How did I become an F1 driver?

Chapter 459 Chapter 463: Heaven-defying Brakes

Sainz was naturally unwilling to lose his pole position, so when he came to T1 and was overtaken by Verstappen, he prepared to cross the line to see if he could regain his position.

Qin Miao also started well, but did not have a decisive starting speed.

Although Sainz in front didn't start as well as Verstappen, the acceleration ability of Ferrari's shitty engine in the middle and rear sections was incredible.

Even if Qin Miao's reaction speed at the start is faster than Sainz, there is no way to catch up with Sainz by accelerating in the later stages.

As for Qin Miao's inside line, Hamilton's start was no worse than Qin Miao's, even slightly better than Qin Miao's. Coupled with the advantage in engine durability, Hamilton stuck to Qin Miao's inside line. Ben once again danced an extremely dangerous waltz on the track.

Hamilton wanted to squeeze Qin Miao toward the outside of the track. Qin Miao had the opposite idea to Hamilton. He wanted to squeeze Hamilton toward the inside to gain more room for himself to enter the corner.

The two of them were just on the track, neither one wanted to give in to the other, but the two of them still had a little bit of sense. Although they were fighting, there was no collision.

I can only admire the exquisite control of the car by the two drivers, which is breathtaking.

However, T1 at Circuit of the Americas had too great an advantage for the cars on the inside, and Hamilton and Qin Miao were still in a wheel-to-wheel state at the time.

Therefore, Qin Miao ultimately failed to keep his starting position and fell to Leclerc's familiar fourth place.

Ahead, Sainz also failed to hold on to his pole position.

Not to mention that he didn't run well at the start. Just because of Verstappen's inside starting position and Verstappen's extremely aggressive driving style, Sainz may not be able to hold on to his position.

Of course, for Qin Miao and Sainz, their starting position in today's game is indeed not very good.

And most of the drivers who lost their positions at the start of today's race were the drivers who started on the outside.

Therefore, the two drivers had already guessed before the start of today's race that they were likely to be overtaken by the driver on the inside at the start of the race.

After being overtaken, I naturally didn't feel that surprised.

At the same time, Qin Miao also knows that the Circuit of the Americas in Austin is a relatively easy overtaking track, and the two DRS areas give him enough space to accelerate and attack.

The most important thing is that the Mercedes-Benz team's cars have been improved this season, and the DRS efficiency has also been significantly improved.

According to the statistics after qualifying, although Mercedes' DRS efficiency is not as good as Red Bull and Williams, it is also ranked third among all teams.

There is also much to be done on this track.

Although the track width of Circuit of the Americas is very wide, due to the characteristics of the track in T1, after exiting T1, there are basically no drivers behind who are still wheel-to-wheel.

There wasn't much Qin Miao could do at this time, which was to follow his teammate Hamilton and wait for DRS to open and for Hamilton to make a mistake.

"Qin Miao did make a mistake at the start of today's game." The three commentators from Five-Star Sports naturally started their day's work after the game started.

It's just that there is one less person in charge of commentary in the studio today. Fei Ge did not participate in the commentary today.

Although everyone is a fan of Qin Miao, Qin Miao has been fighting in the F1 paddock for so long now. Everyone is used to Qin Miao's existence, and they no longer have a strange mentality when watching Qin Miao's races.

And Fei Ge is old after all. The US Grand Prix was held at 3 o'clock in the morning in China. The old man really couldn't bear it, so Li Bao took Fei Ge's place in today's game.

Fei Ge will watch the replay of the game after getting up tomorrow.

"It's rare to see Qin Miao lose her position in the starting stage." After watching the start, Li Bao said with some regret.

However, the other two commentators did not care about this. Although what Libao said was indeed true, it seemed that Qin Miao did not rise any ranking in the starting stage of this game throughout the season, but instead dropped one position.

But Qin Miao's more than one year and almost two years of racing in the F1 paddock has left an irremovable imprint in the hearts of all Chinese fans. That is, Qin Miao can always get good results on the track that make everyone look at him. Always.

Qin Miao followed his teammates for three laps until DRS was turned on.

However, it was not Qin Miao who took action first, but Qin Miao's teammate Hamilton in front of him.

Before DRS was turned on, Hamilton followed Sainz in the DRS area, obviously putting pressure on Sainz.

And I don’t know if it’s because Sainz focused all his attention on Hamilton behind him in these three laps or because Sainz’s own car is so slow.

When DRS was turned on, the time gap between Sainz and Verstappen ahead had been widened to 1.5 seconds.

This race has only started for 3 laps, and Verstappen has opened up an average gap of 0.5 seconds per lap.

This Dutchman is unreasonably fast.

On the fifth lap, the time gap between Verstappen and Sainz had reached 5 seconds, and this time it was one second faster.

There is indeed a reason for Verstappen's fast car, but Hamilton's attack on Sainz and Sainz's defensive actions are also one of the reasons why such a big time gap opened up in such a short period of time.

But during these 5 laps, Hamilton tried several times, but just couldn't find an opportunity to overtake Sainz in front of him.

Instead, the fight between the two allowed Qin Miao to fully charge his car and catch up to a position 0.6-0.8 seconds behind Hamilton.

If Hamilton hadn't been able to regularly absorb Sainz's wake, Qin Miao would have killed Hamilton long ago.

But Qin Miao was trapped in the DRS train again, and Qin Miao's engine was on the verge of replacement in this game, and its output was not as powerful as Hamilton's engine.

Therefore, before Hamilton made an active mistake, Qin Miao could not find a good offensive opportunity for a while.

Finally, on the 7th lap, after Hamilton's attack on the outside of T1 failed, Qin Miao found the opportunity to insert Hamilton's inside line, almost clinging to Sainz's car as it exited the corner, and forced his way into Hamilton's. Insider.

As an experienced driver, the old man also knew that his teammate's offensive ability was not inferior to his defensive ability, so while attacking Sainz, he naturally also focused part of his attention on his teammate Qin behind him. On Miao.

So Qin Miao forced his way inside and Hamilton noticed it, so he naturally wanted to make defensive moves. But in the end, Qin Miao's attack was too sudden and Hamilton failed to close the door. However, because they paid attention to Qin Miao's position, there was no accident between the two due to Qin Miao's sudden attack.

"Qin Miao is coming up!"

"Late braking on the inside, Qin Miao's signature offensive method!"

"Stand up to Hamilton, yes! That's it! Don't give Hamilton any chance!"

"Exit the corner! Accelerate! Beautiful Qin Miao! Now Qin Miao is in third place!"

On the track, Qin Miao braked late and fully released the ERS at the start, so he naturally took the third position very easily.

Hamilton wanted to regain his position, but his battle with Sainz in these 7 laps wasted too much time and ERS battery, and even the temperature of the car was too high. Naturally, this defense was ended in failure.

After Qin Miao passed Hamilton, he didn't drive the team TR. He just shouted in his helmet: "Nice!"

He was too happy at this time, which was a bit like provoking Hamilton.

After a brief celebration, Qin Miao turned his attention to Sainz ahead.

After defending Hamilton for such a long time, although the power of Sainz's car is not exhausted, it certainly doesn't have much left.

We can just take advantage of this opportunity and take advantage of the situation to win Sainz.

This is the so-called mantis stalking the cicada, and the fisherman profits.

Because when he overtook Hamilton, Hamilton was attacking Sainz, so Sainz was taking an inside defensive line. Therefore, Qin Miao took an inside line to attack Hamilton and was not thrown away by Sainz after he came out of the corner.

In the next few corners, Qin Miao didn't need to use the power of his ERS car, and he didn't even care if Sainz opened up a slight time gap.

Soon the two came to the DRS monitoring point between T10 and T11 one after another.

This location is naturally the DRS monitoring point that Sainz passed first.

Seeing this, Qin Miao came directly to the outside line in advance. It looked like Qin Miao was preparing to take a wider angle into the corner.

Sainz, who had been staring at the rearview mirror, knew that Qin Miao was preparing to exchange a larger cornering angle for faster cornering speed and exit speed.

Considering that there is Hamilton watching covetously behind Qin Miao, there is indeed a way to go this route.

After all, there is still a 0.8 time gap between Hamilton and Qin Miao at this time. Qin Miao does not have to worry about Hamilton braking late and forcing his way in like Qin Miao overtaking him.

So Sainz is also preparing to take the outside line to get a wider entry line.

Originally, the possibility of successfully defending Qin Miao's offense this time was not high. If he still used the inside defensive line, Sainz estimated that he would be tapped by Qin Miao between the DRS starting point between T11 and T12. .

However, just when Sainz came to the outside line and started to brake to enter the corner, Qin Miao also started to brake. However, while Qin Miao was braking, he still emerged from behind Sainz's car, and the brakes were inserted into the inside line.

Braking and tapping at the same time is actually a very dangerous behavior.

Because in this way, all the grip of your tires cannot be used for braking and deceleration, and part of the grip of the tires has to be transferred to steering. Moreover, the behavior of decelerating and braking while steering can easily cause the front wheels to lock up and even lose control.

After all, F1 cars don't have ABS. If you step on the brakes a little too hard, the front wheels may lock directly, leaving no room for negotiation.

Therefore, this set of actions requires extremely high demands on the driver's ability to control the brakes of the car, and it must reach an extremely terrifying level before it can be completed.

If you apply the brakes too much, the racing tires will lock up on the spot. If you apply the brakes too little, the braking effect will be poor, and you may even overshoot.

And as the speed of the car gradually decreases, the force you need to input to the brakes is a process that gradually becomes smaller.

But even under such harsh conditions, Qin Miao managed to control his car, brake and slow down while pulling out.

The whole process went smoothly, and the car showed no signs of losing control. Amid Sainz's astonished eyes, it steadily inserted itself into Sainz's inside line, then turned after being alongside Sainz, cut across the shoulder of the road, entered the corner and started accelerating. .

Next comes a long straight.

Originally, without overtaking Sainz, Qin Miao had a high possibility of using the wake of DRS and Sainz to overtake Sainz in the next DRS straight, but now he overtook him in the corner. Sainz and Qin Miao were naturally liberated on the spot. After entering the DRS area, they turned on DRS and rode away.

Sainz could only sigh helplessly.

After Qin Miao came to T12 and braked to exit the corner, the time gap between Qin Miao and Sainz directly came to 1 second.

"Qin Miao! He surpassed the two cars in front of him in one lap. This is Qin Miao, with absolutely strong defensive and offensive abilities." After watching Qin Miao's two overtakings, Fei Ge clapped his hands and laughed: "The next thing we have to see is whether Verstappen can withstand the pressure from Qin Miao."

Zhou Haoran said: "In fact, Qin Miao can run more relaxed now. Anyway, as long as Qin Miao finishes in the top three in the next few races, the 2022 driver championship will fall into Qin Miao's hands. So it can even be said that Qin Miao does not need to compete with Verstappen for the championship of this race. To put it bluntly, after Qin Miao's current results, it is best not to fight with Verstappen on the track."

Zhou Haoran did not make his words too clear, but old fans who have watched F1 races for a long time will know that what Zhou Haoran is talking about here is that if the fight between Qin Miao and Verstappen on the track is too fierce, As a result, Qin Miao retired from the race due to a collision or some other "accident", and Verstappen won the race championship, which was not worth the gain.

After all, F1 is a business league, and there must be more dirty things inside and outside the paddock than fans imagine.

No one can tell whether there will be some man-made accidents on the track.

On the track, Qin Miao naturally didn't know that the commentators of Five Star Sports were doing their best to advise him. However, from Qin Miao's own perspective, if he had the speed to catch up with Verstappen, Qin Miao would definitely not Give up the possibility of competing for the championship in this game.

In fact, Qin Miao's single lap speed is indeed good, even 0.2 seconds faster than Verstappen.

However, due to Sainz's obstruction in the early stages of the race, the time gap between Qin Miao and Verstappen had been widened to 5.1 seconds.

In an F1 race, such a huge time gap is enough to make people feel desperate.

(End of this chapter)