How did I become an F1 driver?

At this time, while the Mercedes team staff felt confident, they also felt a little uneasy, because semi-wet tires were faster than full-wet tires. After all, this was only the data obtained on Friday. The tuning of the car at that time was completely different from the tuning of the current car. They It's not entirely certain whether the situation at that time can be applied to today's racing cars again yesterday.

In addition to Mercedes-Benz, the staff of Ferrari and Red Bull Racing are also looking forward to and anxious.

Naturally, they also expect Qin Miao and Hamilton to make mistakes in their tire selection. The semi-wet tires cannot find any grip under the current wet track conditions of the Suzuka Circuit.

However, as the safety car withdrew, Verstappen began to slow down and sway left and right to heat up the tires of his car, and all the answers were about to be revealed.

In the end, Verstappen started to accelerate after passing the straight corners T16 and T17.

But because of the rain, the distance between Hamilton and Leclerc was not very close, so when Verstappen started to accelerate, Qin Miao was still slowing down at the braking point of T16.

However, Verstappen entered T18 and the race finally started again.

At this time, Hamilton is not joking with you.

After leaving T17, he followed Leclerc, and all the way to the start straight, he was on the dirty side of Leclerc's outside line, and started to forcibly shorten the time gap between himself and Leclerc under pressure.

From this point alone, it can be seen that the Mercedes-Benz team was not wrong about the track conditions and tire data at this time. Under the current track conditions, the grip and speed of semi-wet tires are indeed faster than those of full rain tires. , even much faster.

And if Verstappen and Leclerc, who were first and second, still wanted to struggle in front of Mercedes' car, then the drivers behind Qin Miao stood out as being honest and well-behaved.

After the start, none of them stayed on the track, although they did not see the speed shown by Qin Miao and Hamilton's semi-wet tires on the track.

However, based on the driver's experience on the track and the close-combat strategy displayed by the Mercedes team at this time, everyone also felt that semi-wet tires were faster.

This pit stop for tire change naturally caused a lot of confusion. After all, except for the four drivers in front and the two drivers who retired from the race, the remaining 4 drivers all chose to pit for tire change during this time period.

Traffic jams and the like are normal. If you are unlucky and encounter two cars in front of you, you will have to wait at your place to wait for the two cars in front to complete tire changes before you can go out.

The maintenance area was once blocked as it was during the morning and evening rush hours on the Third Ring Road.

Under such traffic conditions, unsafe releases are commonplace. At least four drivers were punished for unsafe releases during this pit stop.

Anyway, everyone behind the first four drivers was a mess in the pit lane.

Qin Miao was not in a hurry during this period.

No matter how fiercely Hamilton and Leclerc are fighting at this time, it is an objective fact that Verstappen and Leclerc are not as fast on wet tires as Hamilton and Qin Miao.

In order not to lose more positions, they must stop and change tires after this lap.

By then, Qin Miao and Hamilton had gained more than 16 seconds of lead over the other teams' drivers for no apparent reason due to a sudden pit stop in the practice session.

Sure enough, after one lap, Leclerc, who was defending Hamilton extremely hard, and Verstappen in front of Leclerc chose to pit during this lap.

Naturally, I put on semi-wet tires.

After the two drivers in front pitted, Qin Miao and Hamilton reached the rankings where they should be.

Hamilton was first and Qin Miao was second.

Looking at Hamilton in the lead, Qin Miao originally thought that he would rely on the advantage of tire protection to gain enough tire advantage in the later stages of the race before killing Hamilton.

But when the time came and there were 30 minutes left before the end of the race, Qin Miao found that even if he started to protect his tire, the time gap between Hamilton and himself remained at 1.8 seconds.

At this time, Qin Miao realized that Hamilton was also trying to protect his tires, and he also wanted to finish the race on a set of semi-wet tires.

This old man is guarding himself!

Although Hamilton's tire protection ability is not as abnormal as Qin Miao's, Hamilton thinks that Qin Miao is not competitive enough on rainy days, coupled with the characteristics of the Suzuka track that is not easy to overtake and the W13B that he has now fully adapted to, Hamilton I am confident that I can withstand all the pressure Qin Miao brings to me in the later stages of the game.

Although Qin Miao had a good talk with Barber when he was at the bottom, he didn't care who won the race championship. Qin Miao's main purpose in this game was to widen the points gap between him and Verstappen. , further consolidating Qin Miao’s current leading position in the standings.

But Qin Miao must have hoped in his heart that this championship would fall into his pocket.

Qin Miao showed this characteristic of his when he was competing in F2.

After the F2 season ended, he specially handed over his championship car to Zhou Guanyu, and exchanged the two F2 championship trophies from Zhou Guanyu. In addition to Qin Miao's obsessive-compulsive disorder, the more important thing is Qin Miao. The desire for the championship.

Even if the championship trophy is not yours, it’s nice to see the trophies from the entire F2 season neatly arranged together, isn’t it?

Therefore, Qin Miao was not ready to give in at this time. Now that Hamilton had not opened him up to a time gap where he could not attack Hamilton at all, Qin Miao naturally wanted to give it a try.

However, as time went by, Qin Miao could only barely catch up to 1.4 seconds behind Hamilton even if he tried his best.

Qin Miao even had a strong feeling that it was not him who caught up to this position, but Hamilton deliberately slowed down to allow him to catch up.

Not to mention that DRS was not turned on at all during the rainy race. Even if DRS was indeed turned on during the race, Qin Miao would not be able to catch up to the DRS area behind Hamilton at this time.

After realizing this, Qin Miao was ready to give up. If he couldn't catch up now, then this game would be like this. There was nothing wrong with being second.

But he has said that this season there is no conflict of interest between him and Hamilton in the driver's standings.

After thinking of this, Qin Miao naturally slowed down a little and started to protect the fetus.

Hamilton in front naturally adopted the same tire protection strategy as Qin Miao.

Qin Miao started to sway, but Hamilton didn't know. He thought Qin Miao slowed down to protect his tire, and waited until his tires had insufficient grip later in the race before taking action.

……

The rest of the race gradually returned to calm, until 15 minutes before the end of the race, Zhou Guanyu pitted for a tire change.

Zhou Guanyu, who put on brand new semi-wet tires, achieved the fastest lap of the race on his first lap after coming out of the pit area.

Zhou Guanyu was 1 second faster than everyone else in the second time period.

There is no doubt that Zhou Guanyu's speed after this pit stop will definitely make many drivers stop to change tires, because Zhou Guanyu uses the new semi-wet tires too fast.

Under the influence of the catfish effect, basically all drivers behind will pit to change tires.

Qin Miao and Hamilton also received the news.

But Qin Miao actually didn't care whether he entered the station or not.

After all, Qin Miao still has a 10-second advantage over Verstappen behind him. At this time, he will definitely fall behind Verstappen when he pits. But by then, even if Qin Miao is not used to fighting in the rain, his single The lap speed will be at least 1.5 seconds faster than Verstappen's single lap. It is not too easy to catch up with Verstappen again and overtake Verstappen.

And regardless of whether Hamilton and Qin Miao make the pit stop, Verstappen and Leclerc behind them will definitely be worried that the driver behind them will take advantage of the speed advantage of the new tires to catch up with them, so they will also have to stop and change tires. , then the time gap between Qin Miao and Hamilton and Verstappen behind them will directly expand to 30 seconds.

With such a big time gap, no matter how fast Verstappen is, he can't catch up with 13 minutes left in the game.

It can be said that after the race restarted and Qin Miao and Hamilton put on semi-wet tires, they were already in an invincible position.

And just when Qin Miao was safely preparing to take home the second place in this race, Qin Miao suddenly saw a flash of red in the stands waving on the track while passing through the main straight.

That was a flag that Qin Miao was very familiar with.

And next to that flag, as if to compete with her, a plaster flag was waving there.

After seeing this scene, Qin Miao, who had been expressionless throughout the game, suddenly laughed in anger.

It seems that even though he did not win the championship, some people are still unconvinced.

Qin Miao didn't know who the spectators were in the stands waving their country's flag, but Qin Miao had a feeling that while he was waving his own national flag, he saw another person waving a plaster flag next to him, and he must have been suppressed. Full of fire.

In that case, I, Qin Miao, must help out! However, when he turned his attention away from the field and looked at Hamilton ahead, Qin Miao was in trouble.

Qin Miao put his skills on Hamilton when the game just restarted, but because he had never put too much pressure on Hamilton on the track, Hamilton's pressure data at this time was only [24 %], there is simply no way for Hamilton to make some fatal or irreparable mistakes on the track.

Qin Miao now really felt how uncomfortable the rain battle was.

Although Qin Miao is indeed top-notch in talent in the racing industry, he still has irreparable shortcomings as he did not receive proper training and education since childhood.

This naturally refers to Qin Miao's ability to fight in the rain.

However, Qin Miao also has some remedies.

So far in the 2022 season, including the current Japanese Grand Prix, 18 races have been held.

Qin Miao's system naturally issued tasks of varying difficulty to Qin Miao in each of these 18 split matches. It's just that this season the system didn't give many skills, but only attribute points and various other things. Qin Miao had already been given props, so Qin Miao didn't pay much attention to the specific tasks issued by the system.

This is bad news, but the good news is that after no skills are given, the system gives a lot of attribute points.

As a reward for 17 games, Qin Miao accumulated 25 attribute points.

At this time, in the system, Qin Miao's rain battle ability was still stuck at 80 points.

Qin Miao can now fully maximize his rain fighting ability on the spot, and then he can still have some skill points left to use other skills.

The reason why Qin Miao has so many skill points left is mainly because Qin Miao is still in the growth stage, and many attribute points are increasing. Qin Miao thought that they were going to increase anyway, so he might as well keep these skill points first. , wait until your growth reaches a bottleneck before using it.

Now Qin Miao can make an invincible "ding" sound just like when he played a single-player brush game.

However, Qin Miao would definitely not just use all the attribute points that he had worked hard to save for almost a year, and then slowly degrade back to 80 points. Then he would not be at a loss?
But Qin Miao no longer wanted to give up the championship in today's Japanese Grand Prix, so Qin Miao tentatively increased his rain battle attribute points from 80 points to 85 points.

Instantly, Qin Miao felt different. The predictability of racing in rainy conditions that he had experienced before came back again.

At least Qin Miao now has a clearer sense of where his tire grip limit is than when he had 80 attribute points.

With the addition of these five attribute points, Qin Miao's single-lap speed on the track has naturally been significantly improved.

Five Star Sports has been paying attention to the racing data of Qin Miao and Hamilton. Zhou Haoran, who estimated whether Verstappen behind him was still a threat to the two, let out a sigh after seeing Qin Miao's new lap time.

"Qin Miao's current lap speed is actually 0.4 seconds faster than the previous lap?"

On the track, Hamilton naturally noticed that Qin Miao behind him suddenly increased his speed. After all, although he was still cruising at this time, Qin Miao, the only threat to his championship position in today's game, was right behind him, so Hamilton While running the race, he was naturally always paying attention to Qin Miao behind him.

Then Hamilton, who had been taking care of his tires, started to increase his speed. He felt that Qin Miao felt that his tire reserves were enough at this time and was ready to attack him.

This is indeed the case, but Qin Miao also added an extra five attribute points.

At the same time, Qin Miao also knew how difficult it was for Suzuka to overtake in rainy conditions, so Qin Miao gritted his teeth and invested an additional five attribute points to force his rain fighting ability to a score of 90 points.

The most intuitive effect was that after one lap, Zhou Haoran said in shock and disbelief: "Qin Miao's single lap speed is still improving? Now Qin Miao's single lap speed is 0.4 faster than the previous lap. Seconds, even with Hamilton blocking the way!"

The five-star sports commentators who had already thought that the championship of today's Japanese Grand Prix had nothing to do with Qin Miao saw this situation on the field and suddenly became energetic again.

"Qin Miao! Qin Miao is getting faster now. There are still 6 minutes left before the end of the game. He still has a chance to win the championship!"

"Hamilton's tires are probably worn out now. Compared with Verstappen behind him, Hamilton and Qin Miao's single lap speed is 1.7 seconds slower, but the time gap between the two is more than 24 seconds, which makes Verstappen Pan can only serve as a foil for the two Mercedes drivers in this game!”

On the field, Hamilton naturally discovered that Qin Miao's speed behind him suddenly accelerated, so fast that he was caught off guard. The average pressure level on Hamilton's head was originally [24%] and instantly reached [30%] due to Qin Miao's speed. 】.

Qin Miao smiled slightly, finally making you feel less comfortable running!

"Qin Miao's speed has increased, and it seems that he is preparing to attack his teammates in the final stage of the game." Brother Bing was a little excited, but also worried: "It is rare to see Mercedes-Benz team members on the field now. There is a lot of internal fighting, especially after the performance of Red Bull Racing’s cars has improved this season.”

"I hope there won't be any accidents when the two drivers are fighting on the track." Fei Ge also said with some worry: "After all, no matter what, if we continue running in this form, the Mercedes team can steadily take first and second place. Bring them all back.”

When Brother Bing wanted to continue to say something to tease him, Zhou Haoran quickly grabbed his two seniors and gave them a look.

After all, Five-Star Sports has basically become a label. If the two commentators of Five-Star Sports have just finished speaking, and the two Mercedes drivers both withdraw from the race due to internal fighting, then everyone at Five-Star Sports will be dumbfounded.

Although everyone usually just uses this matter to make fun of Five Star Sports, as soon as the issue of insufficient guarantees came out, more serious people were holding on to this matter.

The two of them were just a little confused after explaining for a long time. They didn't lose their ability to think, so they quickly reacted and switched to other topics.

The director also understood very well at this time, and cut to Toto Wolfe as soon as Fei Ge finished speaking.

This is the first time since the start of the 2022 season that the director has given Toto so many shots in a grand prix.

After the performance of Mercedes' car was not as good as before, Toto was obviously reduced to a cow lady in the eyes of the on-site director. Toto's attention and topic in the paddock were not as good as before.

Although Toto had no expression on his face as usual at this time, the slightly bulging masseter muscles on both sides of his cheeks could prove that Toto's heart at this time was not what he showed on the surface. calm.

I guess I was already cursing in my heart by now.

But at this time, he had no way to intervene in the internal fight between the two drivers.

For various reasons, an extremely delicate balance has been reached between the two Mercedes drivers.

The current relationship between the two is like a pile of rubble after an earthquake. It seems stable, but you don't know if pulling out a brick or a seemingly inconspicuous stone will trigger a chain of events. The reaction caused the pile of ruins to collapse further.

And at this time, both drivers have their own valid reasons on the track to win this race championship.

So no matter what Toto thinks in his heart at this time, he certainly cannot and will not give team instructions to the two drivers at this time.

So Toto could only watch helplessly as the two drivers battled it out on the track.

After passing through the starting straight again, Qin Miao was already 0.8 seconds behind Hamilton.

After such a long race, although it was still raining on the track, there was no rain in some areas on the track that were relatively high and were not prone to rain accumulation.

Therefore, Qin Miao was so close to Hamilton's car that his vision would not be affected by the mist raised by Hamilton's car. At least it was within an acceptable range.

Qin Miao even had to run out of the racing line from time to time and deliberately press on the waterlogged areas on the track to cool down his tires.

At this time, the advantage of having the same aerodynamic components and racing engines of the cars driven by the two people is revealed. That is, this offense/defense is no longer compared with the team's R&D capabilities, but with the driver's performance on the track. Car control ability and own driving skills.

Compared with Hamilton, Qin Miao, who has been taking care of his tires for a long time after the restart of the race, naturally has an advantage in tires. Now Qin Miao's tires are at least three laps newer than Hamilton.

Therefore, Qin Miao confidently gave up the inside lane of the track to Hamilton in T1 on the track, while he was preparing to take a wide entry line on the outside. In addition, the T1 outside of Suzuka Circuit is characterized by high-speed corners. So Qin Miao was going to try to brake late on the outside.

While Hamilton felt that Qin Miao put a lot of pressure on him, he also became excited.

Hamilton has been waiting behind Qin Miao for a whole season, and now he finally has the opportunity to prove on the field that his poor performance this season, even not as good as his second-year rookie teammates, is not because he is old, but purely because of his age. Racing issues for the team.

It's time to announce to all F1 fans that the all-powerful seven-time champion...is now back.

On the track, Qin Miao suppressed Hamilton on the outside of the track, just like at the start, Verstappen didn't start as well as Leclerc, but he was able to overtake Leclerc directly on the outside of T1.

Qin Miao is also preparing to take the same route as Verstappen, but now Hamilton's lead over Qin Miao is obviously larger than Leclerc's lead over Verstappen at that time.

So Qin Miao finally entered T1 side by side with Hamilton, but before the braking point of T2, Qin Miao had no decisive advantage.

So when the car came to T2, Hamilton stood firmly on the inside and did not give Qin Miao any chance to continue overtaking on the outside.

This was the end of the first confrontation between the two Mercedes drivers at the Suzuka Circuit. (End of chapter)