How did I become an F1 driver?

Chapter 235 Chapter 233: Circus
After seeing Leclerc lose some speed for some unknown reason, Qin Miao was a little worried. After all, it was hard to find such a good shield as Leclerc, so Qin Miao began to think about whether he should go a little slower and give Leclerc DRS. Give him a sip.

Fortunately, this was just a false alarm. Ferrari's characteristic self-repairing engine repaired itself on the spot.

Leclerc's speed picked up again.

However, on lap No. 16, in line with the principle of taking advantage of your illness to kill you, Hamilton started to release again in this lap, preparing to chase Leclerc again.

Qin Miao's eyelids twitched when he saw the gap between Hamilton and Leclerc shrinking rapidly. It can be said that his mentality of sitting firmly on the Diaoyutai has changed to a certain extent.

In the combination of T3 and T4 on the same lap, after passing T2, Qin Miao would normally adjust his braking weight back one gear.

But this time Qin Miao adjusted one more space when twisting the ring.

The setting of Qin Miao's position happened to be the last of the three settings that Qin Miao commonly used in this game. After adjusting one more position, Qin Miao's choice became the mode with a lower braking weight.

Because the braking weight has shifted toward the rear, Qin Miao's natural braking distance after braking this time is much longer than normal.

After T3 became larger, T4's cornering was naturally affected, and Qin Miao's overall speed dropped a lot.

When Qin Miao adjusted, he was just 0.7 seconds ahead of Leclerc.

At this position, even Leclerc can't catch up with DRS, but when passing through medium-to-high-speed corners, the turbulence discharged by Qin Miao's car will greatly affect the exit speed of the corner.

Toto, who was watching the race in the team's P room, had two screens in front of him. The on-board images of Qin Miao and Hamilton would always be displayed on these two screens.

When Qin Miao made a mistake, Toto happened to see Qin Miao's first perspective...

When Toto saw this scene, he also raised his eyebrows.

Toto remembered that in nine F1 Grand Prix races, Qin Miao had never made even one such unforced error, not even in the team's simulator.

Toto remembers this very clearly. The head of the simulator department specifically praised Qin Miao's stability in Qin Miao's evaluation report, which can prove that Qin Miao's mentality and basic skills are extremely solid.

But now a mistake happened, and it happened when Qin Miao was not under any pressure.

If you want to say that Qin Miao didn't mean it, Toto really doesn't believe it, but it doesn't rule out that Qin Miao really just made a mistake by coincidence.

After all, Qin Miao is just talented and not a real robot. He can be foolproof no matter what he does.

As long as Qin Miao's bite to death was just a mistake, no one on Mercedes' side could find fault with Qin Miao.

But Toto frowned and recalled Qin Miao's mistake. Compared with the tire lock, Qin Miao's mistake basically caused no tire damage...

Originally, the incident between Hamilton and Verstappen gave Toto a headache, and he had been working in the paddock for a long time. Now that he saw Qin Miao's actions, Toto not only had a headache, but also felt a numb scalp. .

Rosberg and Hamilton, Ricciardo and Verstappen...

Pictures of infighting between teammates appeared in Toto's mind.

Toto couldn't help but shudder when he thought of these scenes.

Hamilton is the founder and cornerstone of the Mercedes dynasty, and the only hope to break the record of car king Schumacher's seven championships.

So Toto will not and cannot give up on Hamilton at this time.

But Qin Miao's talent and performance are obviously the second Hamilton, and may even surpass Hamilton. This is Mercedes' future, with at least seven years of driver protection, and Toto doesn't want to give up.

However, if you have to choose between Qin Miao and Hamilton's eight crowns, Toto will ultimately choose Hamilton's eight crowns.

After all, talented drivers will always be found if they wait a little, and the chance to surpass the historical status and record of car king Schumacher is only this year.

And Qin Miao is still young now. At worst, Hamilton will complete his eighth championship and surpass Schumacher's historical status. The team will invest all resources in Qin Miao next year to compensate for the ground effect era.

So Toto decided to talk to Qin Miao after the game.

Regardless of whether Qin Miao did it intentionally or not, at least let Qin Miao pay attention in future games. You can compete with Hamilton legitimately, but you cannot help other drivers compete with their teammates.

However, Qin Miao at least did not reveal any obvious flaws in this matter, and there were reasons to deal with it, so when Toto talked to Qin Miao, he must approach it from another aspect.

But despite this, after Qin Miao made a mistake, Toto still signaled Franky to ask Qin Miao to speed up.

Everyone tacitly didn't mention Qin Miao's mistake. They just asked Qin Miao to speed up and have enough tires and ERS.

After receiving the order, Qin Miao naturally did not stay at his original position for long, and directly set the fastest lap.

Toto was really miserable and happy at the same time.

Qin Miao's talent is so terrifying. He can run extremely reliably and still have time to pay attention to what's going on behind him.

You can respond as soon as you find something is wrong and help the driver behind you make up for it.

"Hey~"

A sigh of relief or melancholy came from Toto's mask.

On lap No. 17, Hamilton arrived about 0.5 seconds behind Leclerc, and at this time, Leclerc's engine began to stall intermittently again.

Fortunately, Qin Miao just pulled him in front, and Hamilton behind him was never able to surpass Leclerc.

And after chasing Leclerc for so many laps, Hamilton's tires were also blistered.

On the following lap No. 19, Leclerc used Qin Miao's DRS to widen the gap between himself and Hamilton again, reaching 1.1 seconds.

At the same time, the pit stop window opened, and Perez, who had hard tires, took the lead to stop and change tires.

Qin Miao's tire wear at this time has just exceeded 30.00%, and there are still more than 60.00% of tires that can be used.

This is due to the terrifying effect brought about by pressing the car all the way.

Qin Miao even had a hunch that if he pressed a little harder, he might be able to stop the yellow and red.Of course, Qin Miao will not take risks. The team has already calculated its tire consumption. Even if it is for himself, Qin Miao cannot make mistakes when he is sure to win the championship.

However, due to Qin Miao's pressure, the drivers in the front group consumed less tires, so no one had the idea of ​​pitting at this time.

Instead, Hamilton, who had been trying to attack Leclerc, reported to the team that both of his front wheels were blistering due to excessive temperatures, and Leclerc's speed was restored to 1.5 seconds.

And it is worth mentioning that Qin Miao stopped driving after being reminded by the team. Qin Miao also felt that the team should have noticed something but did not mention it clearly.

If he still pretended to be stupid at this time and wanted to strengthen his teammate Hamilton, it would not be explained by a mistake, so after being reminded by the team, Qin Miao began to speed up and run at his own pace.

In two laps, the gap between Qin Miao and Leclerc came to 2.5 seconds, and there was basically no turbulence in front of Leclerc.

It is worth mentioning that after there was no turbulence and he could run at his own pace with peace of mind, Leclerc ran faster and even beat Qin Miao's fastest lap at one point.

Four laps into No. 20, Qin Miao returned to the fastest lap. It is hard to imagine that Qin Miao's set of medium tires that had been run for 25 laps could still achieve such a terrifying speed at this time.

And at this time, Qin Miao also opened a gap of more than 5 seconds behind Leclerc.

And maintained this gap and began to protect his tires.

Under this gap, basically everything in front of Leclerc is clean airflow.

It was somewhat difficult for Hamilton to overtake Leclerc. Now that Leclerc is not affected by Qin Miao's dirty airflow, he is faster. The gap between Hamilton and Hamilton has been widened to 2 seconds in these laps.

No. 20 Seven laps later, Hamilton, who had been suppressed by Leclerc for more than half the race, finally chose to pit.

After Hamilton stopped at his position, all the team staff did was prepare their hands and wait for Hamilton to complete his ten-second penalty.

After ten seconds that felt extremely long in the hearts of Hamilton and all Mercedes engineers, everyone started moving as if the start button was suddenly pressed.

This time the team put Hamilton on hard tires. Although the race was already halfway through, Hamilton would need to pursue forward with all his strength, so it was necessary to put on hard tires.

After Hamilton came out, the data panel in the lower right corner of the screen showed that his tire change time was 14.2 seconds. Excluding the 10-second penalty, the tire change lasted 4.2 seconds, and the total time to pass the pit area was as high as 40 seconds.

Hamilton fell into fifth place after receiving the penalty. Behind Norris, he was a full 41 seconds away from Qin Miao, who had not yet pitted.

Someone is going to say at this time, didn't it take Hamilton 40 seconds to pit?Why did Qin Miao, who was still about seven seconds ahead of Hamilton after coming out, only have one second longer than Hamilton?
After the pit stop, was he only one second ahead of Hamilton?

But in fact, pitting is a dynamic process. Drivers have a period of time to maintain a speed of 80 kilometers per hour through the pit area, and this time must also be counted.

Of course, Hamilton's ranking is also fictitious, because Sainz in front of him has not pitted yet.

It's not hard to figure out how Ferrari's strategy team would handle the situation. It didn't even require the strategy team to use their brains. A fan on the podium would know what to do at this time.

Hamilton had a ten-second penalty, and Hamilton was still unable to overtake Leclerc in the first half of the race. So Ferrari directly stole Mercedes' tactics, asked Leclerc to pit and put on white tires, and then started running at his own pace, etc. After Hamilton caught up, Leclerc started to defend Hamilton.

The three commentators from Five Star Sports also agreed with this. After thinking about this, Brother Bing even made a direct judgment: "According to the current rhythm, Leclerc should take second place over Hamilton."

However, Leclerc did not pit on the first lap after Hamilton pitted, and his speed remained at 1 minute, 31 seconds and did not drop, so it was no problem for the team to ask him to stay outside.

But this lap, Sainz also chose to pit.

It was no problem for him to pit at this time, after all, he had already run 25 laps on the medium tire.

When Sainz stopped at the tire changing position, Ferrari's tire changers gave the spectators a big repair.

Sainz stopped the car, and two jack technicians at the front and rear jacked up Sainz's car. Then the tire changers took off the tires and put new ones on, and the wind gunners began to tighten the tires. bolts on.

The two rear wheels and the right front wheel completed all their operations immediately. The tire changer on the left front wheel had no big problem with the first few steps, but when the wind gunner wanted to tighten the tire bolts, , but found that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't lock it tightly.

The most important thing is that after working hard for three or four seconds, after finally locking the tires and putting the car away, the wind gunner did not immediately put down the wind cannon and raise his hand to indicate that the tire change was successful, but slowly raised the wind cannon. , and then nodded twice.

It took another half a second or so for Ferrari's tire changer to release Sainz.

When Sainz went out, the tire change time was displayed in the lower right corner: [12.3 seconds], which was almost catching up with Hamilton's penalty time.

Sainz was given a ten-second time penalty by the team for no reason.

When the Five Star Sports commentators saw this scene, they became even more angry and said: "What on earth are these idiots like Ferrari doing?"

"After changing the tire, he was still nodding. I was really convinced."

"Why can Ferrari make such a low-level mistake?"

"I hope this doesn't happen when Leclerc changes tires."

……

Sainz was stabbed in the back by the team and dropped a lot of positions after he came out. He should have been behind Hamilton when he came out. He was in front of Ricciardo and fell behind Ricciardo, and there was a five-second gap with Ricciardo. .

And on lap No. 30 after this lap, Leclerc also chose to pit.

To be honest, with the lessons learned from Sainz's pit stop, when Leclerc pitted, the three commentators from Five Star Sports, including all the spectators watching the game, and Ferrari fans were all sweating for Leclerc.

But soon, a dramatic scene appeared on the screen, because after Leclerc parked, the team only took 2.2 seconds to help him put on the white tires.

This tire change speed can already hit the fastest tire change speed in this Grand Prix, and this tire change speed is less than a fraction of Sainz's tire change...

After seeing this scene, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Even the circus needs a little break and the show can't be too dense.

ps. I’m quite busy at work today and only have [-] left...

(End of this chapter)