How did I become an F1 driver?

Chapter 229 Chapter 227: Old London Square Flag (6K, 1119 more updates)

The first thing to start is the pre-match interview session in front of fans. This is considered a basic activity. Qin Miao basically participates in it before every grand prix starts.

Then we will explain to the VIPs of the team. This activity is exclusive to the VIPs of the Mercedes team. It is the rest time for the VIPs before the start of the game. There will be Mercedes staff who will explain to them the work of the Mercedes team today. The process and the purpose of the work, or what testing plans the two drivers have today.

This can enhance the identification of the fathers of these sponsors with the Mercedes-Benz team, and also allow them to have a stronger sense of participation, and also know what the drivers are doing during practice sessions and competitions.

Today, Qin Miao was responsible for explaining to the VIPs present what the team wanted to achieve in today's practice match and qualifying race.

In addition, there is also a grilling grid game. Qin Miao participated in it before. Basically, many drivers played a fun quiz game together, and then it was like a Grand Prix game to see which driver's points were compared. After holding the same game several times, a prize will be awarded to the driver with the highest score.

However, the official organizer of this event did not disclose what the prizes were.

Although Qin Miao is not sure what his current score is, according to Qin Miao's feeling, his score should have been hovering in the mid-range group, and he is destined to miss the final championship of this small game.

Then there is another activity that Qin Miao participated in before, taking VIPs to run laps on the track. I won’t go into details about this activity.

The last activity is the autograph signing session after the game.

This link was suspended for a period of time due to the epidemic, but now it is open directly in Europe.

So this link started again.

This event is almost like a book signing. You can buy a piece of Qin Miao's clothes or a hat or something else on the spot.

Then go to the lottery. If you win the lottery, you can go to meet the driver on site and have the driver sign the things you bought.

There are so many people and the drivers have limited time, so the probability of winning is not high, but as long as they have the opportunity to meet the drivers, chat with them, and get their autographs, fans are always willing to pay.

Moreover, the peripheral clothes and hats sold here are not much more expensive than outside, with the most being only a 10% premium.

After confirming his five activities for Friday, Qin Miao has safely pocketed the system reward.

Although the food given may not be very good, mosquito legs are also meat.

Friday.

Today is the start of practice and qualifying.

Today's qualifying determines the starting order for Saturday's sprint qualifying. According to Qin Miao's system, if he wants to win the Pole to win in the British Grand Prix, he must be in qualifying in today's qualifying. Take home the pole position during the race.

And maybe I have to guarantee first place in Saturday’s sprint qualifying, so I won’t say much about Sunday’s race.

Qin Miao was even busier on Friday than on Sunday. While running around and doing activities, he also had to try his best to find the suitable tuning settings for his car during the first practice period. Once he found it, he would start qualifying immediately.

However, compared to other tracks, the Mercedes simulator has the highest degree of simulation for the Silverstone track. After all, this track is right at home. People in the simulator department whether they go out to collect track data or work on weekdays The racing tests here are all conducted at the Silverstone Circuit, and naturally the Silverstone Circuit also has a rich data reserve.

With such a huge amount of data as support, the credibility of the data the team ran on the simulator is still very high.

Although he knew that he would be very busy today, Qin Miao's time to get up remained unchanged. After all, he and Qiu Meng lived directly in the driver's parking lot next to the track yesterday, and there was no need to worry about commuting to work.

After getting up and washing up in the RV, Qiu Meng seemed to have skills in this area. No matter what, she could always prepare Qin Miao without leaving anything behind.

Whether it's the trivial matters in daily life or the contract between business and Qin Miao.

After cleaning up, Qin Miao and Qiu Meng hugged each other before getting out of the RV and heading to the paddock.

Barber came relatively late today. After all, Qin Miao still had Qiu Meng in the RV. It would be inconvenient to have more Barbers in the car with this girl present, so he returned to the car like other Mercedes engineers. own home.

Because he arrived earlier, Qin Miao didn't see many team members on the road. Most of them were people from Matthew and the FIA, and he never saw any acquaintances.

However, Qin Miao has become famous at a young age. In this three-acre paddock, Qin Miao's influence is no less than that of Perez, Red Bull's second driver.

So when walking on the road, many people greeted Qin Miao, and some even took their mobile phones and wanted to take photos with Qin Miao.

However, Qin Miao has been an F1 driver for so long, and he has also learned how to take photos with other drivers on the road.

I will keep moving forward. If you want to take a photo with me, it’s okay, but you have to move forward at my pace, and the time left for you to take a photo will not exceed three seconds.

Whether you can take a good-looking photo depends purely on your technique.

It’s not that the drivers are arrogant or anything like that, it’s just that the drivers are also very busy.

Moreover, this method is an unwritten rule in the paddock, and most people know it. Therefore, when experienced fans see the drivers and have the opportunity to have close contact with them, most of the time they turn on their mobile phones. With the video recording function, you can walk over and say a few words to the rider and it will be considered a photo taken.

After arriving at Mercedes' team home, Qin Miao had breakfast in the restaurant, and Barber came over soon after.

After Barber was in place, Qin Miao and Barber started today's activities.

The first activity is to participate in the pre-match interview. There is not much to say about it. The main thing is to look forward to the results of this game and what kind of result I hope this game will have.

The second activity also transitioned smoothly.

Because there was a qualifying match to watch today, there were a lot of spectators at the scene.

But Qin Miao has been practicing for such a long time and has seen tens of thousands of people crowding onto the track during a race. Naturally, he will not feel nervous because there are more than 30 people in a conference room.

But despite this, the signing session after the explanation meeting still made Qin Miao a little miserable.

But one thing is that when Qin Miao appeared at the door, the faces of the VIPs were full of surprise and disbelief, which made Qin Miao quite happy.

My damn vanity.

However, this activity was not very long, it was over in half an hour.

The third grilling grid is mainly for questions and answers. This time the question and answer is mainly for the riders to guess the vehicles that other riders use for daily commuting to and from get off work.

It is worth mentioning that although the Challenger had just arrived in Qin Miao's hands, he drove it near the paddock and did not shy away from it.

So Qin Miao's car also appeared in the grid this time, and most of the riders didn't guess who owned this RV pulled by the truck.

After learning that this car belonged to Qin Miao, Alonso said bluntly: "A young driver like him should not like a car that has more tool attributes than aesthetic attributes."

But no matter what, this event is over, and Qin Miao's results are still satisfactory.

After completing this task, Qin Miao took the VIPs and ran around the track for several laps in the gap between the F2 races. Among them were people who had taken photos with Qin Miao during the meeting. After seeing that the driver was Qin Miao, they naturally I was happy for a while.

After completing this activity, F1 practice and qualifying are about to begin.

Therefore, Qin Miao's outside activities are over. Now Qin Miao only needs to wait until the first practice and qualifying are over, and finally participate in the post-game interview. Qin Miao's first task this competition week is also It's finished.

Of course, Qin Miao also knew the priorities, even though he was running around so much before the start of the practice match that his feet never touched the ground.

But he did report back to the team's P room before the team's stipulated time.

After a brief handover of work, Qin Miao put on his racing suit, then came to the P room and got into the cockpit of his racing car.

Qin Miao is always like this. As soon as he enters the cockpit of his racing car, he can abandon all distracting thoughts in his mind.

Today's practice is mainly to verify the effect of the new parts on the car, whether it is consistent with the data obtained on the simulator, and to simulate lap times for the upcoming qualifying race.

I won’t go into details about the process. The two drivers used soft tires to simulate qualifying lap times on the track while looking for car adjustments during the practice session.

However, because of the need to collect data, during the entire practice session, the two drivers' cars were equipped with sensors used to collect track data, and the total weight of these sensors exceeded 10 kilograms.

The result reflected in the lap time is that Qin Miao and Hamilton were not too fast during the first practice.

After the first practice, the two were ranked fifth and seventh respectively.

During the first practice session, Qin Miao used two sets of soft tires and Hamilton used three sets.

At this time, Qin Miao's tire reserves were 7 soft, 2 medium, and 2 hard.

Hamilton's tire reserves are 6 soft, 2 medium and 2 hard.

After the first practice, all teams began to analyze the data obtained by the drivers during the first practice, and began to formulate strategies for the next qualifying session based on this data.

Whether to go directly to stud qualifying, or to save the tires and wait until sprint qualifying and the race to start using tires has become a question that various teams are scrambling to study.

Soon, the two hours left for the team and drivers to rest and adjust passed.

Qin Miao and Hamilton walked out of the team home together and came to the team's P room to wait for the start of qualifying.

While the two were waiting, they sat behind Toto and chatted about racing tuning.

But as mentioned before, this is Silverstone in the UK after all, and the headquarters or R&D departments of seven teams are all nearby, so not only Mercedes, but all teams have a lot of data on the Silverstone track.

It is no exaggeration to say that the tuning performed on the simulator can be handed over to Hamilton without modification, and he can get good results on this track.

The Grand Prix is ​​held at the Silverstone Circuit in the UK. This track was introduced in F2, so I won’t waste too much time here and enter the Q1 stage directly.The weather today is pretty good, the temperature is 25 degrees Celsius, the track temperature is 40 degrees, the air humidity is 54%, and there is a slight southerly wind.

Although the track temperature in today's race is not so suitable and will have a certain impact on the tire grip, the team and drivers have already taken this into consideration during the practice session.

To a certain extent, today's qualifying race will be relatively easy because there is no wind today.

Without the influence of wind, riders can focus more on lap times themselves.

And there were quite a few spectators present today, a total of 8 people. The stands that could be seen were basically full, and no one was wearing a mask.

But despite this, Qin Miao still saw many Chinese people wearing Mercedes uniforms at the event before the start of qualifying.

Domestic VIPs were also included in the pre-game activities.

Qin Miao and Hamilton both put on their equipment, got into their cars and fixed their bodies 2 minutes before the start of the race.

Sitting in his car, Qin Miao could just see the audience in the stands opposite.

It is worth mentioning that the stands opposite were surrounded by Hamilton fans at this time. Everyone on the opposite side was a fan of Hamilton, wearing uniform black and blue uniforms, and before the qualifying started, they were in Qin. A big sign with Hamilton's face was erected directly opposite the door of Miao and Hamilton's P room.

And because of the angle, this sign can only be seen from the P room of Hamilton and Qin Miao. However, from the Red Bull Racing Team next to the P room of the Mercedes-Benz Racing Team, it may only be visible. Can see half of it.

But Qin Miao frowned slightly after seeing this photo post.

Pictures from yesterday's pre-match press conference came into view.

Qin Miao didn't think too much at that time. Even if he found that Tsunoda and Perez were not in high spirits, Qin Miao thought it was just something unhappy happened to the two drivers.

But if you think about it carefully, do the three people who attended the press conference have anything in common?

The answer is simple. None of these three people are European. To put it bluntly, none of these three people are Caucasian.

Two Asians and one South American.

So if you think a little darker, this is completely the blatant discrimination and arrogance of the old London men.

Now I can see Hamilton's face lit up in front of the British audience.

Although it might be just Qin Miao's imagination, and yesterday's incident might just be a coincidence, Qin Miao just felt that the British audience at the scene was criticizing him.

[You, Qin Miao, are just a newcomer. You have to recognize your position in the Mercedes team. The No. [-] driver should honestly do what a No. [-] driver should do. Don't think too high and think about unrealistic things. . 】

To be honest, Qin Miao's fist became hard.

Now it's not just because of the task given by the system, but also because Qin Miao really wants to give these arrogant old British gentlemen a little shock to China.

This is no longer the Victorian era, and the empire on which the sun never sets has long since set.

However, Qin Miao is not a person who is easily affected by external factors. Even if he has obvious emotions, Qin Miao can control his inner emotions very well as soon as he gets into the racing car.

After buffing his car, Qin Miao drove out of the garage under the command of Reyes and started today's qualifying session.

Due to the reform of the qualifying competition system, all teams no longer lack tires in the qualifying stage, and tomorrow's sprint qualifying tires are also optional, which means that today's three quarters of qualifying can be used without any worries. Use soft tires.

Qin Miao used the brand new soft tires for his first flying lap.

Because there are many high-speed corners at Silverstone, and the load of the Mercedes car is relatively large, one lap is enough for Qin Miao to raise the temperature of his tires during qualifying.

Because all the drivers only ran one practice session, even though everyone was pushing at the beginning of qualifying, they all invariably held back a little bit.

After all, it's familiar, and it's not every day that each team has the opportunity to pull their own car to run data at Silverstone.

With so many upgraded parts installed, no one is sure whether the characteristics of the car have changed due to changes in the performance of the car.

Moreover, the time for first practice is also very limited, and no team can guarantee that they will get all the data they want in just one hour of first practice.

Therefore, in the Q1 qualifying session, in addition to the drivers of Haas Williams Arrow and other teams who tried their best from the beginning, several drivers in the leading group were gradually testing how the cars performed under today's track conditions.

On Friday, three commentators from Five Star Sports also started live broadcasting for the first time in a long time.

In fact, according to Five Star Sports' previous live broadcast rhythm, the three commentators could only broadcast F1 qualifying and the race at most.

But today is different.

There is an additional Chinese driver in the F1 field, and this Chinese driver has performed well since entering F1.

As a result, the ratings of the Five-Star Sports F1 section have surged, sometimes even reaching 20% ​​of the local ratings.

In a state where the television media is increasingly showing weakness, having such terrifying ratings shows Qin Miao's strong influence in the country at this time.

Therefore, unless Five Star Sports encounters a particularly important game, such as the semi-finals of the Champions League final, all programs must give way to F1.

Sometimes Five Star Sports will even broadcast live F1 practice sessions.

Moreover, the three commentators did not have any resistance to the sudden overtime work. After all, while they are commentators, they are also F1 fans and viewers.

They were very happy to see Qin Miao achieve such good results on the field.

This is almost a state of entertainment and work.

It is also the best reflection of the influence of Qin Miao, an F1 driver, in the country.

The same is true today. Although today is only Friday, there is a qualifying race, so the person in charge of Five Star Sports decided to broadcast F1 after discussing it for a while.

In the Q1 stage, Qin Miao's results were not very good. In the end, he only ran one flying lap before the end of Q1, and naturally only used one set of tires.

Qin Miao’s Q1 score was 1:27:519, advancing to the eighth position.

Regular viewers, or even those who have watched Qin Miao's qualifying matches a few more times, will generally put on a relieved smile after seeing Qin Miao's results.

Several commentators were not surprised.

Soon, as the subsequent riders crossed the finish line one after another after the clock was stopped in Q1, the final results of Q1 came out.

The eliminated drivers are Tsunoda, KIMI, Latifi and the Haas duo.

After taking a short break, Qin Miao looked at his Q1 data.

After determining where I can push my limits further, Q2 has almost begun.

The difficulty of qualifying in Q2 has increased a lot, but Qin Miao still only used a set of soft tires and only ran the first flying lap. His speed was much faster than in Q1, 1:26:710.

This result definitely makes it impossible to compete for pole position in Q3, but it is not difficult to advance to Q2 in Q3.

After confirming that his score was firmly in Q3, Qin Miao stopped running again just like Q1.

Returned to the maintenance area and started fishing.

最终Q2结束，汉密尔顿以恐怖的1:26:023来到了Q2的第一。

When Hamilton crossed the line with this result, the scene was filled with cheers like a mountain roar and a tsunami. Sitting in the car, he was affected by the engine noise and Qin Miao, who was wearing noise-canceling headphones, could even hear it vaguely. to the cheers of the audience.

Qin Miao was 0.7 seconds slower than his teammate, ranking third.

Seeing Qin Miao's results, the commentators from Five Star Sports even joked directly: "The third place in Q2 should be the highest ranking Qin Miao has ever achieved in Q1 of F2 qualifying, right?"

However, although Qin Miao ranked third, the gap between him and his teammates was really too big.

Toto was very calm after seeing Qin Miao's results. After all, it was almost becoming Qin Miao's mark that he didn't take out the real thing until the last flying lap of Q3, so he didn't care too much.

After the clock was stopped in Q2, the eliminated drivers were: Alonso, Gasly, Ocon, Giovinazzi and Stroll.

Returning to the garage for a brief rest, Q3 started again.

Because two sets of tires were saved in Q1 and Q2, Qin Miao could use soft tires for both flying laps in Q3, and even had one set of tires left.

In the first flying lap of Q3, the team released Hamilton first, and then Verstappen followed Hamilton out of the team's P room, while Qin Miao was behind Verstappen.

In the first section of the first flying lap, Hamilton was painted purple, and the second flying lap immediately after that was also painted purple, but soon Verstappen brushed Hamilton's purple back in the second flying lap. .

In the end, Hamilton passed the third timing section, and the time came to 1:26:134. Verstappen also completed the lap closely behind, and the final result was only 0.172 seconds slower than Hamilton.

In addition, Verstappen also wiped out Hamilton's fastest lap in a timing segment. I believe that if he adjusts his state again, it is not impossible to snatch the pole position from Hamilton in the last flying lap of Q3.

The two drivers can be said to be inextricably fighting each other on the field.

(End of this chapter)