Holden star Craig Lowndes has rocketed back into Supercars title contention with a dominant display on Sunday at Queensland Raceway.The Team Vortex veteran fired past championship leader Jamie Whincup on the line of the 200km race in Ipswich before charging unchallenged to his 12th win at the venue.No other driver has won more than five races at the 3.12km circuit.The 42-year-old Lowndes victory - his second of the year - puts him 150 points behind Whincup (1821) in the championship standings with Shane Van Gisbergen (1711) and Mark Winterbottom (1701) sandwiched between the pair.It also takes him level with Mark Skaife on 80 wins for Holden - the most by a driver for the manufacturer.This is the 17th season since Lowndes won the last of his three championship titles.Lowndes dismissed the suggestion the 2016 championship race was turning into a two-man race between Whincup and Van Gisbergen.Theres probably a blanket between four or five cars up the front, Lowndes said.Theres still a lot of racing to be done ... what we need to do is be more consistent.Whincup completed a pair of runner-up finishes for the weekend to extend his championship lead over Van Gisbergen to 110 points.Van Gisbergen made a snap decision to pit when he felt an error by Fords Scott Pye might spark a safety car midway through the race.But Pye rejoined the circuit, leaving Van Gisbergen stuck in the middle of the field before an eventual 12th place finish.Whincup said second was the best he could hope for despite starting on pole.Lowndesys was a rocket, he had better tyres as well, he said.We maximised it, ran second.Fords Chaz Mostert came third on the back of a strategy play by his team, passing teammate Winterbottom and Nissans Michael Caruso in the dying stages to secure a podium finish.Defending champion Winterbottom finished fifth and is 120 points behind Whincup in the title standings.The Supercars next stop is the Sydney Motorsport Park SuperSprint from August 26 to 28. Cheap Bulls Jerseys . Newcastle dominated in the early stages but City weathered the storm and then raised its game in extra time. Negredo broke the deadlock from close range after a simple move in the 99th minute before Dzeko took the ball round goalkeeper Tim Krul to seal the victory in the 105th. Custom Bulls Jerseys . Neymar curled home a free kick from just outside the area to put the 2014 World Cup host ahead in the 44th minute. Three minutes after the break, a simple through pass from Paulinho freed Oscar and the Chelsea star rounded goalkeeper Jung Sung-ryong to extend Brazils lead. http://www.custombullsjersey.com/ . Meanwhile, there were huge victories for Sunderland and West Ham over fellow relegation rivals, leaving the battle to avoid the drop up for grabs with the bottom 11 teams separated by just six points. Eden Hazard and Fernando Torres scored second-half goals to seal a fourth straight victory for Chelsea, which climbed above Arsenal and Manchester City in the standings ahead of their games on Monday and Sunday respectively. Custom Bulls Jersey China . Each of Houstons starters scored in double figures as the Rockets improved to 2-0 against the Spurs this season, with both victories coming on the road. They also moved within 3 1/2 games of San Antonio (22-7) for the lead the Southwest Division. Custom Bulls T-shirts . As he recorded his 23rd and 24th points of the evening, a segment of the sellout Air Canada Centre crowd expressed their appreciation for the Raptors point guard with a smattering of MVP chants. Russian tennis star?Maria Sharapova scored a significant victory in court Tuesday when the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld her appeal and reduced her two-year suspension for doping to 15 months. Equally daunting challenges await Sharapova on a very different court when shes eligible to play on the WTA Tour again in April.The landscape in womens tennis has changed dramatically since Sharapova was suspended shortly after the Australian Open. In one way, this is good news for the 29-year-old. Serena Williams is 35, injury-plagued and increasingly prone to playing poorly -- or in the grip of anxiety. Sharapova is a five-time Grand Slam champ who owns a career Grand Slam. But that 2-19 record against Williams is a glaring stain on her resume. A few wins over Williams in the near future would make the mark less noticeable.The general feeling is the WTA is in transition to a post-Williams era. Its a great opportunity for Sharapova to insert herself back into the conversation -- and perhaps find a way to get back to a top ranking she most recently held for four weeks in 2012. But new voices want to make themselves heard -- and time is on their side.Few would have predicted Angelique Kerber, 2015s No. 10-ranked player, would appear in three Grand Slam finals this year, winning two. Garbine Muguruza, 22, was a Grand Slam finalist at Wimbledon in 2015; this year, she won the French Open, beating Williams in the final.When Sharapova played her last WTA match (Williams crushed her 6-4, 6-1 in the Australian Open quarterfinals), neither Karolina Pliskova nor Madison Keys were anywhere near the top 10. Johanna Konta was not yet emergent. Now they all are significant forces, and they can match Sharapova in an enterprise that was once practically her private domain: power tennis.The one player who cant meet the standard, Kerber, is now No. 1 largely because she has mastered the art of neutralizing the kind of heavy serving and baseline blasting that the power players represent. Even before Kerbers transformation into a more aggressive, confident player, Sharapova was just 4-3 against her.Pliskova, a player who has much in common with Sharapova style-wise, was beaten by Kerber in the US Open final.I dont know any other player, Simona [Halep] or those girls, which are running [as much as Kerber], Pliskova said after the match. I cannot play really 30 times across the net. Its gonna just kill me, and I will not in the end even win it.Pliskova rushed the net 38 times in the final, when she realized it was the only way for her to escape those unwinnable baseeline duels.dddddddddddd Sharapova might find herself in a similar boat when she plays Kerber. And Kerber is just one player. The problem for Sharapova is that the threat is general and has multiple layers.She will need to beat opponents whose success comes from being able to fend off and frustrate hard hitters, players who will make Sharapova hit one more ball. And she will have to master the cohort who can beat Sharapova at her own game.Kerber leads that former group because of the quality of her return game, as well as her baseline proficiency. As service bombardier Pliskova observed: The other girls, they are missing so much the returns. [Kerber] is not.No. 4-ranked Muguruza is in that category as well. Shes a strong 6-footer who plays a punishing, powerful baseline game. Former No. 1 Victoria Azarenka, who is inactive and due to give birth at the end of the year, might be back at about the same time as Sharapova, who just leads their rivalry 8-7.Add the jackrabbit-quick Halep, whos overdue for a breakout, along with familiar faces such as Svetlana Kuznetsova and Dominika Cibulkova to the pool.The other problematic group for Sharapova is the ever-expanding lot of players who can match the Russian serve for big serve or beat her at first-strike tennis. Pliskova and steadily maturing 21-year-old Madison Keys are the leading young members of that group.Williams always enjoyed a power and mobility advantage. Petra Kvitova can overwhelm Sharapova as well. Kvitova is just 26 and a two-time champ at the tournament where Sharapova ought to be most effective but has won just once, Wimbledon.The power group also includes 36-year-old Venus Williams and Konta, 25.The one component that cant be factored in this comeback is Sharapovas legendary competitiveness. Her toughness is unparalleled. Shes been a master intimidator.However, command is earned and confidence is cumulative. When Sharapova returns, she will enter tournaments as a wild card with no ranking, her tank empty of Ws -- that once steady flow of assurance cut off and dried up. It takes a lot of match play to get back your confidence, as Rafael Nadal can attest.Sharapova has always kept her distance from her peers and rivals, which wont make her return any easier. Nobody will be decorating the locker room with Welcome Back! banners. That might not matter to her, but it will to her rivals. Nobody will want to be to one Sharapova walks over to get back to the top. ' ' '