How did I become an F1 driver?

The next day, Sunday.

Today's weather has improved significantly compared to yesterday. Today's weather is a bit like Friday's weather. The temperature feels very comfortable and there is no risk of rain.

For today's race, Qin Miao chose the pit stop strategy of one stop for yellow and white. Because of this pit stop strategy, Qin Miao even brainstormed with the team staff for a while.

At 2:00 p.m. local time in Austria, all staff on the track were evacuated.

Sitting in the car and wearing a racing suit, Qin Miao's ears were filled with Frankie's words in the team TR: "It is unlikely to rain in today's race, and there is nothing special to pay attention to on the track."

“Cherish the good opportunity to start inside, strive to gain a few more positions in the starting phase, and cheer for the game.”

"Ok."

After answering, Qin Miao let out a long sigh, and then his eyes gradually became firm.

As the warm-up lap began, Qin Miao lowered the goggles on his helmet to block out the noise from the running engines of other racing cars on the track.

It also prevents the photographer from capturing his eyes.

After the warm-up lap, Qin Miao parked the car at the fourth starting grid, looked at the rear of Leclerc's car, and estimated in his mind what specific offensive routes he would have after the start.

As for Hamilton in front of him on the left, Qin Miao still has confidence.

If it's not raining, my starting reaction speed is likely to be faster than Hamilton's.

And I have the advantage in the interior. As long as Hamilton doesn't explode with me, it won't be difficult for me to surpass the opponent before T1.

Of course, all this is based on the premise that Leclerc does not make any mistakes at the start.

If he made a mistake at the start, no matter how good Qin Miao's start was, he would have to use part of the car's traction to change lanes to avoid rear-ending Leclerc.

In short... Qin Miao took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, staring at the five red lights that had lit up one by one.

"Okay, we see, five red lights~ light up... the red lights go out, and the race begins!" With Bingge's voice, the 2023 Austrian Grand Prix officially began.

The moment the red light went out, Qin Miao took off amid the roar of the W14 engine.

Qin Miao stared at the Ferrari in front of him and glanced at his teammate Hamilton out of the corner of his eye. He was able to take in the movements of his two main opponents at the start of today's race.

Leclerc's starting speed in today's race was pretty good, but it was still slightly behind Verstappen.

Moreover, Verstappen's start in the race was the same as that in the sprint race.

After the start, he first squeezed towards Leclerc on the inside line, and then pulled to the outside line of the track to enter the corner.

Leclerc's personality is not as tough as Perez. In addition, Leclerc's starting speed today was not as fast as Perez in the sprint race. At the same time, he did not have the same concerns about the seat as Perez, so naturally he was less ruthless than Perez.

Naturally, Leclerc had no way of getting ahead on the inside line before Verstappen closed the door, so after seeing Verstappen change lanes, Leclerc went directly to the outside line, just getting stuck in front of Hamilton.

After noticing Leclerc's actions, Qin Miao simply stopped focusing his attention on Hamilton.

Because the old man is on the outside line, and in front of him is not only Leclerc but also Verstappen, which blocks all of Hamilton's routes to overtake on the outside line.

The old man is nothing to worry about.

Qin Miao has the advantage in the interior at this time.

So under Hamilton's helpless gaze, Qin Miao stuck close to the right side of Hamilton's car and locked Hamilton on the outside of the track.

After letting his teammate sit in jail on the track for a short while, Verstappen and the three drivers behind him came to the braking point of T1 together.

Leclerc and Hamilton behind Verstappen were blocked by Verstappen's car, so even though they had not reached the braking point yet, as soon as Verstappen braked, they had to brake together.

Otherwise he would have definitely hit Verstappen.

But Qin Miao was different. Although Verstappen in front of him was driving on the outer center line, and part of the silhouette of the car overlapped with Qin Miao, there was Leclerc's body in the middle as a buffer. In addition, the speed and inertia of the car itself were not large from the start of acceleration to the braking point of T1, so the braking point at this position could be chosen a little later.

Qin Miao immediately braked.

Because of this late brake, Qin Miao directly overtook Hamilton and got stuck on the inside of Leclerc.

Looking at the W14 racing car with a red border that appeared in his rearview mirror, Leclerc clicked his tongue, but still refused to give way when exiting the corner, wanting to squeeze Qin Miao off the track.

But after seeing Leclerc's excellent start at the start, Qin Miao no longer had any improper thoughts about his position.

Now Qin Miao only wants to kill Hamilton.

So facing the pressure from Leclerc, Qin Miao decisively released the accelerator when exiting the corner, giving Leclerc the position at the center of the corner.

If you are awesome, you go first.

After exiting the turn, Hamilton naturally fell behind Qin Miao.

I don’t know why, but Qin Miao was still very happy after completing this overtaking. In fact, Qin Miao’s mood at this moment was almost the same as when he won the sprint race yesterday afternoon.

"Qin Miao has completely broken the curse of never overtaking the driver in front of him at the start, right?" The soldier from Five Star Sports said with a smile after seeing Qin Miao overtake the car in front.

"Indeed."

"It's not easy." The other two commentators also echoed.

After that, Zhou Haoran added: "I have watched the in-car video of Qin Miao's start. In fact, Qin Miao's starting speed has always been very good, but because Qin Miao was blocked or encountered various accidents after the start, Qin Miao's excellent start this season has not been successfully converted into an advantage in the rankings many times."

On the track.

After overtaking Hamilton, Qin Miao began to think about Leclerc's position.

This is not a case of getting more after getting something.

This is called reasonable planning.

After leaving T1, Qin Miao was sucked into Leclerc's tailwind.

Qin Miao's idea of ​​attack at this time was very simple. At this time, Leclerc estimated that he could use Verstappen's tailstream.

It is basically impossible for him to overtake the opponent by sucking Leclerc's wake, so Qin Miao wants to put pressure on Leclerc in the inside and let him go to the outside.

By then, Leclerc's cornering speed in T3 will definitely be affected, and I can then take a cross line behind Leclerc.

Because he needed to defend himself, Leclerc was most likely left behind by Verstappen at this time.

Leclerc's exit speed is slow, and he does not have Verstappen's wake stream. However, because I take a cross-line exit, my speed must be faster than Leclerc.

With so many advantages accumulated, Qin Miao didn't believe that Leclerc could still block his attack.

However, Qin Miao’s idea is indeed very good, and it is indeed an effective offensive strategy.

However, Qin Miao had been riding the W14 muscle car for too long and had made some misjudgments. He subconsciously thought that the W14 was the only muscle car that was competitive enough in the paddock.

In fact, Ferrari's power unit is also ranked at the top among all the power unit manufacturers in the paddock. It can even be said that the horsepower of Ferrari's power unit has always been the strongest in the entire paddock.

In fact, the horsepower of the Ferrari engine is even higher than that of the Mercedes engine, but due to aerodynamic design issues, the speed of the Ferrari on the track is not as fast as that of the Mercedes.

So Leclerc sucked in Verstappen's tail stream after exiting the T1 corner.

Verstappen's wake also made up for the Ferrari's aerodynamic disadvantages.

Not only was Leclerc not left behind by Verstappen, but he was gradually getting closer to Verstappen.

Therefore, Qin Miao couldn't even close the distance between himself and Leclerc.

In fact, after things came to this, Qin Miao felt that there was still hope for a turnaround.

Because even if things have come to this, he still has the opportunity to brake late. The worst that can happen is that he will do what Verstappen did to Perez in the sprint race, and then pull away from the inside and force the opponent into the buffer zone outside T3.

Then, Qin Miao saw Leclerc approaching Verstappen quickly.

Verstappen also discovered the threat posed by Leclerc. He ignored Leclerc's feints and went straight to the inside to defend.

At this time, Leclerc had two choices, either to go to the outside line and try to overtake Verstappen, or to rear-end Verstappen directly.

It was a very simple choice, Leclerc naturally went directly to the outside line.

While Qin Miao was paying attention to the two people fighting in front of him, he did not forget to take a look in the rearview mirror.

After all, the straight line from T1 to T3 is indeed too long. He has Leclerc's slipstream to take advantage of, and doesn't his teammate Hamilton behind him also have his own slipstream?

Qin Miao still needs to make sure that Hamilton poses no threat to his position before entering the corner.

Hamilton did have ideas about Qin Miao and had already appeared inside Qin Miao's area.

However, after seeing Hamilton's car, Qin Miao estimated the distance between himself and the other party, so he didn't take Hamilton too seriously.

Can't surpass myself.

But the prerequisite is that you have to brake along the center line of the track.

In short, if there had not been this threat from Hamilton, Qin Miao would have been able to threaten Leclerc who was attacking Verstappen in front of him on the track.

But because Hamilton was restraining him from behind, Qin Miao could easily defend against the threat posed by Hamilton, but in this situation, Qin Miao himself also lost the threat to Leclerc.

After Verstappen and Leclerc arrived at the braking point of T3, Verstappen did not squeeze Leclerc out of the track or anything.

Because he knew that his traction in the center of the corner was stronger than that of the Ferrari, after Verstappen reached the right entry point, he directly cut through the center of the T3 and exited the corner.

Although Leclerc was side by side with Verstappen at the braking point, it was basically impossible for him to overtake from the outside as his car's traction out of the corner was not as good as Verstappen's.

As for Qin Miao, due to the threat from Hamilton, his rhythm out of the corner was not very good, and he could only barely follow Leclerc out of the corner.

These are the position changes between the top 4 at the start.

Among these four people, during the starting stage, only Qin Miao was a little more cautious, but fortunately, everyone got off to a smooth start without any accidents.

Next we went downhill to T4.

Leclerc still relied on his car's straight-line acceleration and tail speed to overtake Verstappen on the outside of the track, but Verstappen's cornering ability was obviously better, and he still didn't let Leclerc succeed.

But Qin Miao seized this opportunity.

When Leclerc had already pulled out a front wing on the outside line, Qin Miao's braking position was close to the rear diffuser of Verstappen's car.

At the closest point, the distance between the W14 and RB19 cars was about one meter.

It was also because of Qin Miao's extremely late braking that he was able to enter and exit the corners closely behind Verstappen.

Although Verstappen left him behind after exiting the corner, Qin Miao and Leclerc finished side by side in the T4 corner!

T4 is a long right turn, and Qin Miao happened to be on the inside.

Qin Miao had already surpassed Leclerc by half a car body after exiting the corner.

When passing the false corner of T5 and arriving at T6, Leclerc, who was on the inside, made up the gap.

The two of them took turns to arrive at T7.

It is worth mentioning that although the two of them did not give an inch in these consecutive turns, they both tacitly did not use the same methods they used against Verstappen.

The two of them never thought about pushing each other off the track.

When it came to T7, although Qin Miao left Leclerc some space to exit the corner, the space Qin Miao left for Leclerc was not much, only about one meter more than the width of the car body.

It sounds like a lot, but if you are driving an F100 car traveling at over 1 kilometers per hour with extremely limited vision, this one meter of distance is difficult to grasp.

Therefore, although Leclerc was on the inside line in T7 and had certain advantages, because T7 was a high-speed corner and Qin Miao on the outside line did not give him much width to exit the corner.

Leclerc didn't dare to step on the accelerator so hard when exiting the corner.

Qin Miao was also a little moved. He thought that Leclerc was able to take most of the distance he had given up little by little and exit the corner at a very good speed.

The two of them came out of T7 side by side and came to the false turn of T8.

Therefore, from T4 to the exit of T8, Qin Miao and Leclerc were always side by side, wheel to wheel.

"Qin Miao and Leclerc are still side by side! They really won't give up an inch!"

"It's hard to believe that these two drivers, who have such a good relationship in real life, can fight so fiercely on the track."

"The key is that the two of them acted so resolutely without making any more extreme moves on the track."

The commentators of Five Star Sports were also very excited.

Who could have thought that today's game would be so intense.

……

Soon the two of them arrived at T9 side by side.

At this time, Qin Miao was on the inside line, and Qin Miao used high downpressure training in this Grand Prix weekend.

Therefore, Qin Miao still has certain advantages over Leclerc in T9.

Even after passing T9, Leclerc was still on the outside of Qin Miao, but at this time, Qin Miao had left Leclerc half a car body behind him.

As the two cars reached T10, Qin Miao was still on the inside, and at this position Leclerc could hardly keep up with Qin Miao's rhythm.

Although Qin Miao still left Leclerc enough space to exit the corner when he came out of T10, Leclerc was on the outside and part of the space left by Qin Miao was on the shoulder of the track.

So Qin Miao naturally surpassed Leclerc at this position.

In fact, after getting here, Leclerc still didn't give up.

After all, the starting straight of the Red Bull Ring is long enough, and I took the outside line out of the corner, which gave me an acceleration advantage over Qin Miao.

Moreover, Verstappen had already widened the gap of 1.3 seconds with Qin Miao at this time because of the fight between Qin Miao and me. This bastard Qin Miao had no wake flow to take advantage of.

And I have Qin Miao's wake, so I still have a chance!

Leclerc was still not ready to give up the fight with his friend.

Qin Miao also knew the threat that Leclerc posed to him, so at this time Qin Miao didn't care about Verstappen who was gradually pulling away, but focused his attention on the movement of Leclerc's car behind him.

You can attack me, but you can't attack me from inside.

After Qin Miao discovered that Leclerc's car was using its wake to gradually shorten the time gap with his own, he immediately went to the inside of the track.

Leclerc changed lanes following Qin Miao's rhythm.

Regardless of whether to go to the inside or not, I will definitely inhale Qin Miao's wake to the limit before I will pull out.

But just when the two of them were concentrating on preparing for the next attack and defense.

A yellow flag suddenly appeared on the track, and then it was replaced by a safety car.

Qin Miao breathed a sigh of relief after seeing the safety car deployed, while Leclerc was cursing in the car.

"Thanks FIA! I have never felt that the race directors are so friendly." Qin Miao said this directly in the team TR.

"A lot of pressure?" Franky asked jokingly.

"A little bit." Qin Miao recalled the scene of fighting with Leclerc on the track just now.

Leclerc was more straightforward: "F**k! Why is the safety car deployed? What happened!"

……

You can’t blame Leclerc for being emotional at this point.

At this moment, Leclerc felt a bit like when you are halfway through a shower and the water suddenly runs out, with half of the foam on your head still left to be wiped off.

Of course, at this time, Leclerc not only missed the opportunity to overtake Qin Miao on the track, but also missed the opportunity to continue fighting with Qin Miao on the track.

After all, for Leclerc, before today he had basically no chance to fight with Qin Miao on the track.

Even if you want to learn more about Qin Miao's defensive ability, you can do it on the team's simulator.

Although my nerves were tense throughout the whole process, my brain and all the organs in my body were working at high speed.

But it is undeniable that Leclerc has not experienced that adrenaline rush on the track for a long time.

Unfortunately, this period did not last particularly long, and Leclerc still felt a little unsatisfied.

Of course, part of the reason is that Leclerc knew that with Qin Miao's speed, if he missed the opportunity to attack, he would most likely not be able to aim for the runner-up position in this game.

The engineers of the two teams also explained to them why there was a safety car on the track.

Because at the start, Tsunoda and Ocon collided on the track.
Debris from Tsunoda's car landed on the track, necessitating the deployment of the safety car to clear it.

This safety car was really a loss for Leclerc.

For Qin Miao, this is a win-win situation.

On the one hand, the time gap of almost two seconds that Verstappen had lost due to his fight with Leclerc completely disappeared because of the safety car.

On the other hand, this safety car also deprived Leclerc of all possibilities to compete with himself.

What? This isn't a win-win situation.

Is it possible that a win-win situation means Qin Miao wins twice?
The safety car was on track until the fourth lap.

After restarting, Verstappen naturally wanted to quickly widen the gap between himself and Qin Miao.

Qin Miao followed Verstappen looking for opportunities.

It’s a pity that the characteristics of the RB19 Mars rover were fully demonstrated at this moment, and it quickly left Qin Miao behind.

Leclerc, who was behind Qin Miao, had no chance to attack Qin Miao at this time. He was entangled by Hamilton behind him in the second lap after the start.

After 3 laps, the race came to the 7th lap, and the DRS was turned on.

The time gap between Leclerc and Qin Miao was widened to 1.7 seconds, while the time gap between Qin Miao and Verstappen was widened to 2.4 seconds.

On the second lap after DRS was turned on, Hamilton used DRS to overtake Leclerc on the inside line on the starting straight.

The true nature of the W14 Mars rover is fully revealed at this moment.

Next, the two Mercedes drivers Qin Miao and Hamilton began to feel a little at a loss on the track.

The lap speeds of the two people at this time are actually the same. Qin Miao's lap speed may be a few tenths of a second faster than the old man, but this time difference has basically no effect on their positions.

After being overtaken by Hamilton, Leclerc was left behind for a distance because his car ran out of power. Later, he was gradually left behind by Hamilton due to the difference in car performance.

In a short time, the two returned to the most common track conditions at the beginning of this season, that is, the drivers cruised alone in their positions.

Of course Verstappen's condition is somewhat special, he can't cruise.

He couldn't even protect the tire in his position, because if he ran slower, Qin Miao would most likely undercut him as soon as he stopped in the pit.

After being undercut by Qin Miao, it becomes difficult to regain position on the track.

However, things soon turned around on the track as a yellow flag suddenly appeared on the track.

Hulkenberg stopped his car in the buffer zone due to engine failure. Although Hulkenberg drove the car off the track, it still triggered yellow flags in the second and third timing sectors.

And the yellow flag for this stage was soon converted into a yellow flag for the entire race.

At this point, Qin Miao broke the rumor that he could not surpass others at the starting stage, and achieved a rare achievement of surpassing two people in one lap at the starting stage.

P.S. Godfathers, it's the end of the month, please give me some monthly tickets (end of this chapter)