How did I become an F1 driver?

Qin Miao pursed his lips.

It’s not that he has any complaints about the Chinese Grand Prix. In fact, ever since he entered the F1 paddock, Qin Miao has been looking forward to his home race all the time.

But now that he knows that his home court will be next year, Qin Miao has become a little anxious.

After all, Qin Miao didn't know whether his ability was worthy of the trust of domestic fans at the scene when playing at his home court.

After all, he is already a two-time world champion, and the fans' expectations for him are definitely to win at home.

However, Qin Miao has no idea how the Ferrari car will perform next season.

To be honest, Qin Miao is now two-time world champion, and he is also the youngest world champion in the world.

Qin Miao's pursuit of the world championship is no longer as strong as when he first entered F1. As for pursuing Michael Schumacher's seven or eight championships like Hamilton, Qin Miao has not thought that far.

After all, as mentioned before, modern F1 actually values ​​a team's R&D capabilities more than the driver's personal abilities.

Although Qin Miao has certain fantasies about winning seven or eight championships, he does not force it. If there is a chance, he will definitely strive for it. However, Qin Miao has only two world championships now, so it is still too early.

Of course, these are things that will happen next year and later. After thinking about it for a while, Qin Miao put this matter out of his mind.

"Got it, let's go."

……

Friday.

The first training stage.

According to the Mercedes team's habit, after the first practice session started, Qin Miao first ran a long distance test on the track with neutral tires.

When they just came out of the maintenance area, everything was actually fine and Qin Miao didn't notice anything abnormal with the car.

But after Qin Miao ran two laps, he found something wrong.

After Pirelli changed the tire compound, Qin Miao found that the grip of his car's tires was decreasing too quickly.

The grip loss is even faster than that of the neutral tire before the compound was changed.

You know, Pirelli has made it clear that the new tire formula it brought this week enhances the wear resistance of the tires.

But this...how can it be reverse enhancement? !
At the beginning, Qin Miao didn't think there was anything surprising. He thought it was because of the track.

But after Qin Miao ran five laps of the long-distance test, the team collected enough data and called Qin Miao back from the track. Qin Miao then went to ask the old man.

At this time, Qin Miao felt that it was a problem with the tire formula, and that everyone should have encountered the same situation.

However, when Qin Miao and Hamilton were discussing, the old man said, "Really? I feel that the durability of my neutral tires is still normal. They haven't worn out too quickly like you said."

Qin Miao scratched his head: "But I feel that the durability of my tires is much worse than the normal durability... The decrease in lap time is a bit beyond my expectations."

The old man asked, "Has the team estimated how long your set of neutral tires can run on the track?"

Qin Miao turned his head and looked in the direction of Franky and asked, "Franky, has the data department completed its work? How long can my set of neutral tires last on the track?"

French replied: "The results are in, we can run 28 laps on the track before entering the cliff point."

After Frankie reported this data, not only Qin Miao and Hamilton looked at each other in confusion, Frankie himself couldn't help scratching his head.

Although the length of the Silverstone circuit is 5.891 kilometers, the neutral tires can run 28 laps on such a long track, and their durability seems to be very good.

But in fact, if you look at Hamilton's long-distance test results, you will find that the old man can run 30 laps on the medium tires in this race.

The durability of the neutral tire is almost 8 laps more than last season.

Normal people may subconsciously feel that there are differences between people when seeing this, and it is normal that Qin Miao's neutral tire durability is two laps less than the old man's.

But you have to know that Qin Miao is the youngest two-time world champion in the world.

And the biggest label of Qin Miao is his incredible ability to protect the fetus.

For Qin Miao, it is normal for his tire durability to be 5 laps longer than his teammate Hamilton on average.

Not only is there not much left now, but what’s the big deal about owing two laps?

After the team discovered the abnormality, they naturally started checking Qin Miao's tires first.

But after checking, the team found that there was no problem with the tire pressure, the rubber on the tire tread, or the markings on the outside of the tire. Qin Miao's tires were exactly the same as Hamilton's neutral tires.

Qin Miao also considered whether it was because he didn't have the system skills.

But after taking a look at the system, I found that my skills were all in good condition and there were no changes.

For a moment, everyone in Mercedes-Benz, including Qin Miao, was scratching their heads and at a loss.

But after all, this is still in the practice stage, and Qin Miao and his team staff cannot spend all their time studying this.

Moreover, strictly speaking, the people at Mercedes-Benz were laymen when it came to tires. Unable to figure it out, they directly told Pirelli about the problem with Qin Miao's tires.

Pirelli also attaches great importance to this, but due to the restrictions of F1 rules, they must wait until the end of the Grand Prix weekend before they can take Qin Miao's tires away for inspection.

So Qin Miao had no choice but to continue running like this during this Grand Prix weekend.

Of course, the Mercedes team also came up with a hypothesis for the cause of this problem, which is that Qin Miao's tire protection method is probably not suitable for Pirelli tires of this formula.

So when they got back on the track, Franky told Qin Miao not to protect the tire and just run normally to see the effect.

Then the tire grip decreased even faster than when Qin Miao was running on the tires.

Qin Miao was numb, and Mercedes-Benz was also numb.

The people on Pirelli's side were in chaos.

As soon as the practice session was over, the Pirelli people hurriedly took the set of tires that Qin Miao needed to return to them and left, saying that they wanted to check whether they had taken the wrong tires.

Qin Miao's performance in the first practice was actually pretty good, and he ended up being the second to finish in the first practice.

Qin Miao also completed the second training phase despite this unfamiliar feeling.

The good news is that although Qin Miao felt strange, his lap time and work were not affected by it.

After finishing work on Friday, Qin Miao was still unwilling to give up and asked Leclerc and Zhou Guanyu in the group.

Qin Miao felt that maybe he was not the exception, but Hamilton was the exception.

But the answer he got made Qin Miao feel helpless.

Qin Miao: [What do you think of the durability of this set of tires after Pirelli changed them? ]

Zhou Guanyu: [Not bad, the tire compound is much more durable than last season, and the grip has not dropped too much. I feel like I can finish this race without stopping.]

Leclerc; [Same as above, this time Pirelli finally played its part, the tires are quite suitable for the current track]

[Have you encountered any problems with tires? Tell me and I'll be happy.]

Qin Miao; [You can shut up]

After cursing Leclerc, Qin Miao rubbed his brows in pain and turned off his phone.

Now he had achieved the desired result, that is, he was the only one who encountered this problem in the field. Qin Miao was really puzzled, could it be that the durability of the tire was contrary to his driving style?
Qin Miao didn't know what to do for a moment and could only hope that Pirelli would give him a reply as soon as possible.

Now the only good news for Qin Miao is that this tire compound will only be used in the British Grand Prix, and the original tire compound will be replaced after the British Grand Prix.

Even if it's uncomfortable, it's just uncomfortable for this game.

Moreover, the change in tire durability only affects Qin Miao's tire durability, and has no effect on Qin Miao's lap speed.

Qin Miao's ability to preserve the fetus is now only at the same level as the old man's.

This is equivalent to Qin Miao’s rating being reduced from T0 to T1.

Saturday.

Qin Miao came to the paddock early in the morning and found Frankie and asked, "Has Pirelli responded?"

Franky shrugged and said, "I'm afraid I'll disappoint you. I asked for you this morning, and Pirelli said they are disassembling your tires for comparative analysis, and the results won't be available until Sunday."

Qin Miao sighed: "Bad luck."

"Okay, don't think too much, go have some breakfast and get ready for the game."

"What a bad luck!"

……

After all, this race is the Mercedes team's home race. Mercedes naturally wants to get a relatively good result in this race. If possible, it also wants the two drivers to challenge for the home race championship.

So for this race Mercedes replaced both drivers with new internal combustion engines as well as MGU-K, MGU-H and turbo.

Basically all the parts that are prone to wear have been replaced.

During the third practice session, Qin Miao successfully completed his test task ahead of schedule, but due to the wear of his tires, the number of soft tires Qin Miao had left for this Grand Prix weekend began to become a little tight.

If the qualifying session goes normally, only one set of soft tires will be left in the race.

This feeling of anxiety accompanied Qin Miao all the way to the qualifying round.

But after the qualifying round began, Qin Miao no longer cared about so many things.

Although there was a little rain on the track before Q1, the rain did not stop when Q1 started.

But the rain was light and there was not much rain accumulation on the track.

After seeing the weather, the engineers from Mercedes' strategy team did not even ask the two drivers to change to semi-rain tires, but directly asked them to change to soft tires to set lap times.

After all, many of the engineers in Mercedes’ strategy group are native British, and they know the damn British weather very well.

As for Qin Miao, he was a little worried because of the problem of tire durability.

Therefore, Qin Miao did not dare to drag out the qualifying round like he did before.

Moreover, the track conditions in Q1 did not allow Qin Miao to slack off.

There was water on the track at this time, and all the drivers could do was to keep setting lap times on the track for as long as possible.

Because as time goes by, the track conditions will get better and better, and the drivers' lap times will naturally get faster and faster.

At this time, Qin Miao also felt the embarrassment caused by insufficient tire balance.

Basically in every flying lap, Qin Miao needs to try his best to push the car to the limit.

Don't waste any lap.

Fortunately, Qin Miao is a very stable driver and he advanced to Q2 easily in the end.

It is also worth mentioning that in the last Austrian Grand Prix, the two Mercedes drivers were indeed unlucky.

There are always various accidents on the track.

But at Silverstone, the poles were reversed.

The unlucky person turned out to be Red Bull driver Perez.

In Q1, Perez topped the leaderboard in the last lap before the clock was stopped.

But Perez crossed the finish line two seconds after the clock stopped in Q1, so he was actually the first driver to finish Q1 in the entire race.

But as mentioned earlier, when track conditions are unclear, the later you cross the finish line, the faster you will be.

Perez was the first to cross the finish line, so it is conceivable that his lap time would not be too fast.

This is indeed the case. Basically, every driver who crosses the finish line behind Perez and completes his last flying lap can step on Perez's results.

So much so that Perez was eventually eliminated in Q1.

Well, Perez just pulled his head out of Red Bull's brakes in the last race, and now Perez took the initiative to put his head back in.

The countdown to the kill, which had originally stopped, started again.

I won’t go into details about Q2. Qin Miao also drove a new set of soft tires in this lap and easily advanced to Q2 in second place on the last flying lap.

Q3.

At this time, the weather at Silverstone Circuit cleared up and the track became completely dry, and now the drivers' lap times have all returned to normal.

Qin Miao used a set of soft tires for his first flying lap, which he only ran for three laps.

In the past, it was really okay for Qin Miao to use brand new soft tires when running the base lap, after all, the tire-preserving ability was there.

But not anymore.

Now Qin Miao rides a tricycle to go to the bar... save when you should, spend when you should.

Qin Miao's result in the first flying lap was actually quite good, 1:27.636, ranking third.

After a rest, Qin Miao started the second flying lap. For this flying lap, he still used the old soft tires.

Because of the basic results, Qin Miao ran more freely in this flying lap. However, because he pursued the limit too much and misjudged the remaining capacity of his tires, Qin Miao lost control and ran off the track at T11.

Fortunately, there is a series of continuous bends behind T11, the track is relatively spacious, and Qin Miao's car control ability is still online.

After two laps on the track, Qin Miao controlled his car and avoided a collision.

The short yellow flag on the track turned green again.

But Qin Miao's soft tires are useless...

And the last flying circle.

Qin Miao used his second-to-last set of brand new soft tires.

This final flying circle surprised both Qin Miao and Hamilton.

Because McLaren's speed suddenly increased.

After the last flying lap, both McLarens stepped on the Ferrari. (End of this chapter)