How did I become an F1 driver?

Chapter 298 Chapter 301: Restless Little Hands (6K, 114 more updates)

Although none of them said it explicitly, Qin Miao knew that they were all curious about how they relied on to finish the entire race on a set of hard tires.

However, because the relationship between these drivers and Qin Miao can only be said to be an ordinary colleague relationship, the relationship with Qin Miao is not as good as that of guys like Leclerc and Norris who can often get together during their breaks.

Therefore, they did not have the position to directly ask Qin Miao how he did it like Leclerc did.

After all, strictly speaking, this is actually within the scope of the driver's personal secrets.

So after surrounding Qin Miao, these people just asked insinuating questions and did not speak directly.

Although Qin Miao also wanted to answer their doubts, it was a pity that Qin Miao knew that they might not believe him even if he told the truth.

So in desperation, I can only choose to be vague and confused.

After all, if he really told the truth, they would feel that Qin Miao was perfunctory with them and would not even find a suitable excuse.

After dealing with it for a while, Qin Miao shook off these colleagues.

To be honest, before entering F1, Qin Miao did not think that these people were saints and perfect, but at least there was a beautifying filter for these drivers.

After all, there are only 20 F1 drivers in the world, which is really fewer than pilots.

Naturally, people would think that these 20 people should be top talents, gentlemen and the like.

But after he became one of them, Qin Miao discovered that these guys were also human beings, and they also had emotions and desires, and many of them even had shortcomings that Qin Miao simply couldn't stand.

The amount of milk that can be released from the mouth after being anxious is no less than that of ordinary people, and even some who are gifted can have surprisingly high amounts of milk in their mouths.

After returning to the door of Room P, Qin Miao saw Qiu Meng wearing a Mercedes team uniform waiting for him at the entrance of Room P.

Judging from her bored look, she must have been waiting for a while.

Walking in front of his wife, Qin Miao gave a bitter smile, grabbed her hair and said, "I can't help it. I didn't get off to a good start. I let Big Ya get torpedoed, and I made you look forward to a game in vain."

Qiu Meng smiled and gave Qin Miao a hug: "It's okay, it's already great, and you are still leading the standings. As long as you continue to maintain the stability on the track like you did in the middle of the season, then it will be fine." Everything that comes down depends on God’s will.”

Qin Miao nodded slightly.

We had a brief chat, but because Qin Miao still had work to do, he quickly let go of Qiu Meng and returned to the P room of the team with Barber.

After packing up his things for a while, Qin Miao went to the team home to wait for the team meeting to start.

Because Qin Miao and Hamilton's performance today was not very good, and compared with the pre-race plan, the Mercedes team did not gain enough points to defend the title today, so the atmosphere of this post-race meeting was somewhat dull.

Neither the driver nor the team's senior management were in a good mood at the moment.

In the end, Toto took the initiative to take responsibility at the meeting and put the blame for the defeat on himself, and the atmosphere of the entire meeting became better.

After the meeting, all the data will be flown back to the Brackley factory for analysis, but whether a satisfactory result can be obtained depends on the team's horoscope.

As for why the data needs to be transported by air, instead of using the network to directly send it back to the fleet headquarters online?

A little trivia: Even though current network speeds can easily reach Gigabit, [-] Gigabit, or even [-] Gigabit, the most economical and fastest way to transfer data is through real-world transportation.

Even though a team only has three days in a Grand Prix weekend, the data they can collect in these three days is calculated as tens of thousands of terabytes.

The speed of transferring tens of thousands of terabytes of data to the fleet headquarters through the network is not as fast as directly transporting a bunch of hard drives back.

Moreover, the team's data also needs to be kept confidential. If it is transported through the Internet, Mercedes' data will be intercepted.

If it is leaked, it will be particularly troublesome, especially if other teams get Mercedes' data. The other team may rely on this data to directly increase the lap speed of the car by 0.2 seconds.

Therefore, after comprehensive consideration, it is better to adopt the safest and most secure transportation method.

At six o'clock in the afternoon, Qin Miao got off work.

After another day of rest in Mexico, Qin Miao did not go back to Monaco or the UK on Monday, but went directly to Brazil.

After arriving in Brazil, Qin Miao began to use the simulator provided by the team to practice at the Interlagos track, just like when he first entered F1, and also helped the team run the simulator.

Qiu Meng will not come with Qin Miao this week. She needs to go back to Monaco to keep an eye on their house.

And considering Qin Miao's identity and occupation, Qin Miao will definitely have more and more cars in the future, and the storage of vehicles will also become a problem.

So Qiu Meng is also planning to acquire a piece of land in France this week and build a garage for Qin Miao.

After all, their home is at the junction of Monaco and France, so it is more convenient to get a garage in France for Qin Miao and the others to use.

However, Qiu Meng still doesn't want to miss the scene of Mercedes winning the constructor championship, so she will still go to Brazil during the race week.

Like Qin Miao, Qin Miao's teammate Hamilton also came to Brazil directly after taking a day's rest in Mexico.

For Brazilians, Qin Miao may be just an ordinary driver. There may be fans of Qin Miao in Brazil, but compared with Qin Miao's teammate Hamilton, Qin Miao's popularity in Brazil is negligible.

Hamilton can be said to be the most popular driver in Brazil after Senna in the racing industry.

Brazil is also Hamilton's other home ground.

Moreover, after Hamilton came to Brazil in advance this time, he did not carry out various business activities like he did before. Instead, like Qin Miao, both of them practiced Intellectual Property on the simulator prepared by the team for them. Largs Circuit.

Hamilton was stimulated by Verstappen in the last race.

The disastrous defeat in Mexico not only dealt a heavy blow to the Mercedes team, but also dealt a huge blow to drivers such as Hamilton and Qin Miao.

So after leaving Mexico, Hamilton held a breath in his heart. Since entering F1, he has never been so angry, nor has he lost so miserably.

He needs to find this place again on a track in Brazil that is more in line with the characteristics of Mercedes-Benz cars.

So after arriving in Brazil, Hamilton resolutely put down all business activities and jumped into the simulator.

From Monday to Wednesday, not only Qin Miao, Hamilton, but also Bottas from the team factory and Mercedes' test drivers all worked at high intensity without any rest time and worked overtime at night.

Qin Miao didn't even touch the computer in the past three days. Even if he was working out, it was an hour of basic physical training to ensure that his physical fitness would not decline.

After training, he had less than half an hour to rest, so Qin Miao started working again.

After three days of intense work, finally on Thursday, the day before the start of the Brazilian Grand Prix, Mercedes started to solve some of the problems that Qin Miao and Hamilton reported during the Mexican Grand Prix. .

And it brought a new rear wing upgrade at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

And because of these three days of hard work, Qin Miao almost vomited while running the Interlagos track on the simulator. Qin Miao didn't even want to go on the track on Thursday because he was too tired.

It is no exaggeration to say that Qin Miao now feels that as long as he is given a suitable car and a buff that combines with his personal car, he can physically run around the Interlagos circuit with his eyes closed. Even if he hits the wall without running out of the track, Qin Miao still has the confidence to keep his lap speed at a good level.

Muscle memory is almost developed.

Moreover, even Qin Miao could not bear the high-intensity work these days. It was not a physical problem. With Qin Miao's physical fitness, staying up late every day in his life would not be a problem.

The main thing is to organize the data, review the simulator recordings, then modify the data according to the data, and then continue to run the simulator. This set of operations is a bit too demanding on the brain and effort.

But there is no way. Today is strictly speaking a working day for Qin Miao and the others. In addition to going to the track to familiarize themselves with the conditions of the real Interlagos track, Qin Miao also has to do some work for his crew members. A little psychological construction.

After all, in the last race, Qin Miao and his crew did not get the minimum points standards set by the team before the start of the race.

It just so happens that Qin Miao and his team members can create a semi-enclosed space by walking on the track. During this period, they can have a good chat about recent events and encourage the team's technicians.

At the same time, because of Hamilton's relationship, the Mercedes-Benz team has a lot of marketing activities in Brazil. These marketing activities require the presence of the two drivers Qin Miao and Hamilton.

In short, with three practices back to back, no one, no matter the driver or the team, feels uncomfortable. The only happy people may be the spectators watching this year's race.

After all, they have watched games every weekend for more than half a month.

After arriving in the paddock, Qin Miao saw Hamilton in the team's P room when he was about to go to the track.

Looking at Hamilton's face that was as haggard as his own, for some reason, Qin Miao suddenly felt that the fatigue he had felt in the past few days was nothing.

Qin Miao also noticed that after Hamilton saw him, the tired expression on his face seemed to relax a little.

But when Qin Miao took a closer look, he didn't see anything strange on Hamilton's face. It might just be Qin Miao's illusion.

They nodded and said hello to each other, and then got together to chat about what they had been doing in the past few days. After that, the two of them were a little surprised to find that the other party had not had much rest in the past two days like themselves, and was helping the team. The R&D department runs simulator data.

The reason why neither Qin Miao nor Hamilton knew that the other person was busy with the same thing as himself was mainly because their contacts were different.

Moreover, when they are busy, they are in a state of distraction. They are always concentrating on their work, and they have no time to pay attention to other things.

After knowing what happened to the other person, the two looked at each other with sympathy in their eyes.

On Thursday, after walking the track, Qin Miao and Hamilton recorded many promotional videos together.

However, after the team's promotional video recording, Qin Miao got off work, while Hamilton needed to shoot commercials and record interviews.There is no way, who knows Hamilton has so many endorsements?

Even if he passed the test on Thursday, Qin Miao also had a night's rest.

After taking a comfortable bath and having a peaceful sleep, Qin Miao's day was over.

Soon, the time came to Friday, the official start of the Brazilian Grand Prix.

The Brazilian Grand Prix is ​​the last grand prix weekend this season to feature sprint qualifying rules.

Everyone is quite nervous about this. After all, compared with a normal grand prix weekend, this week's practice will be followed by qualifying.

But the good news is that thanks to the efforts of Qin Miao, Hamilton and the Mercedes-Benz team factory staff, Mercedes-Benz has obtained two sets of tuning settings that are relatively suitable for the Interlagos circuit.

Therefore, it is possible for the team to find the best qualifying tuning for the W12 by practicing one practice at a time.

During the first practice session, Qin Miao, who had changed into her racing suit and completed her pre-race preparations, got into the racing car.

Reyes placed a display screen in the middle of Qin Miao's racing flip-flops. After placing it, Franky's voice sounded in Qin Miao's headphones: "You should also feel it. The weather in Sao Paulo is good today, the air temperature is 15 °, having such a temperature in November can be called a pleasant climate.

But this temperature is not good news for racing tires. The track temperature is only 25°, so slide carefully when you go out and always pay attention to the tire temperature.

The weather is cloudy and the probability of rain is 40%. If there are rain clouds coming, we will remind you through TR as soon as possible. "

"Received." Qin Miao replied to Franky's words while looking at the data in front of him.

"The car is ready and ready to go at any time." Franky's voice also came over.

Qin Miao made one last check to see if the various settings of the car were the same as what he had chosen. After confirming that there was no problem, he gave Reyes a thumbs up to indicate that he was ready.

After Reyes received the signal from Qin Miao, he asked Qin Miao's crew to remove everything from the monitor to the tire heating blanket on Qin Miao's car.

After making sure everything was taken off, Reyes guided Qin Miao out of the team's P room.

During the first practice period, not only Qin Miao, but also almost all drivers focused on simulating lap times for qualifying.

They couldn't help but care. After all, in the qualifying stage, all drivers must push forward with all their strength, and in such a state, a small mistake may cause the car to lose control and hit the wall.

In order to avoid such accidents to the greatest extent, both the team and the driver themselves will try their best to become familiar with the driving method of soft tires on this track in the limited time of a year.

Thanks to the surprise training period before the start of the race, the two Mercedes drivers Qin Miao and Hamilton had a good adaptability to the Interlagos circuit, and they soon made effective results.

At the end of the final practice session, Hamilton and Qin Miao brought back one or two.

Hamilton's score was 1:09.040, and Qin Miao's score was 1:09.150.

Different from the normal Grand Prix weekends in the past, all the drivers at this time worked hard to set lap times for their own safety and the safety of the car during the practice session.

Basically no one would hide their secrets at this time.

In other words, this lap time score serves as a reference to a certain extent.

After the first practice, the team was busy with data again, and Qin Miao was also watching the replay of the fastest lap he had just run.

It is worth mentioning that during this period of time, the team has marked Qin Miao's poor performance in the fastest lap just now.

After getting off the bus, Qin Miao naturally had nothing to say, just learn, improve and integrate.

Soon, it was afternoon.

Before the start of qualifying, Qin Miao took a short rest for half an hour to relieve his head that was a little swollen from watching the competition video intensively.

This race determines the starting order for tomorrow's sprint qualifying session.

Although both fans and drivers inside and outside the paddock were criticizing the sprint qualifying format at this time, Qin Miao also felt that this format was a bit useless, and even the gold content of Sunday's qualifying was greatly reduced. Saturday's In the sprint race, no driver is willing to engage in a high-intensity fight with the driver in front because of concerns about car damage.

But the FIA ​​rules have been decided and there is no way to change them.

……

Although the FIA ​​gives all teams a full practice time to familiarize themselves with the performance of their cars on this track, people's talents are different, and so are the teams.

Mercedes can find a set of settings suitable for qualifying in a short period of time, but it may not be possible for other teams.

In the first lap after the start of Q1, the two Mercedes cars showed terrifying speed. Hamilton and Qin Miao occupied the top two positions in the first lap.

Although Red Bull's performance in recent games has been very strong, in terms of the team's heritage, Red Bull is a bit less interesting than Mercedes.

So when the clock stopped in Q1, the two Mercedes drivers still occupied first and second place, while the two Red Bull drivers advanced in fifth and sixth.

Although they also advanced to Q2, it is not difficult to see that Red Bull is in a state of distress.

In Q2, after the start of the grid, Mercedes' speed was still strong. Qin Miao and Hamilton once again joined forces to advance.

But the team didn't look happy because of the outstanding performance in Q2. After all, it was just an appetizer before the race.

The only thing worth mentioning is that after the clock was stopped in Q2, Hamilton's time was nearly 0.3 seconds faster than his teammate Qin Miao.

0.4 seconds faster than Verstappen.

It can be seen that Hamilton still has some home support here in Brazil.

The situation in Q3 was similar to that in Q2. Qin Miao and Hamilton ranked first and second in the first lap of Q3.

However, on the last lap of Q3, just before the race was about to stop, Verstappen still showed his terrifying talent.

On the last lap, he snatched second place from Qin Miao with an advantage of 0.009 seconds.

And the first place is Hamilton's.

After the final qualifying session, the top ten drivers in Saturday’s sprint qualifying are ranked as follows:
1: Hamilton

2: Verstappen

3: Qin Miao

4: Perez
5: Gasly
6: Sainz
7: Leclerc

8: Norris
9: Ricardo
10: Alonso
The top four drivers are basically the four from Mercedes and Red Bull, and fans are already somewhat used to it.

It is worth mentioning Gasly.

Although he was driving a Toro Rosso car, Gasly showed a terrifying speed that did not belong to Toro Rosso. Whether it was Mexico last week or Brazil now, Gasly drove the Toro Rosso car at a terrifying speed that did not belong to Toro Rosso. Red Bull has always been in a position halfway between the Mars group and the Earth group.

I just don’t know what Yuki Tsunoda would think after seeing such a gap.

Isn’t it scary to have poor grades? What’s scary is that you have poor grades and your teammates’ grades are better than yours...

However, this year's Taijun still had reasons to prevaricate.

After all, no matter how you say it, this is only the first year since Tsunoda Yuki entered F1, and it is understandable that he cannot keep up with his teammates.

What?You mean Qin Miao?

He is the only genius of this level among the more than one billion people in China, and there is no comparison with such a pervert.

Just when the qualifying session was stopped and Ricciardo, who set the last lap time, crossed the line, and everyone thought that the qualifying session was going to end like this, an accident happened on the field.

After qualifying, the three top three drivers all drove their cars back to the pit area and parked them in their own spots.

According to normal procedures, the next three drivers should get out of their cars, pack up and prepare for post-race interviews.
But after Verstappen got off his car, he did not immediately go to the post-race interview.

After getting out of the car, Verstappen looked at his car, then glanced at Hamilton's car behind him, paying special attention to the rear wing of Hamilton's car.

After that, Verstappen walked to the rear wing of his car. After taking off his gloves, he used his fingers to roughly measure a gap under the rear wing of his car.

After getting a rough angle, Verstappen walked directly to the rear of Hamilton's car, stretched out his hand and measured it at the same position on the rear wing of Hamilton's car.

Perhaps because he felt that the first shot was not accurate, or because he did not get the answer he wanted, Verstappen's hand changed position again.

But it seems that the data obtained from this adjustment is still not what Verstappen wanted.

You know, the game has just ended, and all the cars are in the stage of waiting for inspection.

At this stage, except for FIA staff, other unrelated persons are not allowed to touch the movable parts of the car.

Although Verstappen's act of touching Hamilton's car was not stopped immediately, the scene must have been transmitted to the FIA ​​race stewards. If nothing else, Verstappen will definitely be punished.

(End of this chapter)