Today's sports news: What you need to know

Latest - Pukekohe Park Raceway has been confirmed as the location for the 2021 Auckland Supercars event.

The Auckland SuperSprint will stage the penultimate round of the 2021 Supercars Championship.

The two-day event will be held across November 6 and 7, and will be the first event in New Zealand since September 2019.

It comes after the recent announcement of the trans-Tasman travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand.

Norwich City back in Premier League

Norwich City clinched promotion to the Premier League with five games to spare after rivals Brentford and Swansea City failed to win their Championship matches, guaranteeing Daniel Farke's leaders one of the automatic promotion places.

Norwich sealed an immediate return to the top flight having finished bottom of the Premier League in the 2019-20 campaign.

Norwich have enjoyed an outstanding season and sit at the top of the second-tier standings with 90 points from 41 matches.

While most sides relegated from the top flight make wholesale changes in the following campaign, Norwich trusted Farke and the core squad that took them up in 2018-19.

After picking up four points from their opening four games, Norwich made steady progress to move top of the table with a 1-0 win over Middlesbrough in November and never looked back.

Their Finand striker Teemu Pukki has rediscovered his form to shoulder the scoring burden this season, recording 25 goals and three assists in 37 league appearances.

Meanwhile, centre back Ben Gibson, who joined on loan from Burnley at the start of the season, alongside Grant Hanley has provided Farke's side with much-needed solidity in defence.

Norwich have matched the 27 wins achieved in their title-winning second division campaign of two years ago, and will aim to cross 100 points for the first time in the club's history.

Only second-placed Watford, currently eight points behind, can deny Farke's side the second-tier title.

Meanwhile, Sheffield United's relegation from the Premier League was sealed when they lost 1-0 at Wolverhampton Wanderers.

The defeat left the Yorkshire club 19 points behind fourth-bottom Burnley with a maximum of 18 remaining.

Sheffield United finished in the top half last season on their return to the top flight but have looked relegation favourites for a long time after taking two points from their opening 17 games of this campaign.

- Reuters

First FA Cup finalist found

Chelsea beat Manchester City 1-0 to book a place in next month's FA Cup final thanks to a second-half goal by Hakim Ziyech which ended City manager Pep Guardiola's dream of steering his side to an unprecedented quadruple of titles.

Ziyech scored in the 55th minute when he tapped into an empty net from a cross by Timo Werner with City goalkeeper Zack Steffen in no man's land after racing off his line to close Werner down but then seeming to change his mind.

The win at Wembley leaves Chelsea coach Thomas Tuchel on course for a trophy after engineering a remarkable turnaround since he replaced Frank Lampard in January, with the Blues also in the Champions League semi-finals against Real Madrid.

Premier League leaders City's woes were compounded by the loss of midfielder Kevin de Bruyne early in the second half with an apparent ankle injury ahead of a busy end to the season for City who have a Champions League semi-final against Paris St Germain and the League Cup Final against Tottenham Hotspur.

Chelsea face Leicester City or Southampton, who play their semi-final tomorrow, in the FA Cup final on May 15.

- Reuters

Melbourne Victory sack coach

Melbourne Victory parted company with head coach Grant Brebner after the Scot saw his last-placed side handed a 7-0 thrashing by rivals Melbourne City in the A-League on Saturday.

Jamie Maclaren scored five times against 10-man Victory as City moved to the top of the standings while Brebner stepped down from his role at the helm of the team.

"Grant, myself, our chief executive and some board members have met and we've come to the agreement that Grant will no longer be the coach of Melbourne Victory," said club chairman Anthony Di Pietro.

"It is in the best interests of everyone involved - the club, Grant as a person. We wanted to make that clear this evening."

Brebner was appointed head coach late last year and the former midfielder took the club into the last 16 of the Asian Champions League in Qatar soon after taking over.

But Victory's A-League form has been dismal, with the club rooted to the bottom of the standings with just three wins from 16 games so far this season.

- Reuters

West Ham's top-four hopes dented

West Ham United manager David Moyes said "horrendous mistakes" during a calamitous five-minute spell cost his side a 3-2 defeat at Newcastle United which dented their Premier League top-four hopes.

Moyes's team could have gone third with a win but they were stopped in their tracks in the 36th minute when Issa Diop scored an own goal and Craig Dawson was sent off.

Goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski then dropped a routine catch from a corner to allow Joelinton a tap-in.

Ten-man West Ham battled back after the break with Diop's header and Jesse Lingard's penalty but Joe Willock won a thrilling game for the hosts with a header.

West Ham remained in fourth place with 55 points but Chelsea are only one point behind with a game in hand while Liverpool, who face Leeds United, are three points worse off, also with a game in hand.

"I don't think we deserved to be 2-0 down, but we did because of our mistakes," Moyes said. "We made a couple of horrendous mistakes today, which has not been like us really, but anyway we showed great character after halftime.

West Ham are on course for their best top-flight finish since coming third in 1986 and the prospect of Champions League football is tantalisingly close for the club more used to relegation battles in recent seasons.

While the defeat was a setback, they have six games remaining, beginning with a clash against Chelsea next weekend, after which their run-in is enticing.

- Reuters

Perez narrowly misses pole position in F1 Italian Grand Prix

Sergio Perez secured his first Formula One front-row grid position at Imola but the Red Bull driver reckoned it was also a pole that got away.

The Mexican will line up alongside Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at the Italian circuit after qualifying 0.035 of a second slower than the seven-times world champion.

Second place on the starting grid, in only his second race for Red Bull, meant Perez's heavily-fancied Dutch team mate Max Verstappen had been out-qualified by a team mate in the final top-10 shootout for the first time since 2018.

"Enough to be on pole position," Perez replied when asked how much time a small mistake on his best flying lap had cost him.

That said, the Mexican recognised he could scarcely have expected such a result after failing to qualify in the top 10 in the Bahrain season-opener and lagging behind Verstappen in practice at Imola.

Perez was hired by Red Bull as an experienced driver to back up Verstappen and help the team mount a real title challenge to Mercedes after a string of recent young team mates had been eclipsed by the 23-year-old Dutch sensation.

- Reuters

Quartararo promoted to pole in Portuguese Grand Prix

Yamaha's Fabio Quartararo clinched pole position at the Portuguese Grand Prix, while six-times MotoGP champion Marc Marquez will start sixth on his return to the grid after a season-ending crash last year.

Quartararo was promoted to the top of the grid for the race after Ducati rider Francesco Bagnaia had his record-breaking lap cancelled over a yellow flag infringement in the closing moments of the qualifying session.

The yellow flags were brought out after a crash for 2020 Portugal poleman Miguel Oliveira in the closing moments of the session. The incident leaves Bagnaia starting 11th on the grid, with Suzuki's Alex Rins moving up to second.

Championship leader Johann Zarco shrugged off an earlier crash to finish third, while Marquez was fastest in Q1 and will start his first race in nine months from the back of the second row.

- Reuters