How did I become an F1 driver?

In the subsequent races, Qin Miao continued to lead, while the drivers behind Qin Miao changed their positions frequently because they had changed to new tires.

But overall it poses no threat to Qin Miao's position.

On the other side, Lynk & Co's Kakuta and Piastri started fighting.

Under normal circumstances, Tsunoda is a relatively calm driver.

At least even though he would swear and curse, at least most of the time Tsunoda was relatively calm on the track.

But today's game was different.

The performance of his teammate Ricciardo who returned to the track gave Tsunoda a strong sense of crisis.

The sixth place result in qualifying had to make Tsunoda worried.

Despite all the accidents, both big and small, during the race, Kakuta reaped the benefits and came in eighth, a ranking position that Lynk & Co had never dared to imagine before.

But Kakuta was clearly not satisfied with this.

He wanted to go further.

So he had some inappropriate thoughts about Piastrid in front of him.

And in order to prove that he was no worse than his teammate Ricardo, Yuki Tsunoda was more aggressive when attacking Piastri.

But everyone who has driven an F1 car knows that the most taboo thing in the F1 arena is to be eager for quick success.

Because what you need to control your car is more precision and stability, and it is easy to ignore these two particularly important points when you are in a hurry.

So, as expected, when attacking Piastrid, Yuki Kakuta encountered an accident.

At the T1 position, Kakuta tried to overtake Piastri from the outside, but Piastri in the inside did not give in.

In the end, the left front wheel naturally hits the right rear wheel, and the car takes off directly.

Fortunately, the distance between the two at this time was not as close as that between Leclerc and Perez at the beginning of the race.

Yuki Kakuta's car was only in the air for a short while, and after landing, it slid twice on the spot. Apart from that, there was no further damage.

But this mistake also completely caused Yuki Kakuta to fall out of the points zone.

Of course, although Lynk & Co regrets Yuki Tsunoda's retirement, they are not discouraged.

Because in today's race, in addition to Yuki Tsunoda, Lynk & Co also has another driver, Ricciardo, in the points zone.

Even at this time, Ricciardo was ranked sixth in the points zone.

In other words, after the race, as long as nothing unexpected happens, Ricciardo will be able to bring back 8 points for the Lynk & Co team.

These 8 points are enough for Lynk & Co to overtake Alfa Romeo and move up to eighth place in the standings. At that time, they will be only two points away from Williams in seventh place.

This has already exceeded the Lynk & Co team's goal for this season.

But then again, if there had been no accidents during this process, Kakuta would have finished the race safely with his ranking on the track at that time.

So can Lynk & Co surpass Williams in the team standings directly and finish seventh in its first season with the team?
Wouldn’t the bonus be more this way?

Of course, having said that, Kakuda has already withdrawn from the competition, and Lynk & Co has advised the Japanese to calm down, but there is nothing they can do to stop him.

So Lynk & Co people can only feel regretful about this.

Of course, there are also a group of people who want to curse Lynk & Co.

In addition to the team’s senior management, there are Lynk & Co’s technicians.

The F1 team's car repair work does not distinguish between which team you belong to. If anyone's car breaks down, everyone has to repair it together.

Although Lynk & Co's technicians did not have to stay up all night to repair the car after the crash in Saturday's qualifying, they still needed to repair this car anyway.

The only good news is that compared to last season, Lynk & Co's investment in the team this season has also reached the FIA's budget cap.

That is to say, when repairing the car, the team will not ask the team's technicians to repair those parts of the crashed car that are barely usable after patching up and install them back on the car.

After all, it is made of carbon fiber. After a crash, it will basically break into very small carbon fiber fragments, and there is basically no way to repair it to its original state.

Even if it is forcibly repaired with resin, the smoothness and strength of the repaired carbon fiber, as well as the overall center of gravity of the part will be affected to varying degrees, and the overall performance of the component will definitely be much worse than before.

Now that the budget cap is sufficient, because the Lynk & Co team does not have that many employees, the budget cap is still very abundant. Therefore, when they encounter a situation where they need to repair their cars, they will replace them with new ones if possible.

The difficulty and complexity of car repairs for technicians are naturally much lower.

Of course, large carbon fiber parts such as the floor or rear wing side boxes can still be repaired if possible.

After all, these things are really too expensive.

It's not just Lynk & Co. Even big teams like Ferrari and Mercedes will repair these parts if they are damaged.

After all, the manufacturing cost of such a large carbon fiber component is really too high.

A baseplate costing over one million is no joke.

But compared with small teams, drivers of large teams are somewhat less worried.

The two Mercedes drivers are even more worry-free at the level of gods.

The two Mercedes drivers are now at the bottom of the driver repair list, and the combined cost of their car damage is not as high as the repair costs of Tsunoda alone after the crash.

The old man is experienced, and he has been a bit sluggish this year.

Naturally, there will be fewer mistakes on the track.

Qin Miao's personal ability and stability are so strong that he has basically never made any serious mistakes on the track. Even if there were mistakes, they only occurred during the practice stage, and these mistakes were basically rolling without collision.

It can only be said that although Tsunoda is indeed a very capable driver, as a typical Japanese, his emotionality on the track has somewhat limited his upper limit.

Moreover, the identity of Lynk & Co's Chinese team is destined. It is unlikely that Tsunoda will stay in Lynk & Co for too long. Even if Lynk & Co wants to keep Tsunoda, domestic public opinion will not allow Lynk & Co to do so.

Not to mention that Lynk & Co doesn't really want to keep Kakuta.

Therefore, it has been almost two months since the Japanese Grand Prix, and there is still no news that Lynk & Co will sign a contract with Kakuta.

And now Kakuta is frantically looking for his next club.

Many drivers have also set their sights on Lynk & Co. After all, the seats for Lynk & Co’s two drivers have not yet been finalized.

Considering Ye Yifei's performance in the past year and his nationality, it is a foregone conclusion that he will join F1 as an endurance racing driver next season.

So strictly speaking, the Lynk & Co team only has one driver seat left. And considering the R&D capabilities and investment of the Chinese team this season, many people think that the Lynk & Co team will most likely become a mid-to-low-level team next season.

This will naturally attract more attention from other drivers in the paddock, such as Sainz.

Lynk & Co is also in a seller's market at this time, so they are not panicking.

Of course, these are all off-field factors, so I won’t go into details here.

There were still many exciting shots on the track in the later stages of the race.

For example, the two McLaren cars work together seamlessly on the track.

After Piastri saw off Tsunoda, he met his teammate Norris on the track, whose tires were in much better condition than his.

At this time, McLaren did not make any mistakes and decisively issued team orders to let Piastri give up the track position to Norris.

After overtaking Piastri, Norris also expressed his gratitude to his teammates and team.

Also because of the McLaren team's reasonable and timely track instructions, Norris surpassed Ricciardo on the track in the middle and late stages of the race.

Williams was ecstatic, sending Ricciardo to seventh place.

On lap 67, Stroll squeezed into the inner line of Bottas. For a moment, Bottas was possessed by Hamilton, and the left front suspension directly hit Stroll.

The young master retired from the competition on his 25th birthday, and both Martins were retired.

And A Luo was the last one to be brought back.

Some people will wonder.

Didn't Alfa Romeo perform well this weekend? Both drivers entered Q3 in qualifying, but why did they come back from the bottom one or two after four cars retired in the race?

This brings us to the excellent heat dissipation design of the Arrow racing car.

It is undeniable that the aerodynamics of Arrow's racing car are indeed amazing, but Arrow's car is also an extremely biased racing car.

Not only is the car's gearbox rubbish, but its heat dissipation efficiency is also low.

Therefore, there is really no problem if you let Arrow's car run a short-distance sprint race on the track.

But over long distances, the Arrow car with its cooling problems is a piece of shit.

The later the race goes, the slower the car goes, and in order to cool the brakes, it may even be necessary to release the throttle and coast.

At the end of the 71-lap race, Qin Miao took the lead from the first corner and led the entire race.

During the period on the track, Qin Miao did not feel any pressure from other drivers. He led from the beginning to the end, and no one entered the DRS zone behind him.

Logically speaking, this should be a race that everyone except Qin Miao, a fan, would find rather boring.

But in fact, various accidents and intrigues among the drivers behind constituted the main theme of today's race.

The fans seemed quite happy and cheerful.

After the final race, the drivers' scores and rankings are as follows:

P1: Qin Miao +25
P2: Verstappen +19 (fastest lap)
P3: Hamilton +15
P4: Leclerc +12
P5: Sainz +10
P6: Norris +8
P7: Ricardo +6
P8: Piastri +4
P9: Russell +2
P10: Albon +1
There is nothing much to talk about Qin Miao's victory in today's race. Pure strength, absolute speed, and a little bit of insignificant luck at the start ultimately led to Qin Miao's victory.

have nothing to say.

Just applaud and cheer for the great Qin Miao who is about to be crowned his third world champion in Mercedes-Benz.

As for Verstappen...

It is well known that Pan Zi's starting position in today's race was poor.

It's hard to believe that the Red Bull driver also started fifth.

But it is undeniable that despite such a disadvantageous starting position, Pan Zi was able to catch up to second place in the end, which shows that he really has something.

If Verstappen started from third or second place in today's race, it would be hard to say who would win the championship.

As for the old man.

It’s not the old man’s fault that he was overtaken by Verstappen in the later stages of the race.

After all, no matter what, Hamilton tried his best to defend Verstappen for nearly 10 laps on the track.

The old man also wants the Mercedes team to bring back one or two.

It's a pity that the old man is really old, coupled with the performance advantage of the RB19 and the super long straights on this track that are conducive to overtaking, and finally, coupled with the more or less bad mentality this season, although the old man has the willingness to defend Verstappen, it is definitely not as strong as when he competed with Verstappen for the world championship in 21 years.

In the end, the old man naturally couldn't withstand Verstappen's attack.

As for the fourth place...

This is already Leclerc's comfort zone.

But to be honest, in so many races in a season, Leclerc can get fourth place so many times, which is a skill that others can't learn.

There is not much to say after that. Ricciardo proved his worth in his first official race after returning to the track.

Bringing back the 7th place helped Lynk & Co get 6 points, and also allowed Lynk & Co to surpass the Alfa Romeo team and come up to th in the team standings.

As for Williams in seventh place…

Originally, Lynk & Co had a chance to reach their position, but unfortunately, in today's two races, perhaps because too many cars retired.

The two Williams cars came back in ninth and tenth place, earning Williams three points.

And perhaps it is because it is the end of the year and Mercedes knows that it needs to put in some good performances to regain its confidence.

Russell performed particularly well in today's game, and even defeated his teammate Albon after the game.

The best driver voted by the audience in today's race was Ricciardo, and the second-place driver was Russell. The difference in votes between the two was only 1%.

If Russell could overtake one more Piastri on the track, he would be the best driver of the race today.

After the race, the driver standings are as follows:
1. Qin Miao: 419
2. Max Verstappen: 418
3. Hamilton: 307
4. Perez: 173
5. Leclerc: 155
6. Alonso: 136
7. Sainz: 135
8. Norris: 115
9. Piastri: 65
10. Stroll: 47
11. Gasly: ​​46
12. O'Connell: 30
13. Albon: 20
14. Kakuda: 8
15. Zhou Guanyu: 7
16. Ricardo: 6
17. Hulkenberg: 6
18. Bottas: 6
19. Russell: 4
20. Ye Yifei: 3
21: Magnussen: 1
After the race, Qin Miao finally surpassed Verstappen in the driver's standings and had one more point than Pan Zi.

The main reason is that Qin Miao was in a cruising state most of the time during the race, and basically did not have much time to push hard on the track, so naturally he did not have the extra energy to brush the fastest lap.

In addition, Ricciardo scored six points in the first race of the 2024 season, directly landing in 16th place in the driver's standings.

The reason why Ricciardo was able to beat Hulkenberg and Bottas, who had the same points as him, was mainly because of Ricciardo's high finishing position. The seventh place made him the driver with the highest finishing position among the back row drivers. Therefore, if the points were the same, Ricciardo would be ranked higher. (End of this chapter)