How did I become an F1 driver?

In the fourth lap, Qin Miao took advantage of the situation to overtake Norris, who had just been overtaken by Alonso and was a little unstable, and improved his ranking to ninth.

Zhou Guanyu widened the time gap with Qin Miao because he was defending Ricardo behind him.

The lap times of the two drivers today were actually similar, but Zhou Guanyu was unable to shake off Ricciardo before DRS was turned on, and he kept Ricciardo in the DRS zone behind him, so he fell into Ricciardo's quagmire.

The positions of the top three drivers remain unchanged.

However, Hamilton caught up with Verstappen's tailstream, and Perez was left 1.7 seconds behind the two after DRS was turned on, and the time gap continued to widen as time went on.

Just like at the end of the 2021 season, Perez could not provide much support to his teammate Verstappen on the track, and his role was more on the tactical level.

On the fifth lap, Qin Miao overtook Ocon in front of him on the starting straight, and on the sixth lap he overtook Bottas and moved up to seventh.

But on the seventh lap, Qin Miao was stuck behind the leader.

Should we say that it is Old Deng who composes the Hamilton Defense Theory?
When it comes to defense, Tou Ge is really good.

When Qin Miao surpassed two drivers in two laps and the car ran out of power, Tou Ge easily locked Qin Miao on the track.

Of course, this time was not long. After realizing that it was difficult to overtake Alonso by relying on slipstream and DRS without ERS, Qin Miao began to charge his car.

As the race came to the tenth lap, Qin Miao still relied on a full battery. With the tailstream on the starting straight and the DRS and ERS fully deployed, he reached a final speed of 369 kilometers per hour, beating the leader on the straight.

The on-site commentator gasped when he saw this.

Because since the advent of the ground effect era, the tail speed of F1 cars has not been particularly high.

Because of the dolphin jump, if the tail speed of the car is too high, it will definitely cause a dolphin jump, no matter how sophisticated your aerodynamic design is.

But the situation today is special, because the Rodriguez Brothers Circuit is at a high altitude and the air is thin, and the Mercedes-Benz cars in their current state tend to be low-resistance muscle cars. There is also a car in front of Qin Miao that has been reduced in rent, and more importantly, the wind is now blowing along the starting straight.

It can be said that under the current track conditions, Qin Miao took advantage of all the gains he could get, and ultimately achieved a finishing speed that an F1 car simply could not achieve in the current era.

As expected, after achieving such an incredible final speed, Qin Miao's lap set the fastest lap record of the entire event.

However, after overtaking the leader, Qin Miao felt a little bit troubled, because after reaching sixth place, Leclerc in front of him was now 6 seconds away from Qin Miao.

The main reason was that Qin Miao and Tou Ge had been entangled for too long, and Tou Ge often took a defensive route, which naturally delayed Tou Ge's own lap speed, and the time gap between Tou Ge and Leclerc was widened indefinitely.

This is also the disadvantage of being penalized to start at the back of the track. Many times, even if you get rid of the slow car behind you, when you return to the track, those drivers who were not as fast as you have already opened up a time gap between you and the slow car while you were entangled with it.

On the 19th lap, the time gap between Qin Miao and Leclerc had been reduced to 2 seconds by Qin Miao.

It does not sound like much to catch up with Leclerc by 9 seconds in 4 laps, but if you calculate carefully, Qin Miao's single lap speed is a full 0.4 seconds faster than Leclerc, and the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico is not a very long track, so Qin Miao's lap time is actually very fast.

And you have to know that Leclerc was using soft tires at the time. The fact that Qin Miao, who was using neutral tires, was able to quickly catch up with Leclerc has already proved his speed.

But for Qin Miao, there was also bad news at this time.

That is, at this time Leclerc had a gap of 4 seconds from Sainz in front of him, and Sainz had a gap of 11 seconds from Perez in front of him, and this was only 19 laps into the race.

At this time, the position of the two Ferrari drivers on the track was very strange.

No matter how fast Qin Miao is, he can only catch up with Perez in the rest of the game. It will be difficult for him to challenge Perez's position.

But this was also calculated by the team before the race started, and Qin Miao had also made corresponding mental preparations before the race started.

If there had been no safety car in this race, Qin Miao would definitely not have been able to get on the podium.

On lap 20, Qin Miao entered the DRS area behind Leclerc.

Without even taking a break behind Leclerc, Qin Miao came to the starting straight in the DRS zone on the 20th lap and immediately overtook Leclerc.

Leclerc did not resist during this period.

Although after 20 laps of the race, Leclerc's soft tires did not reach the cliff point, but the grip of Leclerc's tires is now not as good as Qin Miao's neutral tires. At this time, let alone whether he can defend against Qin Miao's attack, just defending Qin Miao will consume a lot of his own tire reserves. Leclerc also rationally feels that there is no need for him to disrupt his race rhythm in order to defend Qin Miao.

Of course, the most crucial thing is that Leclerc knew that he could not stop Qin Miao even if he defended. The improved Mercedes-Benz car had too fast speed on the straight.

The Rodriguez Circuit can also be considered a comfortable map for Mercedes in its current state.

Now many racing teams' R&D departments are struggling because the two most competitive teams on the track, Red Bull and Mercedes, have completely different racing design languages. The key is that both teams' cars are very fast.

Small teams are certainly not as strong as big teams like Mercedes-Benz and Red Bull in independent research and development of racing cars. At this time, they will definitely take advantage of the end of the season to copy some easier-to-copy designs from Mercedes-Benz or Red Bull and apply them to their own racing cars for next season in order to improve their competitiveness next season.

But damn, there are too many options to copy this season. Red Bull is very strong, and the improved Mercedes is also not to be ignored. No one knows who to copy for a while.

Ferrari: What about me! What about me?
Ferrari's design does have its merits, but since the announcement of the TD039 technical directive, the law has begun to go downhill, so the design language of Ferrari cars has not even been brought to the table.

It was directly excluded from the scope of reference by the design teams of the mid- and lower-level teams.

Back to the topic, after surpassing Leclerc, the time gap between Qin Miao and Sainz in front reached 4 seconds.

Although it seems like a lot, Sainz was using soft tires, and the grip began to decrease at this time.

So this time Qin Miao started chasing Sainz at a speed of 0.6 seconds per lap.

On lap 24, Perez entered the pit.

This time when changing tires, Red Bull Racing also gave Perez a big job.

The Perez tire changing team, which had not made any mistakes in tire changing throughout the season, encountered a tire changing mistake in their home field. The 5-second tire changing time once made many Mexican fans with special identities and backgrounds want to kill them.

But the 17-second gap between Sainz and Perez behind Perez calmed these people down.

Even if there was a slight mistake in tire changing in today's race, it would not affect Perez's position on the podium after the race. The time gap between Sainz and Perez was too big.

After Perez came out of the maintenance area, he fell directly behind Leclerc.

Qin Miao, who had already surpassed Leclerc, was unable to cause any trouble for Perez on the track.

On lap 26, Verstappen entered the pit to change tires, and took 2.5 seconds to change to a set of neutral tires.

It looks like Red Bull is going to let the two drivers finish the race with one stop on the red and yellow cards.

It was also in this lap that Qin Miao just overtook Sainz in front of him and improved his current position to third. Of course, this was just an illusion. Qin Miao's actual position was fourth.

However, Hamilton, who was using neutral tires and had been putting pressure on Verstappen, did not follow Verstappen into the pit.

Because the speed of the neutral tires in today's race has been considerable and the tire degradation is also very small, now that Verstappen has entered the pit, Hamilton can just concentrate on his own pace on the track.

As for Qin Miao, after Verstappen entered the pit, he fell 2 seconds ahead of Qin Miao. To be honest, Qin Miao was thinking about whether he could catch up and put some pressure on Verstappen.

But Pan Zi's new neutral tires were still a bit fast, and Qin Miao could hardly keep up with Verstappen's pace.

When Verstappen just came out of the maintenance area, Qin Miao did shorten the time gap between himself and Verstappen by 0.5 seconds in the first timing section, but after Verstappen's tires warmed up, Qin Miao gradually fell behind.

Seeing this, Qin Miao was no longer stubborn. He slowed down a little and started to protect the tire, while waiting to see if there was any benefactor who could summon a safety car or something at the critical moment.

On lap 30, Hamilton pitted and changed to hard tires. From Hamilton's choice of tires, it was clear that Hamilton was prepared to finish the race with one stop.

In fact, Hamilton wanted to extend the time of his stint, and then choose to change to soft tires in the later stage of the race like Qin Miao.

However, the team believed that Verstappen and Perez's neutral tires would inevitably deteriorate significantly in the later stages of the race, so Hamilton was called into the maintenance area.

As for Qin Miao...

The speed stability of Qin Miao's neutral tires was so high that the speed was always maintained within the acceptable range for the team, so the team felt there was no need to call Qin Miao into the pit to change tires.

The drivers in the front row on the subsequent tracks also entered the pits.

Apart from Ferrari's tire change, there were no obvious mistakes in the tire changes of other teams.

Ferrari's tyre-changing error did not affect the positions of their two drivers.

After all, the highlight of the two Ferrari drivers in today's race was that they were in the middle of nowhere, with the time gap between them being more than 10 seconds.

After replacing new tires, the drivers returned to their rightful positions.

During this period, except for Hamilton who was always 1.5 seconds behind Verstappen to put pressure on Verstappen, the time gap between other drivers was more than 3 seconds.

They were all cruising on the track. On lap 45, Qin Miao entered the pit with 26 laps left.

After this pit stop, Qin Miao naturally changed to the soft tires he had been longing for.

In addition to Qin Miao, another Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu also adopted the pit stop strategy of running the entire race directly after a yellow or red stop.

But compared with Qin Miao, Zhou Guanyu's speed dropped too much in the later stage of the neutral tire.

Moreover, when Zhou Guanyu changed tires this time, Arrow's tire changing skills performed stably. A tire change in 4.5 seconds allowed Zhou Guanyu to fall behind Albon after he came out of the maintenance area.

If we say that the fast straight-line speed of the Mercedes cars this season is the attribute that it makes those teams that are slower than the Mercedes team feel desperate that they can never catch up.

Williams' performance this season has made those teams that are faster than Williams in a single lap but not as fast on the straights feel disgusted.

Albon can often rely on his car's speed on the straight to create a long DRS train behind him. And because of the characteristics of muscle cars, even if the driver behind him has DRS, often at the end of the straight, after the driver behind him turns on DRS, the speed on the straight is not as fast as Williams' car.

So after appearing in this position, unless Zhou Guanyu seized Albon's mistake and overtook Albon in one fell swoop, he would definitely be trapped in this position in this race and completely miss the opportunity to score points.

After coming out of the maintenance area, Qin Miao returned to his fourth place, 13 seconds behind Perez who was in third place.

There is no doubt that Qin Miao has an absolute advantage in speed when it comes to soft tires versus Perez's neutral tires.

The only question now is whether Qin Miao can catch up with Perez in front of him in the remaining 16 laps of the race and get a podium for himself.

As for the second and the first?

The time gap between Perez and Hamilton is now 12 seconds. Qin Miao doesn't think he will still be able to attack Hamilton after surpassing Perez.

Not to mention that after changing to hard tires, the time gap between Hamilton and Verstappen has gradually widened, and now the time gap between the two of them has reached 5 seconds.

In the later stage of the game, except for the director giving a few shots to Zhou Guanyu from time to time, the main shots were focused on Qin Miao.

The time difference between Qin Miao and Perez, as well as the remaining laps of the race are also shown below the video.

Qin Miao was naturally shortening the time gap between himself and Perez with every lap.

On average, Qin Miao could shorten the time gap between himself and Perez by 0.8 seconds in every lap.

However, this 0.8 seconds of pursuit speed may seem like a lot, but considering the remaining 16 laps and the time gap of 13 seconds, this 0.8 seconds of speed is still not enough.

The penalty of being demoted 10 places completely destroyed Qin Miao's possibility of getting on the podium in this race.

On the track, the traditional French skills added a touch of interest and suspense to the second half of this relatively boring race.

On the 61st lap, Ocon turned on DRS on the starting straight and overtook his teammate Alonso. After overtaking Alonso, Ocon cut in front of Alonso like a lion, completely ignoring Ricardo who was stuck inside Alonso behind him.

Because of the obstruction of his teammates in front and Ricciardo on the side, all of Alonso's best cornering angles were blocked.

This resulted in Alonso losing two positions directly. Not only was he overtaken by Ocon, but he was also overtaken by Ricciardo.

This scene brought great shock to the Spaniards and severely refreshed Alonso's worldview.

The French can actually play like this!

No wonder they surrendered so easily back then, it’s a genetic trait!

He strikes hard at his own people and is extremely flattering to outsiders.

Alonso also said directly in the team TR: "Beautiful! What a wonderful season! It's really wonderful!"

Then on lap 62, Ricciardo also overtook Ocon.

……

Although it is not to the extent that every evil will be punished by his own evil, many of Ocon's actions this season are indeed confusing.

Although Qin Miao's dodging and defense at the start were in vain, the two Alpine drivers did not start fighting directly at the start, but judging from the state of the two Alpine drivers on the track just now, the infighting of the French team came late but arrived.

However, there was nothing wrong with what Qin Miao did on the track. After all, sometimes a lot of preparations are made to avoid that one percent of accidents.

And on the field, one crisis after another arises.

On the 65th lap, Alonso, who was ranked 9th, was forced to retire due to engine failure.

Alonso was really furious after retiring from the race. Not to mention being disgusted by his teammates on the track, the stability of this Alpine car was also a mess. He finally got a chance to score points, but it was gone.

At this moment, Alonso really felt like his lungs were about to collapse.

After getting off the car, he punched hard, as if the head of his teammate Ocon was under his fist, of course it could also be the head of Alpine's leader Szafnol.

The only consolation for Alonso at this time is that he will leave Alpine and go to Aston Martin after the end of this season.

Vettel has been helping Martin adjust the car for a year. I believe that by then Aston Martin's cars will still be competitive.

Even if he is not competitive, Alonso does not want to stay in Alpine, this crappy team, and suffer such humiliation.

Treat whoever wants to be treated.

After Alonso retired, Bottas got an advantage because he moved up to tenth place from the original eleventh place and could earn a point after the race.

On Hamilton's side, Mercedes' estimate of the condition of the Red Bull car's tires was a bit too optimistic. Verstappen actually finished the entire race on neutral tires, and even in the late stages of the race, Verstappen's tire grip was no worse than Hamilton's.

Therefore, Hamilton completely lost the opportunity to challenge Verstappen for the championship in this race.

Ultimately, the late game ended relatively uneventfully.

In the last lap, Qin Miao was still 2.1 seconds behind Perez who was in third place.

Qin Miao has really tried his best to get to this position.

But due to a 10-position penalty and too much time wasted on his leader, Qin Miao ultimately missed the chance to stand on the podium in this race.

However, the team is quite satisfied with Qin Miao's current performance.

After all, this is the beginning of the race, and the team had previously estimated the result Qin Miao could achieve.

Red Bull is naturally happy to see this happen.

In today's race, the first few drivers who finished the race were all happy except Hamilton.

The main problem for Hamilton was that he tried to be behind Verstappen for the entire race, but he did not pose any real threat to Verstappen.

Perez saw a podium in his home stadium, and he and the Mexican fans at the scene were naturally happier.

Needless to say, Verstappen won the race.

"Okay, let us congratulate Verstappen for winning the race again after three races, and completing the Pole to Win in the Mexican Grand Prix, breaking the record of drivers who won the qualifying pole position in the Mexican Grand Prix in the past three years who were unable to complete the Pole to Win!" After the race, the commentators of Five Star Sports naturally followed the usual process after the end of the race to congratulate Verstappen on his achievements on the track.

But at the same time, they did not forget Qin Miao who also performed well on the track today.

"Qin Miao started the race today from twelfth place and finished fourth. This result is acceptable to both Qin Miao and Mercedes. At least it did not allow Verstappen to further narrow the points gap with Qin Miao."

"In addition, the only pity is another Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu. In today's race, Zhou Guanyu's single lap speed actually matched that of his teammate Bottas." Zhou Haoran said: "Even in the first stint, Zhou Guanyu's single lap speed using neutral tires was 0.1 seconds faster than Bottas, but Arrow's tire changer made a mistake and sent Zhou Guanyu directly to Albon's DRS train, so that Zhou Guanyu was completely silent in the later stage of the race."

"Yes, that's right. I hope that after this race, Arrow can improve his tire changing process. At least next season, he won't hold back the drivers on the track because of tire changing problems."

After the game, Qin Miao felt a lot more relaxed because he didn't have to participate in post-game interviews and stand on the podium.

After getting off the car, many drivers came over to greet Qin Miao.

The reason why everyone is so enthusiastic is that in the entire 2022 season, Qin Miao only failed to reach the podium in the second Saudi Grand Prix at the beginning of the season and today's Mexican Grand Prix.

It was rare to see Qin Miao after the top three, so naturally everyone came over to join in the fun.

Of course, in addition to this, Qin Miao also announced the news that she was going to have a child.

The drivers don’t have much time to meet privately. Everyone is very busy, so there is no chance to congratulate Qin Miao face to face. They can only send a message via mobile phone.

Now they were not in a hurry to go for the weigh-in. They just had the opportunity to chat with Qin Miao face to face, so they naturally congratulated Qin Miao in person. (End of this chapter)