, talent and means can seemingly make the rules up as they go along, you must admit it’s kind of refreshing when someone in that category finally hears the word “no” and there’s no way around it.

It’s like seeing a someone in a Ferrari get a speeding ticket.

It’s also the right thing to do. At their root, basketball teams are no different than the societies that surround them: they function best when those within the group accept that small sacrifices and inconveniences make things better for the whole.

There’s no need to get into what kind of justification Irving has arrived at for choosing not to be vaccinated.

If you’re the charitable type and you twist yourself into enough knots you might be able to finds some measure of respect for Irving, who – to this point – seems willing to stand on principle even in the face of some significant financial penalties, pressure from his employer and peers.

But it all unravels under even the barest scrutiny. The key to being a martyr, hero or person of principle is that you sacrifice something of yourself for the greater good. People who make a stand that runs counter to those values are some combination of selfish, misinformed, or complete jerks.

Irving seems like he might be somewhere in the middle. He’s interested in big issues and causes, it appears. It was evident in his reported reluctance to the NBA resuming the 2019-20 season in the bubble while much of the U.S. was in the early days of the pandemic and, simultaneously, the midst of a nearly unprecedented summer of racial unrest. It surfaced again when he left the Nets last season for two weeks, a period in which he threw his weight behind some progressive, grass roots political organizing.

On this front, good for him: more of us should strive for a more purposeful day-to-day.

But potentially cratering your team and perhaps your career because you won’t be vaccinated in the middle of a pandemic that is still roiling in many parts of the United States and elsewhere in the world, often in places where the availability of vaccines is a just a rumour?

There are other issues in the world that someone like Irving could put his time, money, and fame behind. This isn’t it.

Related reading: The NBPA needs to step in and save NBA anti-vaxxers from themselves.

Like most healthy young people, chances are being vaccinated isn’t going to be the difference in whether Irving recovers from COVID or not if he’s unlucky enough to get it.

Certainly, there are always exceptions and the risks to elite athletes from the aftereffects of a constantly evolving virus aren’t yet fully known. But if Irving’s playing the odds and calculating what’s best or most convenient for him, skipping the jab probably falls under the category of “tolerable risk” for himself.

But here’s the thing, and where the Nets are right to leave Irving at home.

The reason for Irving and people like him to be vaccinated isn’t so much for their own benefit, it’s for the benefit of those around them and people that they’ll never meet. More vaccinations means less people will be infected, or those that do will have significantly reduced chances of a severe outcome. It means hospitals will be less burdened dealing with COVID patients and have more capacity to deal with people who are merely sick or injured. It means healthcare workers can return to a more typical workload and that the vulnerable among us have a little less to worry about.

Being vaccinated – especially if from a population category that is otherwise not at high risk – is a small act of civic courtesy. In a properly functioning society, we should feel excited to have the privilege to make a small personal gesture that – when repeated often enough – provides untold benefits for those that truly need the consideration.

It is – quite literally – taking one for the team.

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Defining what a great team is in the NBA can be a bit of a challenge at times. It’s a sport where the individual can hold sway in a way they can’t in most other games. But teams that win titles always find the balance between great players forcing their will onto the game while knowing how to inspire others to excel on the margins or create the room for them to shine.

Famously, Michael Jordan found a wide-open Steve Kerr to clinch a title and Chris Bosh gave up a little of himself so that LeBron James and Dwyane Wade could shine as Miami won back-to-back titles. Kawhi Leonard didn’t know he needed Fred VanVleet to win a championship in Toronto until it was almost too late, but he figured it out and the Raptors had the best parade in league history.

Kyrie Irving has won an NBA title – hitting one of the most pressure-filled shots in league history along the way. He’s a basketball genius and – to these eyes – one of the most pleasing athletes I’ve ever been lucky enough to watch play anything. The way he moves and shifts and slithers is more like performance art than sports.

But the stance he’s chose doesn’t only put his own interests above the Nets, he’s putting his own interests ahead of the more than 14 million New Yorkers who have had at least one dose of the vaccine, the rest of his vaccinated teammates, the 95 per cent of NBA players who have done their part and the hundreds of millions everywhere else who have rolled up their sleeves and the billions who desperately wish they could.

It’s a team game. That Irving is facing consequences for not wanting to play really isn’t something to gloat about – even if it feels good for the moment.

But after that? It mostly makes you sad.