How did I become an F1 driver?

And Qin Miao also knows that the reason why his current single lap speed is 0.2 seconds faster than Verstappen is not that he is really so much faster than Verstappen. It is most likely because Verstappen is on guard at this time. fetal.

If nothing unexpected happens on the subsequent track, it will be difficult for him to catch up with Verstappen.

However, Qin Miao still tried to chase Verstappen for two laps on the track, but to no avail, and was persuaded by the staff of the team's strategy team to stop.

Originally, most of the drivers in today's race used a two-stop tactic. Although Qin Miao could have finished the race directly with one stop in yellow and white, the biggest disadvantage of this running method that was so stretched that it forced oneself to a dead end was that the tires were basically basic. There's not much room left.

The driver in front has to pit anyway, so maintaining your own pace and ignoring him is the best choice.

……

In fact, when he just surpassed Sainz, Qin Miao's single lap speed was probably only 0.2 or even 0.1 seconds faster than Sainz.

But as the race reached the 12th lap, the speed of the Ferrari car began to drop very obviously.

It was also on this lap that Hamilton finally overtook Sainz in front of him from behind.

To be honest, Hamilton had the illusion that Sainz was not as serious when he defended Qin Miao as when he defended himself.

To be honest, Sainz was compared with Qin Miao by Tiefosi fans last season and was scolded as worthless. Why did he give Qin Miao a thumbs down on the track? I can't understand!

But in fact, it's not that Sainz doesn't want to, but Qin Miao clearly understands the principle of getting the best result in one battle. In most overtaking, Qin Miao will fully dissipate the heat of his car and keep the power of the ERS battery at 70 %above.

At that time, Sainz was naturally unable to resist the Mercedes car in its heyday.

But no matter what, Hamilton passed.

Then the game entered a brief calm period.

Verstappen, who was first, and Qin Miao, who was second, were running their own pace on the track. Hamilton was chasing Qin Miao in front, but because of Sainz, the distance between Hamilton and Qin Miao was also a bit far, short. Can't catch up within time.

On lap 13, many teams reached their pit stop windows during this period, including Qin Miao's teammate Hamilton.

When Hamilton pitted, he happened to be 2.1 seconds behind Qin Miao.

At this time of pit stop, it seemed that Hamilton wanted to undercut his teammate.

But in fact, after becoming teammates with Qin Miao, Hamilton clearly knows how unbelievable a person Qin Miao is, and the two of them are not running the same pit stop strategy at all.

The old man now has no intention of competing with Qin Miao for ranking.

Verstappen also pitted for tire changes on lap 14.

After Verstappen in front stopped to change tires, Qin Miao naturally came to the leading position.

Qin Miao originally planned to use his own set of medium tires until the 20th lap before pitting for tire changes. Considering that the car's fuel decreased significantly after 20 laps, Qin Miao and the team agreed that Qin Miao could use hard tires. Complete all remaining race laps on the tire.

But the plan couldn't keep up with the changes.

On the 17th lap, Bottas, who was wearing a special edition helmet, made a mistake and rushed into the gravel at Turn 19. In the end, due to his unqualified pulling ability, he failed to pull and fell into the gravel buffer zone and retired.

To be honest, all F1 drivers should go to Sainz and sign up for a cram school to learn how to run a rally on the track. After all, Sainz has rally experience passed down from his family.

Bottas' mistake naturally triggered the safety car.

A group of riders who used hard tires and Qin Miao, who had persisted in using medium tires until now, got a free pit stop opportunity.

All drivers using hard tires made huge profits, but Qin Miao made a small profit.

Because Qin Miao was planning to stop, the stop time was quite limited, and the race ended just one lap before Qin Miao's hard tire started to enter the cliff point.

But now, there are three more laps to go before the end of the race. There is a high probability that Qin Miao's hard tires will not last until the end of the race. Qin Miao's pit stop strategy will also be forced to shift to a two-stop strategy.

But Qin Miao had to take advantage of this advantage, so Qin Miao still pitted and changed to hard tires.

The next step was naturally to follow the safety car.

During this period, Qin Miao was naturally communicating with the team's strategy team. This pit stop and two stops after tire change are inevitable. After all, if you continue to race on the track after passing the cliff point, it will no longer be the cause of tire wear. The question is whether there is a possibility of tire puncture.

Although compared with the 2021 season, after the tires are enlarged in the 2022 season, punctures due to excessive driving on the track rarely occur.

But this situation has only become smaller, not without it. Neither the team nor the driver can afford the risk of a tire blowout on the track.

So at this time, the strategy team in the P room of the team and the strategy team staff working remotely at the Mercedes-Benz Brackley headquarters are all nervously calculating the time for Qin Miao's second stop and when is the best time to pit.

Of course, as I said before, this is just a small profit, not a loss.

So at this time, French clearly told Qin Miao: "After the safety car restarts, you can show a little speed."

At this time, Qin Miao's actual position has reached first, Verstappen is second, Hamilton is third, Sainz is fourth, Perez is fifth, and Leclerc is sixth.

At this time, someone was about to be surprised. Wasn't Leclerc punished to start 15th? Why did he end up in sixth place?

In fact, Leclerc's method of appearing here is very simple, basically the normal tire strategy used by all drivers who have fallen to the rear due to penalty issues.

That is a set of hard tires and a pit stop strategy that is misaligned with the driver in front on the track.

Leclerc ran 17 laps on a set of soft tires and overtook several cars. In addition, on the 13th lap, the driver who was using medium tires pitted to change tires. Leclerc's appearance in this position did not make people feel uncomfortable. Unexpected.

And throughout the process, Leclerc's lap times on the hard tires have always been impressive, and he did not encounter the problem of tire failure on the track like his teammate Sainz.

Qin Miao and the others drove under the safety car until the 21st lap before the race restarted.

During this process, the team also provided Qin Miao's next pit stop strategy.

Because Qin Miao has the habit of keeping three sets of tires with different hardnesses in reserve during the race, so Qin Miao’s tire reserve at this time includes a set of medium tires and a set of soft tires. .

Although I said before, the Circuit of the Americas is extremely unfriendly to Pirelli's soft tires, and it can't run for many laps.

But that just means that the durability of soft tires is not good, but the speed of soft tires can still be guaranteed.

It did not say that soft tires cannot be used for the race. If Qin Miao is going to use soft tires to end the race in the last few laps, the team determines that the best pit stop window is between laps 48-51.

Pitting during this period will cause the least overall loss to Qin Miao's lap time, and at the same time, certain adjustments can be made based on the situation on the field at that time.

Moreover, the extra margin left by the soft tires was enough for Qin Miao to use in the final stage of the sprint.

Qin Miao is sitting in the car without knowing the team's calculation results. Mercedes is not Ferrari, and the pit stop strategy formulated by the strategy team is still very secure, so Qin Miao did not use his own brain and directly adopted the team's pit stop strategy. .

Soon, the game resumed.

Because the 2021 season stipulates that the front nose of the rear car cannot cross the rear wheel of the front car during the starting stage of the front car, so Qin Miao T15 started to press the car during the starting stage this time and released the safety car.

By the time Qin Miao and all the drivers behind him drove slowly to T18, Melander had already driven his Mercedes safety car back to the pit area.

Qin Miao also found a random place and started to speed up after slowly exiting T19.

After all, Qin Miao's position selection was a bit too random, so Verstappen behind Qin Miao was not disturbed by Qin Miao's sudden acceleration.

The same goes for Hamilton and Leclerc at the rear.

However, just when everyone thought that the game would start to proceed normally.

The race has just restarted, one lap has not been completed, and DRS has not been turned on.

There was another famous scene on the track.

Alonso sucked into the wake of his future teammate Stroll after exiting the T11 corner. Then Alonso collided with the young master's car. Alonso's car was directly hit and flew up, with the front of the car high. Lift high.

Normally, if it is a GT3 car, this level of head tilt occurs and coupled with the speed of the DRS long straight, this is still a downhill slope. Alonso's car has to fly directly, and then do a 180° in the air. Spin around and slam your head down on the ground.

However, the terrifying aerodynamic efficiency and downforce of the F1 car quickly pulled Alonso's car back to the ground.

As for the Aston Martin that collided with Alonso, its rear wing was completely lifted off. The left rear wheel indicated that it was free, and then ran away on its own.

The most outrageous thing is that after such a big accident, Alonso's Alpine car seemed to have stolen something from Mercedes, and there was no problem with the car's suspension.

You must know that when Alonso's car flew up, the tire on the left side collided with the guardrail on the left side of the track.

But that's it, Alonso's racing is nothing.

Moreover, Alonso's car started rally mode after the collision. When it was about to lose control the next second, Alonso forcibly stabilized the car. To be honest, after this set of operations, if you put Alonso in his car and repeat it, he himself would not be able to do better than this.

After such a big accident, the competition naturally provided a safety car again.

Melander had just parked his car in the pit lane. He didn't even have time to take a sip of water and take a break before he had to drive his car onto the track again.

While chasing the safety car, Qin Miao suddenly thought:

Hey, if the safety car stays for a longer time this time, can I not need to make a pit stop and go back to my original pit stop strategy and run the entire race on a set of hard tires?

After asking the team's strategy team, they also felt that this was a possibility, but it still had to look at Qin Miao's tire wear on the track. In short, the pit stop strategy formulated was successful after the second safety car. Land conversion is an alternative.

On the other side, after such a big accident, not only did Alonso's car have no problems, he actually drove the car back to the pit area.

After returning to the pit area, he put on new tires and front nose, and then returned to the track and continued running!
This collision is obviously Stroll's full fault, because he changed lanes in the direction of Alonso's car when Alonso was pulling inside, and this time was very late, basically Alonso. The moment Stroll's front nose was about to pass Stroll, Stroll changed lanes.

Therefore, Alonso basically had no time to react and dodge.

However, this accident can also be classified as a track accident, and the penalty for Stroll's defensive actions in this game will not be too serious.

But I will probably have to take a penalty position in the next game.

This time the safety car lasted from lap 22 to lap 25. Qin Miao crossed the line at the same starting position as before and did not lose any position because of this start.

Next, what happened on the track was a bit dizzying for the fans at the scene.

There was Qin Miao in the front, who was facing the constant pressure from Verstappen behind. Although the defense was difficult and the defensive line he followed was very strange, Qin Miao was not surpassed by Verstappen.

Hamilton, who was behind Verstappen, was also constantly trying to fish in troubled waters. From time to time, he would give Verstappen a very threatening probing attack, so that even if Verstappen knew that he wanted to surpass Qin Miao, he would have to use it. A large amount of ERS power cannot save that much power, so we can only try to attack at some braking points and the end of the ERS zone.

But this has another problem, that is, after improvements at the end of the season, the air resistance of the Mercedes car has been greatly reduced, its straight-line acceleration capability has been improved, and its tail speed has increased.

The current W13B is a muscle car, and Qin Miao's training for this race is mainly focused on straight-line acceleration and tail speed.

So even with the support of DRS, Verstappen would always miss Qin Miao when attacking, just a little bit close to overtaking Qin Miao, but this little bit was just out of reach.

The feeling of being so far away.

Qin Miao, Verstappen's main target of attack, is not feeling very well now. On the one hand, Qin Miao has to devote a lot of energy to observing and predicting Verstappen's next attack route. On the other hand, Qin Miao still has to run the race. , pay attention to your tire consumption.

Among the top three drivers now, Hamilton has the easiest time. On the one hand, Sainz behind Hamilton is entangled by Perez, and behind Perez, Leclerc is exerting pressure.

The current two Red Bull cars are embarrassing.

Verstappen was sandwiched between two Mercedes cars, and Perez was sandwiched between two Ferrari cars.

At the rear, Alonso, who had fallen to the end of the team, began to pursue quickly to make up for the losses after the accident.

By the time the race came to lap 30, Alonso had already moved up two positions.

On the same lap, Leclerc took the lead in breaking the strange phenomenon of two Red Bulls being sandwiched between biscuits. At the end of the DRS straight of T12, Leclerc forcibly inserted into Perez's inside line, taking away Perez's position and moving to st place. five.

Two laps later, on lap 32, Qin Miao was informed by the team that if he continued to defend like this, the tires would not be able to hold up, and Qin Miao would have to face the second stop.

After Qin Miao thought for a while, he finally decided to stop for the second time.

However, the notice from the team obviously had a certain impact on Qin Miao's mentality. After all, if he says one stop, then two stops, one stop again, and two stops again, his personal state will definitely have ups and downs.

In addition, Qin Miao's defense against Verstappen relied not only on the tail speed of the car, but also on defensive skills and routing. Qin Miao's carelessness allowed Verstappen to seize the opportunity in T12. Qin Miao's inside line was forcibly inserted.

Qin Miao naturally had no good solution for this.

Although the intersection line was taken, the straight between T12 and T13 was too short for Qin Miao to show the acceleration ability of the car here.

And Verstappen also knows that Qin Miao's extreme braking ability is not weaker than his original teammate Ricciardo.

Therefore, when the T13 braked to enter the corner, Verstappen was still on the inside track and did not give Qin Miao any chance.

"I have to say that Verstappen's overtaking this time was indeed very clean and tidy. There was no such thing as the explosive atmosphere between him and Hamilton on the track before." After seeing Verstappen's overtaking of Qin Miao, the commentators of Five-Star Sports smiled bitterly. explained.

"Qin Miao was also very good in today's game. After all, Qin Miao also defended Verstappen for so long. Overheating of tires and bottoming out of ERS battery are almost inevitable, and judging from Qin Miao's current ranking in the standings, "It's acceptable for Verstappen to win a grand prix," Libao said, but he was more concerned with comforting the fans watching the race.

Qin Miao felt quite helpless after reaching the second position. As Li Bao said, after defending Verstappen for so long, the ERS battery of the car has bottomed out, the tire reserve is good, and there is no overheating. The situation is that the battery is out and the car is charging very slowly.

So next, Qin Miao also started to charge the ERS battery of the car.

As for Hamilton behind Qin Miao...he was trapped in the DRS train.

On the one hand, Qin Miao has Verstappen's DRS, and on the other hand, he has his own defensive ability. If Hamilton overtakes Qin Miao in this situation, then Qin Miao will have nothing to say. You Hamilton are awesome, this It’s okay if you don’t want the No. 1 driver position, I’ll give it to you.

The next race entered a brief calm period, which lasted until the 35th lap.

In this lap, Hamilton's strategy team also realized that they had been following Qin Miao. In this game, Hamilton could only get a third place at most.

Although it is indeed good to get a podium, both the seven-time champion himself and Hamilton's strategy team want to win a race championship in this game.

Therefore, Hamilton took the initiative to seek changes. He pitted for a tire change on lap 35 and completed his second stop, putting on a brand new set of medium tires.

After Hamilton pitted, Verstappen guessed what Hamilton was thinking. He wanted to undercut himself and Qin Miao.

Qin Miao's specific thoughts at this time are beyond the control of Verstappen and Red Bull's strategy team, but Verstappen is definitely not willing to sit still and wait for death.

So Verstappen started to speed up on the track.

Qin Miao also knew that he needed to stop twice, and also started to accelerate in order to prevent his teammates from overtaking him.

Although Qin Miao and Hamilton are teammates, even if Hamilton wins the race today, even if he only finishes third, the overall result will be beneficial to Qin Miao.

It can be said that as long as the winner of the race is not Verstappen, Qin Miao has an advantage.

After all, the point difference between the 2nd place and the 3rd place finisher is definitely smaller than the point difference between the 1st place and the 2nd place.

But among the drivers who can join teams with championship capabilities such as Mercedes and Red Bull Racing, which driver doesn’t want to get a better ranking on the track?
After accelerating for a lap, Verstappen did not leave Qin Miao behind, but he was indeed 0.5 seconds faster than himself in the previous lap.

Afterwards, Verstappen naturally pitted to change tires.

Originally, after all the Red Bull fans saw Verstappen pitting, no one was worried that Verstappen would make a mistake in changing tires this time.

After all, Red Bull Racing's strategy team and tire changers have always been the most stable and best among all teams.

But the Red Bull tire changer, who may not be able to do a job all season long, gave all the Red Bull fans a big job today at the United States Grand Prix.

After Verstappen parked the car in the parking position, the other three tires were changed at the speed and level that Red Bull Racing has always maintained.

However, when the wind cannon on the left front wheel was changing the tire, the tire of Verstappen's car was not removed immediately. After finally being removed, the wind cannon was unable to install the new one because of insufficient power. Tire nuts are locked.

The tire changer tried once or twice but failed. It was not until a new wind cannon was replaced that the tire change operation was completed.

This delay directly reduced the Red Bull Racing team's pit stop time to 11.1 seconds.

Verstappen may have lost the race championship in this game.

Moreover, Leclerc, who had a time gap of more than 8 seconds with Verstappen, pitted on the same lap as Verstappen.

After Verstappen changed the tires, Leclerc had already put on new tires and came out of the tire changing area.

Verstappen was passed by Leclerc in the pit lane.

Originally, in today's race, the speeds of Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari were almost the same.

If there was a time gap of five or six seconds, Verstappen might have worked hard and evened out this time gap with his own strength.

But this 11.1-second tire change time really makes people feel desperate.

As expected, Verstappen said directly in the team's TR: "Beautiful, So fucking beautiful!"

In short, Verstappen was impressed by the team's tire changing staff.

The Red Bull Racing team is not very good at answering Verstappen's team TR. After all, they made the mistake first, so they can only accept the scolding. (End of chapter)