How did I become an F1 driver?

Chapter 149 Chapter 147: Official transfer

Lawson is one of the people who knows Qin Miao's current situation better.

So seeing Qin Miao coming to see him with something in his hand, Lawson vaguely guessed Qin Miao's purpose for coming to him this time.

Inviting Qin Miao to sit down, before Lawson could say anything, Qin Miao put down the gift first, and then took out the Ferrari car key that the other party gave him, and put it on Lawson's desk.

After seeing Qin Miao's actions, Lawson finally understood the purpose of Qin Miao's coming to find him this time.

The other party is about to leave, and if there is no accident, the next house may have been found.

Some sighed sadly: "I expected our parting, but I didn't expect the parting to come so suddenly."

Qin Miao was also a little emotional. The scene of being led into the Ferrari by Lawson was still vivid in his memory, but he was about to leave in a blink of an eye: "Yeah, I thought I would stay in Ferrari for a long time, why? Things are unpredictable."

Lawson asked curiously: "Have you figured out which team to go to?"

Qin Miao smiled: "Mr. Lawson, you know what I can't say."

Lawson didn't feel embarrassed, and after a haha, he accepted the gift Qin Miao brought over, but he didn't accept the car key of the Ferrari 488. Instead, he pushed Qin Miao back: "I accept the gift, After all, I was the one who introduced you to this road, and your talent on the road of racing is really good, so I accept the gift you gave me with peace of mind.

But the car has already been sent out, and we can't get it back, so you can keep the car for yourself. "

Qin Miao shook her head: "It's too precious."

Lawson spread his hands: "It's not that we don't want to come back, but that this car has been modified by you, and it's been marked with your mark. Even if we get it back, it's inconvenient to take it out and give it to others. We want to come back. The only place to go is to put it in a museum to eat ashes, or throw it in a test drive for someone to drive."

Qin Miao scratched his face in embarrassment. When he changed the 488, he really didn't think too much about it. He just felt that the performance of the 488 was not enough, and he had to give her some hard work.

Unexpectedly, the unintentional move at the time, but now he won a Ferrari 488 for himself.

"Then thank you." Qin Miao sincerely thanked, and took the key back again.

What Lawson did was actually planting seeds in Qin Miao's heart.

In the future, whenever Qin Miao saw this 488, he would be able to remember that this car was given to him by Ferrari. In case Qin Miao didn't want to stay in his team anymore and wanted to try other teams, and at that time Ferrari If there is a shortage of people, Qin Miao may not be without the possibility of stepping up.

After chatting with Lawson for more than 20 minutes, Qin Miao got up to say goodbye.

It's getting late, Qin Miao is leaving Maranello...

……

Time has entered the fast lane since Qin Miao joined Meiben.

Friday, August 2020, 8, the day the Spanish Grand Prix begins.

At this time, although there are still Ferrari youth training icons on Qin Miao's clothes and racing car, Qin Miao's heart has already gone to Mei Ben.

There is nothing to say in the morning practice session, just follow the previous process to find a car that I am comfortable with.

In the qualifying session in the afternoon, Qin Miao got a set of training settings that were about 80% suitable for her.

Not high, but basically enough.

Qin Miao followed her familiar rhythm with a new set of soft tires, two warm-up laps, one unobstructed flying lap, and a pole-position score of 1:27.

Punch in and get off work!
At the end of the qualifying session, Ilotte, who was ranked second, was 0.4 seconds slower than Qin Miao.

Others have studied Qin Miao's ranking and race video countless times.

They all wanted to understand why Qin Miao was so much faster than other F2 drivers.

After they analyzed it frame by frame, they found that there was nothing special about Qin Miao, except for his precise routing, when to fuel and when to brake. to a mistake.

The F2 race stage of this grand prix is ​​actually quite exciting. The safety car came out twice, and the second safety car was forced to change the race to the last lap after the F2 race time limit expired.

In order to compete for a better position in this last lap, the drivers in the rear car formation were beaten to death.

It's just that all of this has nothing to do with Qin Miao. After all, this person has opened the distance of No. 20.5 seconds just by starting.

Qin Miao is like the previous few races, you run your way, I run mine.

In the end, Qin Miao started from pole position and brought back the champion, once again scoring all 27 points in the race.

Zhou Guanyu's performance today was also good. Starting from the third place, he had fallen behind a lot in the middle of the race, but relying on his good performance in the last lap, he finally ended the race with a good third place.

In this race, Qin Miao listened to Toto's advice, and did not try to drag Zhou Guanyu or create opportunities for overtaking. He only cared about himself.

In addition to his own strength, Zhou Guanyu's performance in this game is also due to his better adaptability to the high-speed track.

After the game, Qin Miao's total points reached 223, and Zhou Guanyu's total points also broke through the 100 mark, reaching 101 points.

It is worth mentioning that this season, the two Chinese drivers broke through the 100-point mark hand in hand. It is also the first time in F2 history that two Chinese drivers lead the F2 standings.

Just like what netizens said, there has never been a situation in the history of F2 where two Chinese drivers competed in the same field. Whatever these two people do on the field is breaking the record in the history of Chinese racing.

Sunday, the sprint race.

Qin Miao maintained his usual style and ran the whole race with a new set of soft tires. In just five laps, Qin Miao went from eighth to first place and started a 21-lap lead .

It is said that Toto saw Qin Miao's performance on the field today and laughed so hard that he couldn't close his mouth.

For this rising sun in F2, Toto has high hopes.

At Qin Miao's age, coupled with his dominance in the F2 arena, it is no longer possible to use the word "new star" to describe Qin Miao. Instead, the word "sun" is a little more appropriate.

Qin Miao still finished his race as steadily as an old dog, with astonishing speed but also showing terrifying stability.

After P1 was brought back, Qin Miao's total points had reached 240 points.

However, Zhou Guanyu didn't get any points in this sprint race. This unlucky guy was hit by a piece of the front wing while overtaking, and fell out of the points zone after entering the pit to change the front wing.

After this race, the next F2 race is the Belgian Grand Prix in two weeks.

Of course, Qin Miao, who is in a special period, must not be able to take a good rest.

After the game, Qin Miao handed over his two championship trophies to Ferrari to reproduce as usual.

Although Qin Miao is already saying at this time: "A man was born in the world, how can he live in depression for a long time?".

But after all, the contract with Ferrari has not really been terminated, and the contract between himself and Mercedes is still in the process of negotiation.

So for now, everything is business as usual, the difference may be that Qin Miao never went to Ferrari's P room after the F2 sprint race.

During the holiday, Qin Miao returned to the UK and began to advance the negotiation process with Mercedes.

Even because of Qin Miao's good performance in Spain last week, the negotiators invited by Qiu Meng once gained more initiative in the negotiation process.

Finally, on August 8, the negotiation between Qin Miao and Mei Ben was officially completed.

After the contract that both parties were satisfied with was confirmed, the two parties did not sign the contract immediately, but only signed the contract of intent.

After all, Qin Miao still has a contract with Ferrari. According to the requirements of the contract of intent, Mei Ben has to help Qin Miao and Ferrari discuss Qin Miao's contract during this period.

This is not complicated. Talk to Ferrari and break up peacefully if possible. Both parties will sign the contract and void the contract.

If not, then pay liquidated damages according to the requirements of the contract, instead of dragging each other for more than half a month like Qin Miao's contract before finally finalizing it.

8 month 25 day.

Mercedes' negotiating team traveled to Maranello to discuss the contract with Ferrari.

The process was carried out by Ferrari's sporting director, Mekis, without Ferrari's team leader Binotto.

However, Ferrari did not intend to break up with Qin Miao peacefully, so in the end, Qin Miao unilaterally broke the contract, and then under the notarization of the court, Mercedes advanced the liquidated damages of Qin Miao's driver contract totaling 470 million euros.

To be honest, when Qin Miao saw the amount of liquidated damages, he was really speechless. After all, his one-year contract salary was only a little over 100 million euros. Once the liquidated damages were paid, he would have to work for nothing for five years.

Fortunately, Meiben lacks everything else, except money. 470W euros is not a big problem for them, and if Qin Miao can really make them pay all the 470W, they will not feel uncomfortable but will happier.

After the matter in Maranello was resolved, Qin Miao, who received the news in the UK, formally signed a three-year official driver contract with the Mercedes team.

It will officially come into effect from the first day of 2021 and will last until the end of 2023.

Qin Miao's second contract has a liquidated damages of up to 2 million US dollars.

To be honest, Qin Miao didn't feel much about this number, it was too much, beyond Qin Miao's concept.

However, Qin Miao believed that he would not have the idea of ​​changing teams in a short time, so Qin Miao could accept the slightly higher liquidated damages.

Meanwhile, Qin Miao's annual income is $60.

Although it is at least half less than the contract at Ferrari, Qin Miao's contract has incentive bonus options.

Qin Miao can get a bonus of 24 U.S. dollars for every game he participates in (every game has one). Counting 24 grands prix in a season, this is 84 U.S. dollars, so Qin Miao’s total basic salary is actually [-] U.S. dollars.

There will also be additional bonuses for being on the podium. The bonus for No.3 is 15 US dollars, No.230 million US dollars, and No.1 is 60 US dollars, and points are not counted.

If Qin Miao's performance in the 21 season is good enough, his salary may catch up to a fraction of his future teammate Hamilton.

Of course, this contract is not only the contract after Qin Miao joined Mercedes, but also the contract for him to join Williams.

It can be seen that although Mei Ben has a lot of money, he is not stupid.

At the same time, there is also an additional condition for Qin Miao in the contract, as mentioned earlier, that is, not to participate in other media activities other than the mandatory requirements of the FIA.

The day after the contract was signed, the news that Qin Miao was poached by Mei Ben also spread like wildfire.

Apparently, the message was spread by Ferrari.

After all, Ferrari and Mercedes are opponents in the paddock, and the other party has no obligation to keep secrets for the opponent. It is normal to publicize like this.

You can't blame Ferrari for being ruthless, just letting go of his own team's driver on the front foot, and then starting to spread his news in the paddock with the back foot.

After all, everyone knows Qin Miao's talent. As long as he can adapt to the intensity of F1 competition, he will definitely be a character who can often appear on the podium in the future.

From an opponent's point of view, what Ferrari needs at this time is to influence Qin Miao's state as much as possible like now, and create a public opinion environment in the paddock that is not very good for Qin Miao and Mei Ben.

So Qin Miao had just signed a contract with Mei Ben, and rumors spread in the paddock.

A well-known columnist in the paddock wrote a column titled: "What does Mei Ben spend a lot of money to poach F2 super genius Qin Miao from Ferrari?" ".

If it is said that Qin Miao used to be so powerful in F2, then he only played in a very small circle, and the number of people who followed Qin Miao was limited, but compared with the huge fan base of F1, it is really not that many.

Even if there were rumors in the previous paddock that Qin Miao has joined Ferrari and may become the official driver of the Ferrari F1 team next season.

However, under the premise that Ferrari himself did not stand up to prove the authenticity of this news, the popularity of this news faded quickly. Even if someone is interested in this news, if there is no new disclosure for a long time, even if it is No matter how interested, I gradually forgot about it.

Naturally, no one would go to watch the F2 race to find out how good Qin Miao is.

But it’s different now. Under the help of people with good intentions behind the scenes, the news that Qin Miao joined Mercedes is everywhere in the paddock, and the news spread well. The most important thing is that someone from Ferrari stood up to prove it. authenticity.

What is the current status of Mercedes in the paddock?Let's put it this way, if the current F1 is a winner-takes-all model, then there is no need to compete in the subsequent races this season, just award the championship to Mercedes.

The key is that Bottas' recent performance has not been sluggish, and Bottas has one year left on his contract, and there is also a driver in the paddock that Toto has trained for a long time: George Russell.

Although this guy's performance in F2 was not as good as Qin Miao's, he was also a real F2 world champion, and his performance during Williams was amazing enough.

Bottas is still able to eat, and the younger generation has Russell.

In the presence of these two people, many people wondered why Mei Ben wanted such an unknown driver as Qin Miao to join the team.

ps. Sorry, I forgot the timing...

(End of this chapter)