How did I become an F1 driver?

第580章 564：逐渐熟悉雨战的秦淼（6K，加更1/5）

This did indeed result in the Austrian Grand Prix being sold out for all three days.

After all, there are games to watch every day, and maybe there are fewer compared to Friday.

There is even a short Grand Prix on Saturday.

It’s just that in this Grand Prix race, the drivers basically had no desire to attack.

It is more like a long distance test race with points income.

However, this racing system greatly reduces the time drivers have to familiarize themselves with the car before the race.

But it is not without benefits. At least I don’t have much time to familiarize myself with the car, and the same is true for the drivers of other teams.

In addition, the layout of the Red Bull Ring has not changed much compared to last season, and the hardness of the tires provided by Pirelli has not changed, only the formula is different from last season.

But the overall durability is still about the same.

So strictly speaking, the team was under very little pressure in this race.

The team only needs to help the drivers find the right car tuning and test the tire wear. As for track data, there is no problem in directly reusing the data collected from last season.

The first training stage.

After Qin Miao came out of the maintenance area, he familiarized himself with the track in the first lap, and then ran five long-distance laps and performed tire wear tests.

After these five laps, Qin Miao was basically 0.1 second faster than the previous lap each time.

However, Qin Miao's lap times were not outstanding throughout the entire process.

After all, before hitting the track, the team filled up Qin Miao's car with fuel.

As for the car upgrades...

Qin Miao personally feels that the upgrade of the car is effective, but the effect is not as good as in the simulator.

In the simulator simulation, this upgrade improved the car by 0.4 seconds, but in reality, Qin Miao felt that the lap time might have only improved by about 0.15.

But it is not without benefits. After the upgrade, the overall downforce of the W14 has increased, while the acceleration and tail speed of the car have basically not been affected.

At first Qin Miao thought it was an illusion, or maybe his car was too heavy.

However, when the practice session came to a brief end and they returned to the team's P room to change the training settings, Qin Miao and Hamilton got together to chat about the team's upgrade.

Then Qin Miao discovered that Hamilton felt the same way as he did.

The upgrades brought by the team this time are effective, but not that effective.

If Qin Miao is the only one who feels this way, then it is possible that Qin Miao's perception is biased.

But if Qin Miao and Hamilton both think so, then the team's upgrade did not meet expectations.

After telling Elliot about this, he rubbed his brows with a headache, said "I know", and then took out his cell phone to make a call.

Qin Miao actually wanted to comfort the other party. After all, no matter what, this upgrade was practical and effective.

But judging from the other party's expression, he probably doesn't have time.

After telling each other, Qin Miao and Hamilton continued to practice.

The practice session ended quickly, and Qin Miao found a tuning setting that made him feel relatively comfortable running, the kind that could be used in both qualifying and the race.

But it is definitely not the best. After all, it is impossible to get all the data in one practice session. The remaining data will have to be collected in tomorrow's sprint qualifying and sprint race.

The tuning Qin Miao used for this Grand Prix weekend was biased towards high downforce.

Although the Red Bull Ring has many bends, it is indeed a true high-speed track.

Many corners can be taken directly at full throttle, but because of the characteristics of the W14 as a racing muscle car, although it can dominate the first timing section, after entering the second and third timing sections, many corners require releasing the accelerator or stepping on the brakes to pass.

Therefore, Qin Miao adjusted his training settings towards high downpressure.

Although you still need to ease off the accelerator at these bends when the car is at full fuel, once the race reaches the middle and late stages and the car becomes lighter, the handling will basically be smoother and you won't need to ease off the accelerator or brake.

In the afternoon, qualifying round.

I won’t go into details about Q1. Qin Miao used a set of soft tires that he had used in practice and finished 13th to advance to Q2.

What? Why is Qin Miao so frugal? He even used old soft tires in qualifying.

The damn FIA arranged two qualifying sessions for this Grand Prix weekend, but only gave a total of 8 sets of soft tires to all drivers.

Normal drivers usually use one set of soft tires in practice and three sets in the three qualifying stages, but this Grand Prix weekend has two qualifying races, which means that six sets of soft tires will be used in one qualifying stage alone.

This does not include the situation where a mistake is made on a single lap in the qualifying stage and a new set of soft tires are needed, or the desired data is not obtained in the practice stage and another lap has to be run on soft tires.

Add to that a sprint race and a race, and if you don't use them sparingly, the soft tires simply won't be enough.

If something unexpected happens, you won’t be able to use the soft tires.

So if nothing unexpected happens, there will definitely be many drivers using neutral tires as soft tires in the sprint qualifying stage.

For Qin Miao, who likes to stockpile some tires as spares, not having tires is tantamount to torture.

He has no choice but to be frugal.

The drivers who were finally eliminated in Q1 were: Bottas, Zhou Guanyu, Tsunoda, Magnussen, and de Vries.

In Q2, Qin Miao initially wanted to continue using the old soft tires for another lap on the track.

If the lap time is appropriate, Qin Miao can save a set of soft tires.

But unfortunately, this set of soft tires is the softest C5 after all. It was able to run three flying laps in the practice stage with heavy fuel and high downforce settings, and another flying lap in the qualifying stage. This is already the limit of what this set of soft tires can do.

Regardless of the lap time or anything like that, Qin Miao felt that the tires would probably burst.

As a result, Qin Miao fell directly to last place in his first flying lap in Q2, and his lap time was 1 slower than Russell, who was second to last.

As for Verstappen...

His result was more than 1 second faster than Qin Miao's, but his flying lap exceeded the track limit when he exited the T10 turn, so his qualifying result was cancelled.

On the second flying lap, Qin Miao returned to the team's P room and changed into his second set of soft tires for this Grand Prix weekend.

As soon as the tires were changed, Qin Miao's performance immediately improved and he moved directly to third place.

Qin Miao also learned that many drivers on the track had their results cancelled because they exceeded the track limits when exiting the T10 turn.

Qin Miao did not pursue the limit in these laps, so he did not use the track to the extreme like other drivers when exiting the T10 corner. Therefore, Qin Miao was not punished by the FIA.

But after knowing the reason, Qin Miao couldn't help but become cautious when passing the bend here.

After Qin Miao's result was good enough to enter Q3, he punched out directly.

The director even captured the scene of Qin Miao getting out of the car to stretch his body after parking it.

But Verstappen's disqualification in Q2 was not the end, but the beginning of a ritual.

Because starting from Q2, more and more drivers ran off the track in T10 and had their lap times cancelled.

The most unlucky one among them... I can't say he is unlucky, it can only be said that Perez's condition has been bad recently.

Not only were his lap times for the first and second laps of Q2 cancelled, but his lap time for the third lap was also cancelled.

The reason is the same, that is, the track limit was exceeded when exiting the T10 corner.

As a result, Perez had no results in Q2 and was eliminated directly.

This is the fourth consecutive race that Perez has not entered Q4.

The drivers who were eliminated in Q2 were: Albon, Ocon, Russell, Piastri, and Perez.

Above Ocon, Albon and others are Gasly and Hulkenberg.

The reason why these two were able to surpass Ocon and the others was simply because the results of their last flying lap were cancelled because they exceeded the track limit.

Gasly and Hulkenberg had better results than them before their results were disqualified, which can only be attributed to luck.

To be honest, after seeing so many drivers on the track being disqualified for exceeding the track limits, Qin Miao gradually realized that something was wrong, because during the pre-race driver meeting, Qin Miao remembered very clearly that Ben Sulayem seemed to have said that the stewards of today's race would not be so strict in judging the penalties for exceeding the track limits in the third timing period.

Could it be that the third time period he was talking about was T9 instead of T10?

In addition, at last year's Austrian Grand Prix, it was normal for drivers to go off the track in T3 in the third time period, and the FIA ​​did not punish the drivers for this reason.

This is also the reason why the FIA ​​issued so many fines during this Grand Prix weekend.

Because drivers don't take so many things into consideration when driving on the track, most people drive based on their instincts and muscle memory.

Moreover, for the veteran driver, he has competed on this track five or six times. The T3 turn in the third timing section has always been at this angle, which is beyond the track limit and makes maximum use of the outer shoulder of the track to turn. There has never been a penalty before, so why is it being penalized today?
But no matter what, these appeals will only be made after the game.

And for the FIA, flexible penalty standards are just an inconspicuous piece of equipment in their arsenal.

Not worth mentioning at all.

Although Qin Miao has run this track a lot, he is not the kind of person who cannot correct problems once he finds them.

After making sure that the FIA ​​was keeping a close eye on this position, Qin Miao just lifted the accelerator slightly when leaving T10 and passed through.

Soon the race came to Q3.

In the first flying lap, Verstappen ran a 1:04.503.

Qin Miao was also running flying laps at this time. Although Qin Miao was still using the old soft tires, this set of old soft tires only ran one flying lap on the track, so overall, the grip of this set of soft tires was still good.

But unfortunately, Qin Miao's result after running this lap was only 1:04.990.

Don't think Qin Miao is at a disadvantage, you should know that Verstappen also used old tires

After seeing Verstappen's result, Qin Miao felt really upset.

I can only say that it is worthy of being Red Bull’s home ground.

In the last flying lap of Q3, Qin Miao considered it and decided to open a new set of soft tires.

With his defensive ability, if he can get a better starting position in the race on Sunday, it will be helpful in maintaining the points gap between himself and Verstappen.

After finishing this lap, Qin Miao's time was 1:04.503.

This is the fastest time Qin Miao can achieve in the current W14 stage. When Qin Miao was out of T10, the distance between his rear wheels exceeded the track limit and was taken down by the FIA ​​stewards by just two or three centimeters.

But even at such an extreme speed, Qin Miao could only achieve a result that was exactly the same as Verstappen's first lap result in Q3 qualifying.

The difference is that Verstappen has now completed his last flying lap with a time of 1:04.391, firmly in first place.

In the end, Pan Zi also won the pole position of the race with this result.

But the second place was not a Mercedes driver.

Second was Leclerc with a time of 1:04.439.

Hamilton was third with a time of 1:04.500
The old man's result was just 0.003 seconds faster than Qin Miao's.

To be honest, Qin Miao was stunned when he got the news when he was running back to the track after the qualifying race.

Qin Miao was willing to admit that Hamilton was faster than himself. After all, his strength was truly on par with Hamilton's.

During the qualifying session, if the wind on the track was a little stronger, or if I ran over a small rock or was slightly annoyed by a slow car and couldn't take the best exit line, I might not be able to beat Hamilton.

The same is true for the old man.

So Qin Miao didn’t feel any surprise at losing to Hamilton.

But why the hell are you, Le Laosi, in second place?

I can't believe that Ferrari's car can be improved so much!!!

In fact, Ferrari didn't even bring any upgrades to its car in this race.

For Ferrari, this was just a normal Grand Prix weekend, no different than any other.

All I can say is that Leclerc performed well, and compared to Mercedes' upgraded muscle car, Ferrari's SF23 is obviously more suitable for the Red Bull Ring.

The overall rankings of the final qualifying round are as follows:
1: Max Verstappen 1:04.391
2: Leclerc

3: Hamilton

4: Qin Miao

5: Sainz
6: Norris
7: Stroll

8: Alonso
9: Hulkenberg

10: Gasly
It is worth mentioning that with only one practice session, Verstappen was only 0.048 seconds ahead of Leclerc after the finish.

It can be seen that a practice session has a significant impact on Red Bull.

But despite this, many car fans still ignore the objective fact that Ferrari's car performance is not as good as Red Bull's.

After seeing this time gap, I couldn't help but look forward to tomorrow's sprint qualifying race.

They naively thought: [Maybe Leclerc could really pull Verstappen off his position. ]

【Wofa Champion】

……

But putting all that aside, this qualifying race was Verstappen's fourth consecutive pole position this season.

And he won pole position at Red Bull Racing’s home track.

Verstappen, who was in high spirits after the qualifying race, was in stark contrast to his teammate who had not been able to enter Q4 for four consecutive races.

I believe it won’t be long before Perez will be wearing the Lynk & Co team uniform.

Of course, Lynk & Co may not necessarily want...

During the post-race interviews after the qualifying session, many drivers who performed poorly in the qualifying session complained to some extent.

On the one hand, the practice time left for them was indeed too short. On the other hand, the Red Bull Ring was a bit short and there were often traffic problems on the track, so that the drivers encountered problems such as low tire temperatures after the start of qualifying, or could not find a suitable exit window.

This naturally includes Zhou Guanyu.

But no matter what, the qualifying round ends here.

Qin Miao managed to get a barely satisfactory starting position for himself.

Generally speaking, starting from the second row is better than starting from the third row.

"The pole position at the Red Bull Ring is on the left, and T1 at the Red Bull Ring is a right turn. Qin Miao has the inside advantage in T1."

"Besides, the Red Bull Ring track is wide enough. As long as Qin Miao is not forced to the inside by Hamilton at the start, with Qin Miao's consistent starting ability, he may be able to break the curse of never improving his position after the start in this race."

This was the objective analysis Zhou Haoran gave to the audience in the studio of Five Star Sports after the qualifying round.

【Mouth balls are spicy! 】

[Damn, Zhou Haoran and Qin Miao have a grudge, right?]

[I feel that the reason why Qin Miao has such a reputation is all because of the people at Five Star Sports]

[When the race starts on Sunday, Qin Miao's tires will start to leak milk like crazy]

[When did Qin Miao offend these three bosses of Five Star Sports? ]

[That’s impossible. I remember Qin Miao had a good relationship with them.]

……

Qin Miao naturally didn't know that the five-star poison nurse had cast a long-range spell on him again.

After Friday's race, Qin Miao participated in the post-race interview and then went back to the team's home to look at his race data for the day.

At this time, the tuning settings of Qin Miao's car cannot be changed, but Qin Miao can still optimize his driving style during the race based on the characteristics of the current car on the track.

It can more or less increase your lap speed by about 0.2 lap times.

Time passes, it is day 2, Sunday.

The day when sprint qualifying and sprint racing begin.

The rules of sprint qualifying are roughly the same as those of normal qualifying, except that the time for single lap times in the three sections is shorter than that in qualifying.

This made the Red Bull Ring, which was already somewhat congested during the qualifying phase, even more congested.

I won’t go into too much detail about the sprint qualifying process here.

Qin Miao finally finished third in the sprint qualifying race with a time of 3:1 in Q05.000.

As for the second and the first...

It's Perez and Verstappen.

These two people were in front of Qin Miao, and it was purely a crushing superiority in terms of racing performance. Qin Miao didn't have any better solution.

The only thing worth mentioning about the sprint qualifying is that the old man did not make it to Q3 today and was eliminated in Q1.

Everyone knows that the Red Bull Ring is built in the mountains of Austria. People who have lived in the mountains should know that the environment in the mountains is really like a woman's face, which changes in an instant.

The sky over the track may be clear one second, and dark clouds may come over the next, and it may start to rain a few minutes later.

Precisely because of the changeable climate in the mountains, there was a light rain on the Red Bull Ring before the sprint qualifying began.

The track was even wet at the start of the race.

Therefore, the drivers have been affected to varying degrees in such an environment.

Because track conditions will gradually improve in such an environment, all drivers used the same running method in Q1 as in the rain qualifying session, which was to keep doing long laps on the track.

The old man naturally ran in the same way, and his results were even quite good. Before the clock was about to stop in Q1, the old man briefly came to the first place with a time of 1:06.624.

But not long after, the old man's results were deleted because he exceeded the track limit when he was in T9 and drove the car off the track.

Hamilton, who knew that his result was cancelled, was already running back to the track.

Now Hamilton's tires are in bad condition and the car is out of power. The old man who suddenly received this bad news can only drive at full speed and try to run another flying lap on the track.

Unfortunately, the condition of the car no longer allowed Hamilton to continue to break his own record on the track.

In the end, the old man was eliminated in Q1.

Although Qin Miao also encountered traffic problems on the track, Qin Miao is the kind of driver who has a very stable single-lap speed. In addition, the ability of the car is there, Qin Miao finally entered Q3 without any trouble in seventh place and got the starting result of third place.

The process after the sprint qualifying race is not much different from the regular qualifying race, except that the pole position driver Verstappen no longer has the small tire reward, and Pirelli gave him a special hat.

Qin Miao and second-place Perez only got one interview opportunity during this process, and they mostly showed their faces in front of the camera.

After the sprint qualifying, we took a break and then came the sprint race.

Then before the race started, it rained on the track.

And it was raining heavily.

Therefore, all drivers changed to semi-rain tires before the race started.

When Qin Miao sat in the slightly damp racing seat, he suddenly felt a chill rising from his buttocks.

As for why I feel this way...

Of course it’s because my butt got wet…

After all, during the preparation period before the race, the cars would definitely be exposed to the rain, so a lot of accumulated water flowed into Qin Miao's car.

Even though there is a vent inside the racing car seat that can ventilate and drain water at the same time, there are still water stains on the racing car seat.

After stretching his uncomfortable butt, Qin Miao looked at the rain which had not abated at all and his 90-point rain fighting ability, feeling full of confidence.

As long as Perez or Verstappen gives me a chance in today's race, I will have a chance to get a good position.

In addition, it was raining on the track at this time. Although there was a risk of the rain stopping during the race, the sprint race was not long after all. As long as he overtook Verstappen's car, it would be very easy for him to defend against Verstappen while there was still rain on the track.

Of course, this is just Qin Miao's best-case scenario for today's sprint race.

(End of this chapter)