How did I become an F1 driver?

And this is not the complete version of W14. If the original other aerodynamic kits are installed, the tail speed of W14 will be even faster.

Of course, these are contents that are inconvenient to display, so it is enough for you to know them yourself.

After the three-day winter test, Qin Miao did not go back to Monaco or the UK to slack off because this was the last free time before the start of the 23rd season.

Instead, he stayed in Bahrain to acclimate to the climate and resumed his normal Grand Prix weekend training intensity.

After all, the first two games of the 23rd season were held in the desert of the Middle East. Adapting to the local arid climate in advance will help Qin Miao feel more comfortable at the start of the game.

You will not swallow your saliva while driving due to the local dry climate, which will affect your driving.

Moreover, the low-intensity exercise during the holidays also caused Qin Miao's physical attributes to decline to 98 points.

Although Qin Miao's physical fitness still ranks first among all active F1 drivers, it is easy to go from frugality to luxury but difficult to go from luxury to frugality.

After experiencing a physical state of 99 strength, I always felt something was wrong after reaching 98, and I felt uncomfortable everywhere.

So during this period of time, Qin Miao was training hard in the hotel prepared for him by the team, but it was impossible for Qin Miao to reduce his practice on the racing simulator due to physical reasons. So these few days were said to be the last rest time before the race, but Qin Miao hardly touched the computer. At most, he would open a video call and chat with Qiu Meng while exercising every day.

That brings us to Qin Miao’s system.

Throughout the whole of last year, Qin Miao basically didn't pay much attention to his system. After all, it was his second year in the paddock, and Qin Miao's abilities were already at top level. Any further improvements would not have much impact on the outcome of the competition.

Even at Qin Miao's level, what matters more than the driver's personal ability is the performance of the car developed by the team.

But the fact that Qin Miao didn't watch it doesn't mean that Qin Miao's attributes have not changed. Over the past year, Qin Miao's various attributes have improved to varying degrees.

[Host name: Qin Miao
Age: 21
Overall rating: 93.7→94.7
Stamina: 99 → 98
Mentality: 95 → 91
Stability: 97 → 98
Ranking ability: 96
Starting ability: 92→95
Race long distance: 95.7→98
Tire protection ability: 89→91
Rain battle ability: 87→82
Attack power: 94.2→96
Defensive Ability: 100 (+1)]

The first thing is Qin Miao’s mentality. To be honest, Qin Miao didn’t know why his attribute would be reduced by four points.

But Qin Miao also had a vague guess. After all, these four points were lowered on the day he won two world championships.

I guess it’s because he’s a two-time world champion.

These two world champions have indeed brought themselves almost unlimited honor and attention.

However, these also became invisible pressure on Qin Miao, causing the heartless Qin Miao to become somewhat anxious and worried.

However, it is undeniable that even if Qin Miao is under pressure after winning two world championships, this 91-point mentality is almost enough to dominate the entire paddock.

In addition to this, there is the one year of practice and the bonus attribute points given to Qin Miao by the system after Qin Miao accidentally completed the system task.

In the first year, Qin Miao was very enthusiastic about the system tasks, but in the second year he became indifferent.

This is just like Qin Miao playing games. The official launched countless tasks for daily activities, but Qin Miao just ignored them and played the game purely for fun.

If you just complete the task at that time, you earn money. If you don’t complete it, it doesn’t matter.

This is Qin Miao’s current mentality towards his system tasks.

Of course, what Qin Miao is really proud of is his ability to fight in the rain.

Qin Miao's ability to fight in the rain has not improved since that rain battle. The reason why it has not dropped to the upper limit of 80 points is because Qin Miao has never relaxed his training in rain battles.

Even Qin Miao had a feeling that with his diligence in training rain battles almost every day in the past six months, he should have broken through the upper limit of his rain battle ability. Now the upper limit of his rain battle ability has reached 81.

That is to say, after it drops to 81 points, it will not fall further.

However, it was impossible for Qin Miao to give up training for rain battles just to test his hypothesis, and he still trained on the simulator for at least two hours every day.

On the other hand, Qin Miao felt that this was the most useless improvement.

After winning the championship in 22 years, Qin Miao obtained a skill, and it was golden.

The general function of skills is to increase your highest attribute by a point.

It is equivalent to an attribute that exceeds the limits of human beings.

But Qin Miao felt that his defensive ability was already invincible. In Qin Miao's understanding, 100 and 100+1 should not be a big improvement.

Qin Miao really couldn't imagine how incredible the defensive ability that broke through the limits of human beings could be.

Can you also establish an absolute domain behind yourself?
Even if this is true, Mercedes' R&D capabilities are steadily improving this season, the performance of the car has been greatly improved, and it is foreseeable that the performance of the car will continue to improve. Even the subsequent upgrade space for the W14 is equally huge. As long as the overweight of 20KG is resolved, there will be an improvement space of 0.7 seconds per lap.

The cars behind may not be able to keep up with Qin Miao's racing pace, let alone catch up and surpass Qin Miao.

So Qin Miao really thinks this skill is a bit useless.

But no matter what, it's always good to have improvement.

Adding the various rewards from the 23rd season, Qin Miao's current net worth has exceeded 2 million US dollars.

Cash flow also exceeded $5000 million.

Although he is not the richest F1 driver in history, Qin Miao is indeed the best driver in Asia.

I won’t go into details about other upgrades and rewards here.

When your life falls into a regular routine, time always passes particularly quickly. Qin Miao feels this way now.

As time went by, it was already Wednesday afternoon. When Barber called to remind Qin Miao that he had to go to the paddock tomorrow to attend the press conference before the first race in 2023, Qin Miao thought today was Tuesday.

However, knowing that the competition is about to begin is also an exciting thing for Qin Miao.

On the one hand, he has the opportunity to feel how powerful the complete version of W14 is. On the other hand, Qin Miao can finally return to the track and compete with other drivers after holding back for so long.

These two things made Qin Miao full of expectations for the race. However, Qin Miao was not looking forward to a match with Verstappen or Leclerc. Qin Miao felt that his main opponent this season would most likely be his teammate Hamilton.

Soon, it was Thursday.

When he arrived at the paddock, Qin Miao was still wearing the black team uniform of the Mercedes-Benz team. Although Qin Miao wanted to wear shorts, for sun protection reasons, Qin Miao finally wore a pair of jeans and sneakers.

If Qin Miao's face is blocked, just looking at this outfit, combined with the environment of the F1 track, anyone who sees Qin Miao's clothes will think he is just an ordinary Mercedes fan.

This is also the point that the Mercedes team loves and hates Qin Miao.

Love is because Qin Miao will not wear his own clothes when he goes to the paddock. Even when he comes out of the hotel, he will definitely wear the Mercedes-Benz team uniform. This is of great benefit to the publicity of the team and the exposure of the team's sponsors.

The regret is that unless the commercial activity to be carried out is very interesting, or the organizer invites people that Qin Miao is interested in, Qin Miao is not willing to participate in any commercial activity at all, and Mercedes-Benz naturally has no way to monetize the traffic from Qin Miao.

It can only be said that such drivers have advantages and disadvantages, but generally speaking, the advantages still outweigh the disadvantages.

At least Qin Miao's grades are very good.

The questions asked in the first pre-race press conference in 23 years tended to be about the cars of each team, the performance of the cars or the drivers' preparations at the beginning of the season.

For this press conference, perhaps knowing that these people have a good relationship, the organizers directly arranged Qin Miao, Leclerc, Norris, Zhou Guanyu and Gasly together.

If you must say, these five people are not from the same team, which is reasonable.

On the other hand, the relationship between these five people is indeed good.

Not to mention Qin Miao, Leclerc, Zhou Guanyu and Norris, Gasly also often plays games online with Qin Miao and others, but they rarely get together offline.

When a few people get together, there is no need for the host to guide the topic or ask questions; they just start chatting on their own.

Although the topic of conversation had nothing to do with the paddock.

But the audience can't help but love to watch their chat.

Several people made jokes, for example, Qin Miao saw Leclerc walking around the house in his underwear at night.

The lights were still on at Qin Miao's house at around 3 a.m., and when he opened the live broadcast room, he saw that he was playing games.

With the two players joking around and joking with each other, Thursday's pre-match interview ended in a cheerful atmosphere.

Several people walked away arm in arm.

When Qin Miao finished the pre-race interview and returned to the team's P room, his car was already ready and his No. 66 W14 had entered full condition.

Compared to the winter test, the shape of the car's floor, side boxes and even the front nose have changed significantly. Of course, there are countless less obvious changes.

Many of the changes are hidden beneath the Mercedes-Benz's black paint.

Unless you maximize the exposure when taking photos, it will be difficult to detect these hidden aerodynamic kits.

This can be regarded as a traditional skill of each team, and basically all teams know this trick.

Because all the cars have black paint.

The first part Qin Miao noticed to be upgraded was actually the floor of his car.

Although Qin Miao is just a driver and does not have a particularly good understanding of the aerodynamic design and principles of racing cars, having been a driver for almost four years, Qin Miao has more or less a better understanding of the main sources of downforce of racing cars in the current ground effect era.

However, although the vortex generators on the edge of the W14's floor are still in that weird shape, they are at least half the size of those on last season's W13 and W13B.

After seeing this, Qin Miao naturally began to have doubts in his heart. Would such a small vortex generator reduce the sealing effect of the airflow on the edge of the car's floor? Would his car experience the dolphin cover phenomenon on the track?

So Qin Miao talked about his concerns with Elliot.

Elliot explained directly: "Reducing the size of the vortex generator will indeed reduce the efficiency of the airflow in the Venturi channel passing through the vortex generator. Qin Miao, your judgment is correct. Doing so will indeed reduce the intensity of the vortex generated by the vortex generator and weaken the sealing of the bottom plate."

After confirming Qin Miao's idea, Elliot began to explain why they did this: "But you have to know that the vortex generated by an overly large vortex generator will cause resistance to the car. The larger the vortex, the greater the resistance, so we did a subtraction at this position."

"But the sealing of the floor is a necessary condition for the car's speed, so we decided to use the airflow in other places." He pointed to the raised carbon fiber sheets at the entrance of the Venturi channel and said, "The fins in this position can effectively guide the airflow of the front nose and the two front wheels through the side boxes of the car, and our side boxes will guide the airflow to both sides for discharge. Coupled with the vortex generated by the vortex generators, the overall resistance of the car is reduced, but the sealing effect of the floor has not changed. In our tests, this design has reduced the overall resistance of the car by at least 1.1%, and the tail speed can be increased by at least 5 kilometers per hour."

Qin Miao touched his chin and said, "So what should we do on the curves? Especially the low and medium speed curves."

"In slow and medium speed corners, the design of the car doesn't have enough speed for these aerodynamic kits to provide such a strong seal?"

After hearing Qin Miao's question, the other party was stunned for a moment, his expression somewhat embarrassed, and then he explained: "There is indeed a problem in this regard. You should have felt it when you tested it on the simulator. The car has some understeer in low- and medium-speed corners, but this is due to the overall design of the car.

On the current W14 platform, if we want to improve the car's speed in low and medium speed corners, we will spend at least twice as much time and money as we would to enhance the car's high-speed cornering and straight acceleration capabilities and tail speed. "

After listening to the other party's explanation, Qin Miao nodded in understanding. This is no longer the era without a budget cap.

In the past, Mercedes-Benz was very wealthy. On the one hand, it invested heavily in the development of racing car engines, and on the other hand, it also invested in aerodynamic design at all costs.

Basically, as long as you have something on your PPT, and it does have a positive effect on the current state of racing, you can get started.

But now it’s not possible because there is a budget cap.

Even if you have something on your PPT and it is very practical, you still have to honestly enhance it according to the overall characteristics of the car.

If nothing unexpected happens, this season's W14 will still be a muscle car.

On a track like Monaco, I'm sure I'll suffer a lot in qualifying.

Then the all-important qualifying race in Monaco…

I guess I can’t keep my title as the King of Monaco this season. (End of this chapter)