How did I become an F1 driver?

Chapter 647 631: Three cars retired in five minutes
In today's race, the Mercedes team replaced Qin Miao with the last set of internal combustion engine, turbine, MGU-K, MGU-H and gearbox permitted by FIA regulations.

It can be said that in today's race, the engine used by Qin Miao is the newest in the field.

Of course, Qin Miao did not get any fine for exchanging these things.

Due to the significant increase in the number of sprint races and grands prix this season, the FIA ​​has increased the number of internal combustion engines and key engine components such as turbines, MGU-K and MGU-H used by all drivers from three to four sets.

This time, Qin Miao used the spare parts of his fourth engine.

Therefore, Qin Miao does not need to accept a retirement penalty, and he can also use an engine with better performance and durability than normal in the last two races of this season.

This can be said to be the last trump card Qin Miao left for himself this season.

In fact, Red Bull has long known that Qin Miao still has a complete spare power unit that has not been used.

They also know that this extra new power unit is a huge threat to Verstappen's world championship position.

But they don't have a good solution to this.

Because Qin Miao is truly unique in the entire paddock when it comes to protecting racing cars.

Not only that, Qin Miao's ability to protect the fetus is even more incredible.

Red Bull can only feel deep envy for this.

To be honest, Red Bull also had the idea of ​​poaching Qin Miao, and it was even very strong. After all, Qin Miao is such a popular driver.

Not only is it strong, but the market that can be tapped is also extremely huge.

After knowing the news, Red Bull's major shareholder Tianshi Red Bull gave its full support.

However, they did not expect that when they were about to contact Qin Miao and increase the weight, Qin Miao had already flirted with Ferrari, and they had no room to intervene at all.

The reason why Tianshi Red Bull is so concerned about this is mainly because they see the huge domestic market and the opportunity to vent their anger.

Although the Red Bull currently sold in China is a product authorized by Tianshi Red Bull, the contract between Tianshi Red Bull and Huabin has long expired.

However, HNA did not stop the production of Red Bull energy drinks, so the gold cans of Red Bull on the market are all infringing products.

Tencel started the lawsuit and HNA Group just dragged its feet.

On the other hand, Red Bull drinks can be produced and sold as usual, without any impact at all.

At the same time, HNA also launched functional drinks such as Zhanma in an attempt to seize another part of the market.

After all, no matter what, it is illegal for them to sell Red Bull now, so they must choose a way out for themselves.

Therefore, Tiansi hated Huabin so much that she wanted to eat his flesh and bones alive and grind his bones to ashes.

As long as Qin Miao joined Red Bull, with his unparalleled influence in the country at that time, as long as Qin Miao appeared on the stage, Huabin’s Red Bull would not sell well on the spot.

Tianshi Red Bull can also regain the domestic Red Bull market share.

What a pity.

Okay, enough of the digressions, let’s get our attention back to the track.

As all the teams and drivers on the track got their cars ready one by one, at the prompt of FIA officials, the team's technicians and staff evacuated the track one after another, and the warm-up lap was about to begin.

Everything was normal at the beginning, but in an F1 Grand Prix, there will definitely be some accidents on the track. The only difference may be the size and severity of these accidents.

Today's Brazilian Grand Prix is ​​naturally no exception.

Even compared to other Grand Prix weekends that have ended this year, the accident in today's race came earlier than anyone expected.

During the warm-up lap, Leclerc, who started third, had a malfunction in the hydraulic system of his car, causing the car to lose power steering.

The sudden increase in the difficulty of steering wheel control caused Leclerc to make steering wheel control errors when entering the corner.

Then Leclerc ran off the track at T7 and crashed into the guardrail.

After this picture appeared, the director immediately turned the camera to the Ferrari team's control desk.

While Vassel was putting on the mask of pain, he also reached out and pressed his Jingming acupoint.

Although Leclerc's collision was not serious, after all, he was in the warm-up lap when the accident happened, and Leclerc did not push the car with all his strength at the time, so the damage to the car was not actually that great.

It's just the front nose that's broken.

Under normal circumstances, Leclerc can enter the maintenance area to replace the front nose wing and then start from the maintenance area to continue participating in today's Brazilian Grand Prix.

But as if misfortunes never come singly, the collision probably damaged the engine of Leclerc's car. When Leclerc was about to get back on the track, he found that he could no longer refuel.

The racing car's engine made strange noises and had very little power.

And even if the engine was fine, without the hydraulic power assist, even someone as strong as Qin Miao would not be able to control the car in high-speed corners, so Leclerc had to retire.

And after the accident, Leclerc was still able to drive his car off the track.

Therefore, the race organizers did not display red flags or yellow flags to temporarily suspend the race, and the race continued.

On the other side, Qin Miao also noticed after he parked his car at the second starting position that the third position was vacant for some reason.

After asking Franky, I found out that the unlucky Leclerc had retired from the race.

Qin Miao did not laugh when he heard the news on the track. He even felt that Leclerc was really too unlucky. Compared with him, Zhou Guanyu's luck was considered good.

Moreover, Ferrari has a long-standing tradition of doing things in the paddock, which is a heritage.

Ferrari drivers always encounter some strange problems, and it is difficult for the car to have only a few failures throughout the season like Mercedes.

Therefore, before agreeing to go to Ferrari, Qin Miao did some psychological preparation.

But after the Brazilian Grand Prix, Qin Miao accidentally heard the TR of Leclerc's team when he retired.

After hearing what this unlucky guy said when he withdrew from the competition, Qin Miao couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"Why am I always so fucking unlucky? Why am I always so fucking unlucky!"

Perhaps it is impossible to accurately describe the grief, helplessness and helplessness Leclerc felt when he said this through cold words.

But when Qin Miao heard Leclerc's voice, which was full of fatigue, unwillingness, and relief, he really couldn't hold it back and laughed unkindly.

Fortunately, Leclerc was not with Qin Miao at the time, otherwise, seeing Qin Miao's gloating look, Leclerc would probably have blushed on the spot and then fought with Qin Miao.

Of course, after Ferrari's regular track performance is over, the main show will begin. The 19 drivers have parked their cars in their respective positions, and the 2023 season, the third to last stop, the Brazilian Sao Paulo Grand Prix is ​​about to begin.

The five red lights go out and the race begins.

Qin Miao's starting reaction speed is as good as ever, but in this race Qin Miao still has a certain disadvantage compared to Verstappen, that is, Qin Miao's starting position is on the dirty side of the track.

Therefore, when the two top drivers had similar reaction speeds at the start, Qin Miao's car's acceleration after the start was not as fast as Verstappen's.

Verstappen rushed out first.

However, because Leclerc, who was in third place, was forced to retire by Ferrari, there was no car blocking the position behind Verstappen.

After starting and realizing that he could not pose an effective threat to Verstappen, Qin Miao took the initiative to change lanes to the outside of the track and went behind Verstappen.

This move not only allowed Qin Miao to get a cleaner track line, but also indirectly showed Verstappen that Qin Miao was not going to attack him at the start.

However, even though he noticed Qin Miao's actions, Pan Zi still had no intention of letting down his guard when he turned.

God knows if Qin Miao is trying to show weakness to the enemy.

Verstappen has suffered too many times in this regard. Knowing how flawed Qin Miao's defensive ability is, he is not prepared to relax his vigilance when facing Qin Miao's attack.

Of course, the intrigue between the two had not yet really unfolded at this time, and an accident occurred on the track again.

In the broadcast camera, debris suddenly flew out from the middle and rear of the racing car flow, and then a Williams car lost control and ran sideways on the track. A tire that was out of control of the car's wheel rim rolled onto the track and began to bounce at high speed.

Then a Haas car appeared upside down in the broadcast camera, and then crashed into the guardrail of the track.

At the same time, the race committee put out the yellow flag, which was converted into the safety car in the next moment.

Less than 5 minutes after the warm-up lap, two accidents occurred on the track.

All I can say is that the Brazilian Grand Prix is ​​indeed lively.

During the safety car period, the director also provided aerial footage of the start of the race.

This was a chain reaction.

The cause of the accident was the start-up phase, where the most classic accident trigger occurred.

That means a driver was sandwiched on the track.

The most classic thing is that the racing car that is sandwiched in the sandwich is not in any trouble.

The cars on both sides of the sandwich were unlucky.

The fragments of the crashed car were flying all over the sky, and they were successively retired from the race.

Replaying the scene at that time, Magnussen squeezed his teammate Hulkenberg from the inside to the outside of the track.

On the outside of Hulkenberg was Albon, and facing his teammates who were squeezing him, he had no room to dodge.

In desperation, he could only seek some space from Albon on the right.

It's a pity that he was too focused on his teammate on the left and didn't notice that he was very close to Albon, and that Albon's acceleration after the start was faster than that of the Haas car.

So when he wanted to push his right front wheel into the area between Albon's two tires to seek some space to avoid, Albon's tire was already side by side with Hulkenberg's front wheel.

So as expected, Hulkenberg's right front wheel hit Albon's left rear wheel.

But this is not a front-to-back collision between tires, but a left-to-right collision.

Therefore, in this collision, Hulkenberg did not bounce Albon's car up, but directly knocked away the rear grip of Albon's car. Albon's car also drifted to the front left under the action of inertia.

Originally, the person Alben was going to hit in this accident was Hulkenberg, but Hulkenberg took the initiative to release the accelerator and slow down as soon as the collision happened.

So Hulkenberg gave up his position, and Albon's car crashed into Magnussen on Hulkenberg's left.

It just happened to crash into Magruson's car.

During this period of time, several cars have arrived at the braking point of T1.

The car in front was just slowing down, and although the car behind also wanted to slow down, they had lost their grip and were unable to do so.

Naturally, under the influence of inertia, Magrusen's Haas car hit the rear of the Piastri car in front.

The unlucky Piastri's rear diffuser and indicator lights were dented.
The flying tire rolled on the track for a few laps and then hit the rear wing of Ricardo's car.

The Williams and Haas cars, the initiators of this accident, slid into the buffer zone outside T1 due to inertia and stopped moving.

It was a typical plot that harmed three wise men and brought bad luck to himself.

Although the race stewards still wanted to rescue it and wanted Matthew to clean up the tire wall and car wreckage on the track.

But there was no way. The two collisions caused the damaged area of ​​the track guardrail to become enormous. In addition, the entire starting straight was covered with car debris. Even with the safety car, it was not easy for Matthew to clean up the debris on the track, so after three laps, the race stewards still put out the red flag.

The game is suspended.

This red flag also gave McLaren and Lynk & Co the opportunity to repair their cars.

But if the car was repaired during the red flag period, Ricciardo and Piastri would have to start from the maintenance area.

Ricciardo was simply unlucky, and starting from the starting line-up basically means that it is unlikely that Lynk & Co will be able to score points with Ricciardo in this Grand Prix weekend.

On the contrary, Piastri's situation is slightly better.

With the current performance of the McLaren car, if there are more accidents on the track, Piastri may be able to return to the points zone. After all, three cars have retired from the track at this time.

During the time of Hongqi, Qin Miao climbed out of the car.

After all, the red flag time is quite long, and it is not very comfortable to stay in the car tightly tied by the seat belt.

The most important thing is that this is Mercedes-Benz's half home court, and Qin Miao can take the initiative to come out and interact with the audience.

Then Qin Miao got out of the car and took a look at the live broadcast screen.

Qin Miao happened to see Leclerc on the live broadcast screen.

Actually, this is nothing. After all, after an accident on the track, the driver must return to the team’s P room area to rest.

So after taking a look and feeling a little sorry for Leclerc for a second, Qin Miao found a step next to his car and sat down waiting for the race to restart.

(End of this chapter)