How did I become an F1 driver?

Chapter 192 Chapter 190: Verstappen's pressure relief (6K, repayment 22)

But as Qin Miao and Barber entered the paddock together, Qin Miao couldn't see these people anymore.

After arriving at the team home, Qin Miao prepared the clothes he needed to wear for the afternoon race in advance, but he did not change into them. Instead, he attended a routine team meeting to understand the current state of the track and the current state Information such as the wind direction of the next track, whether it will rain during the race, and tactical choices during the race.

After the team meeting, Qin Miao went downstairs to accept an interview with Sky Sports at the door of the team home at the invitation of the Mercedes press officer.

After the interview, I hurried to record videos for some non-profit organizations in Europe.

These videos basically thank the non-profit organizations for their contributions to the society and encourage them to continue to persevere. At the same time, Qin Miao will donate a sum of money to these non-profit organizations in his own name.

The money is not too much, just $5.

It may be complicated to say, but the basic operation process is to look at the camera and read the script on the camera.

Not only can Qin Miao get no money for recording this thing, but he has to pay for it himself, but it can improve Qin Miao's reputation, expand his influence abroad, and increase the number of fans a little.

It is equivalent to spending money to buy fame, but it is covered with a layer of public welfare.

This is a very routine operating procedure in capitalist countries.

After these things were done, Qin Miao was called to a stage prepared by the organizer. This place Qin Miao was already familiar with was the place where she participated in the pre-match fan meeting.

However, considering the safety of the drivers, there is a gap of 7 meters between where the fans are located and the middle of the stage for the drivers.

And it is mandatory for all to wear masks.

Qin Miao, who participated in the event this time, is basically familiar with them.

Not to mention Ferrari's Leclerc, old friend, followed by Williams' Russell, then Alpine's Alonso and Toro Rosso's Kadota Yuki.

The first thing Qin Miao saw was Kakuda. He heard from the staff of the Mei Ben team that Yuki Kakuda hadn't adapted to the intensity of the F1 race yet, and he was too tired to get out of the car after a race.

However, considering Kakuda's height, it is understandable that his physical reserves are not so strong.

After all, the two had crossed paths when they were in F2, and their relationship was similar to that of ordinary classmates.

So after seeing Kakuda, Qin Miao smiled and took the initiative to go over and say hello: "Yuki, good morning."

After seeing Qin Miao, Kakuda smiled and replied, "Qin Jun, good morning."

After exchanging a few words with Kakuda, Qin Miao looked at Leclerc.

"Hey, isn't this Qin Miao, the champion driver of our Imola race?" Leclerc and Qin Miao joked without any psychological burden.

Qin Miao didn't choke, just smiled and shook hands with Leclerc to say hello, and said modestly: "It's a fluke, it's just good luck."

But Qin Miao didn't forget to wink at Leclerc when he said this, showing a meaningful and smug smile.

Obviously, after Qin Miao won the championship of that sub-station, he was also very happy in his heart, but his living habits made Qin Miao subconsciously say a few words of humility.

But Leclerc will not be used to him, pretending to ask curiously: "How did you retire in Spain last week? What's wrong with the car?"

Qin Miao: ...

"If you can't speak, you don't have to."

Hearing Qin Miao's words, the surrounding drivers laughed out loud.

Qin Miao also greeted Alonso, and Russell was the last one.

"By the way, Qin Miao, there is a WhatsApp driver group among our drivers. I was too busy a while ago and I forgot to add you to the group. Do you have WhatsApp? I will pull you in now." With Russell simply After shaking hands, the other party said.

Qin Miao nodded clearly.

Qin Miao knew about this group. When he chatted with Hamilton, he heard Hamilton mention it, and Leclerc also mentioned this group to himself, and asked Qin Miao if he wanted to join it.

But Qin Miao didn't care at the time. If others didn't invite him, would he still have to put his face on it?
How is this different from licking a dog?
But now that Russell came to take the initiative to invite Qin Miao, the expression on Qin Miao's face was somewhat meaningful.

I remember that I met Russell in such a pre-match event before. It should have been in Bahrain at the time. Why did I find myself now when I didn’t find myself then?

As for the reason why Russell was too busy and forgot, Qin Miao just took it for fun.

However, there are some things that everyone knows well, but it is not beautiful to say them.

It happened that Qin Miao's mobile phone was also on her body. After taking out the mobile phone, Qin Miao added Russell's WhatsApp friends.

After a while, the other party pulled Qin Miao into the group.

There were originally only nineteen people in the group, but after Qin Miao entered, there were exactly twenty, and the leader of the group was Russell.

Immediately after Qin Miao entered the group, other drivers sent messages.

[Kimi: Welcome the champion of our Imola race into the group! 】

[Leclerc: /Fireworks/Fireworks]

[Alonso: Welcome. 】

It is worth mentioning that Alonso's welcome sentence was sent in Chinese.

【Max: Welcome】

Qin Miao saw that so many people saw and welcomed her the first time she joined the group, and she didn't know what to reply for a while, so she just found a panda head on her phone and covered her mouth. Crying emoji.

Then Qin Miao's emoticon package seemed to ignite some kind of fuse, and in an instant, the messy emoji packs in the group began to pop out.

Norris, who has been diving since Qin Miao joined the group, even posted emojis, which seemed to be out of control.

Qin Miao soon joined the ranks of sending emoticons, but Qin Miao's mobile phone collected domestic panda head emoticons, but everyone was posting emoticons, and Qin Miao's emoticons would not look too weird .

Didn't play for too long, as the pre-race fan events started shortly thereafter.

Qin Miao and the others appeared one by one under the introduction of the host.

It is worth mentioning that when Qin Miao entered the arena, the cheers from the audience were much higher than those of Kakuda Russell.

Of course, compared with Alonso at home and the handsome Leclerc, he is slightly inferior by three points.

After all, 50% of the audience below were wearing Alonso's Renault jersey, and 30% were wearing Ferrari's jersey. Qin Miao only saw a few sporadic spectators wearing Mercedes jerseys.

The content of the pre-match activities will not be repeated here, mainly to answer some curious questions from the audience, play some small games, and finally distribute gifts signed by myself to the audience who arrived to watch the game.

It was already early 11:30 in the morning by the time Qin Miao returned to the garage after finishing the trivial chores.

When Qin Miao returned to her lounge, there was still half an hour before lunch, and Qin Miao didn't work all afternoon until 3 pm when the game started.

This period of time is specially set aside for the drivers to rest and prepare for the race.

After all, the speed of the F1 car is so fast, if the driver does not adjust his state properly, accidents may occur after he arrives on the field.

And Qin Miao didn't say anything about adjustments during this period. After lunch, he turned on his work computer, put the noise-cancelling headphones on, and started playing games directly. By the way, he checked to see if there was any fun in the group.

It's a pity that no one continued to post emoticons in the group after lunch, and Qin Miao didn't want to be the culprit that caused another round of emoticon wars, so he didn't speak in the group either.

And Toto was no stranger to playing on the computer before the match with Qin Miao, so he just ignored it.

People are different. Some people concentrate and adjust their state before the game by meditating, exercising, listening to songs, or singing like Hamilton.

And Qin Miao's way of adjusting his state may be a little special, that is, playing games.

Toto found out that Qin Miao would make an excuse for Qin Miao when he played two CSGO games before the game.

But the real situation is... Qin Miao was just a little bored during this period, and played games to pass the time.

As for status.

To put it bluntly, as long as Qin Miao sits in his car, his mental state can reach the synchronization frequency with his racing car. At that time, Qin Miao is in the best mental state and does not need any adjustments at all.

At 01:30 in the afternoon, after Qin Miao just finished playing, Barber reminded: "The game will start soon, let's take a rest."

Naturally, Qin Miao clearly distinguishes the priority from the secondary. After Barber's reminder, Qin Miao shut down her computer and put it in her computer bag.

Then, in no more than 10 minutes, Qin Miao changed her clothes, meditated briefly, emptied her mind, and went to room P with Barber.

When he came to Room P, Qin Miao was about to inspect the car next to his racing car, when Toto stopped Qin Miao.

"Qin Miao, come here."

While arranging the wiring of her noise-cancelling headphones, Qin Miao came to Toto and asked, "What's wrong?"

Toto's original intention was to comfort Qin Miao. After all, no matter who it is, there will be some psychological pressure after retiring for the first time in his career.

Although Qin Miao performed very well and was very stable during practice and qualifying, the pressure on the racers was greater than that of practice and qualifying. Toto was afraid that Qin Miao would always They are all suppressing their emotions. If they collapse due to too much pressure during the race, it will be troublesome.

But Toto didn't see any nervousness or other negative emotions on Qin Miao's face.

If it was someone else, Toto would think that they hid their emotions well, but Qin Miao was different.

Toto understands him, Qin Miao is a person who can write his emotions on his face, since Qin Miao's face looks very calm, even a little excited, then if there is no accident, this is the deepest feeling in Qin Miao's heart at this time. real feelings.

After a short period of astonishment, Toto was relieved, and he felt secretly happy that he had picked up a talented driver for nothing.

But it was impossible for Toto to call Qin Miao over and then suddenly say: It's all right, you can go.

Even if Qin Miao did this, he probably wouldn't care, but Toto's actions would reduce his prestige within the team, which was completely unnecessary.

He didn't say anything more, just asked a few words very routinely: "Come on for today's game, but I don't want to see you conflict with Hamilton."

"Okay, don't worry." Qin Miao replied with a nod.

"Go, I look forward to your performance in this game."

Qin Miao left without thinking too much.

Seeing Qin Miao who turned around to work on his racing car, and then ran to the podium to learn about the current weather conditions, Toto himself didn't notice that there was an expression of relief on his face when the elders looked at the younger ones.

Soon, following the notice of the race, the staff of the team made the final preparations before the race and pushed the car onto the track.

After the staff got ready, Qin Miao went to the track to take an oath, then listened to the Spanish national anthem, and then returned to her racing car to wait for the start of the race.

All the preparations before the game will be completely over here.

The only thing worth mentioning is that before Qin Miao entered his car, Hamilton came to comfort Qin Miao, roughly meaning to let Qin Miao continue to believe in the team. The gearbox failure is only a small probability event. In the next race, again The chances of that happening are slim.

There is a feeling that the elders worry about their unworldly young people.

In fact, Hamilton, who is 16 years older than Qin Miao, looked at Qin Miao like a junior.

Qin Miao naturally nodded in agreement, and did not even dare to show any impatience, because at this time, the scene of Hamilton teaching Qin Miao was being recorded by an unknown number of people with cameras or video cameras.

But Hamilton quickly let Qin Miao go and let Qin Miao start preparations.

Turn 4.675 of the Circuit de Catalunya was modified, so the length of one lap of the circuit became [-] kilometers.

The tire formula given by Pirelli today is C1~C3, the three hardest tires, from which we can see how serious the tire wear on this track is.

At the same time, Pirelli calculated by itself that at least two stops are required on this track, and one stop is a relatively slow pit stop strategy.

The starting order for the race is:

Row 1: Hamilton, Qin Miao

Row 2: Verstappen, Leclerc

Row 3: Ocon, Sainz
Row 4: Ricardo, Perez

Row 5: Norris, Alonso

Row 6: Stroll, Gasly
Row 7: Vettel, Giovinazzi

Row 8: Russell, Yuki Kakuda
Row 9: Kimi, Mick

Row 10: Latifi, Ma Zeping

At this time, most of the team's staff on the track had withdrawn, leaving only some team staff who ensured the vehicles.

And at this moment, Qin Miao saw someone hanging a five-star red flag on the guardrail of the stand on the left side of the track.

Qin Miao was taken aback for a moment, then turned her head to look over, only to see a female fan wearing a Meiben team uniform holding a gimbal to take pictures of herself.

After seeing myself looking over, the other party was still very happy while bouncing on the spot while waving at me.

The competition has not started yet, so Qin Miao also has enough free time.

It's not easy to come here when people are in such danger, so Qin Miao waved her hand, which was regarded as a greeting, but Qin Miao always had a feeling that he should have seen that person before, but he couldn't remember the specifics for a while. Where have I seen her.

And Qin Miao's action was also photographed by the director who had nothing to do with him.

Brother Fei smiled and said, "Qin Miao is greeting the audience who came to support him."

"This is the first time since the epidemic that spectators are allowed to enter the paddock, right?" Brother Bing asked.

Zhou Haoran nodded: "That's right, but you need to submit the latest week's nucleic acid test report consecutively, and you won't be able to enter the venue if you fail a little bit."

"It's no wonder there aren't many people today." Fei Ge said again: "But I still want to remind my compatriots abroad that it's best not to go to the scene to watch the game, safety first."

But after saying this, Brother Fei changed the subject again: "Although I said so, I really envy her. I also want to go to watch the game live, and I also want to wave hello to Qin Miao."

Brother Bing also sighed: "Hey, it's unlikely for us. If we really want to watch the game live, we have to wait until the Chinese Grand Prix is ​​held again."

The other two commentators also sighed regretfully.

While the three commentators were chatting, the drivers on the track had already started their tire warm-up laps.

Qin Miao's tactics in this game are still different from his teammate Hamilton. He uses a red-yellow one-stop tactic.

To be honest, after Qin Miao entered Meiben, except for unexpected matches, he adopted a one-stop tactic.

Soon all twenty cars stopped on the grid.

Immediately afterwards, five red lights came on one after another, and the game was about to begin.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep...

"Five red lights go out, the race begins!"

"Verstappen's start was very good. Although he was blocked by the two Mercedes, he came directly to Qin Miao's side by starting, and he was wheel-to-wheel with Qin Miao!"

On the field, Qin Miao's start was a little slow. This time, his reaction time at the start took more than 0.2 seconds.

Reflected on the field, Verstappen's speed was obviously faster than Qin Miao's after the start.

Fortunately, Hamilton helped Qin Miao to defend Verstappen, and the two Mercedes cars blocked Verstappen's T1 turn-in line.

But after T1, Verstappen took the outside line, and Qin Miao didn't dare to squeeze Verstappen out directly, so he still left some room for him to exit the corner.

Verstappen was indeed bold and cautious. Although the space left by Qin Miao could only be used by one car, and it seemed that it was very limited for one car to get in, he just dared to go in.

And relying on the wider turn-out line than Qin Miao, he tapped half of Qin Miao's body at T1.

And because T2 is a left-turn curve, Qin Miao's speed is not enough to fight against Verstappen.

In the end, Verstappen surpassed Qin Miao in T2 and came to the second place.

Although it was only in T2 that Qin Miao surpassed, strictly speaking, Qin Miao lost to Verstappen at the start.

"I'm sorry everyone, I didn't get off to a good start." After confirming that she couldn't help Hamilton stop Verstappen, Qin Miao said something in the TR with some annoyance.

This wave of Qin Miao was really helpless against Verstappen's attack, and the reason for this was indeed a slow start reaction.

As long as Qin Miao can start 0.05 seconds faster, he will not be tapped by Verstappen in T1, and he will have the confidence to hold the line in T2.

It's a pity that there is no if.

It was Toto who replied to Qin Miao: "Don't worry, our tactics have advantages, keep our own rhythm, if we can put pressure on Verstappen, then put pressure on it, if not, we should open up the gap with Leclerc behind us as soon as possible. distance."

Toto always has a kind of magical power at such times, and Qin Miao's heart has indeed settled down a lot after hearing his voice.

The negative emotions in my heart also dissipated a little.

And Verstappen kept holding his breath at the beginning stage, because he knew that Qin Miao's defensive ability was too strong. If he didn't surpass Qin Miao at the start, the price he would have to pay to surpass Qin Miao in the subsequent games would be Some are too heavy.

It is even possible that his chance of winning the championship was directly blocked by Qin Miao.

So at the start, he successfully broke through the blockade of the two Mercedes, and after surpassing Qin Miao, Verstappen suddenly felt a sense of excitement after winning the championship in the race.

“Let’s Fucking goooo!”

Verstappen's overly excited voice sounded in the TR.

……

After that, the race gradually fell into a dull situation. Hamilton took the lead, and it took a little time for Verstappen to overtake Qin Miao. Now he is barely 1.5 seconds behind Hamilton.

It is basically impossible to chase forward, and the gap between the two is gradually being opened by Hamilton.

Qin Miao was 0.8 seconds behind Verstappen, and the gap was gradually widening.

Leclerc ERS behind him used it regardless of the cost, just to get to the DRS area behind Qin Miao before the DRS was turned on.

And he did.

There was chaos behind Leclerc, but as the race progressed, the car formation was gradually smoothed out.

Everyone started to line up.

Qin Miao basically didn't feel too much pressure at this time.

Although Leclerc was still in the DRS zone behind him on the second lap, the battery of the ERS was basically used up after his lap, and it was not too difficult for Qin Miao to get rid of him.

Qin Miao admits that if he drives a Ferrari like Leclerc, he may not be able to run against him, but he is driving a Mercedes, and my buddy's Mars rover is not joking with you.

The stand out is a sheer fast.

Although Mercedes has a problem of excessive tire wear due to the high overall downforce and often high tire temperature, but enough downforce is exchanged for absolute cornering speed.

Moreover, what Qin Miao likes is the low down pressure training, coupled with Qin Miao's ability to protect tires, the problem of tire wear basically does not bother Qin Miao.

So on the third lap, after DRS was turned on, Leclerc found that even with the blessing of DRS, he could barely keep up with Qin Miao on the starting straight, and slightly shortened the gap between the two cars.

However, the advantages I gained by relying on DRS will always be pulled away by Qin Miao in the multi-curve areas of the first and third time periods.

The overall environment is unfavorable for Leclerc. Despite the blessing of DRS, Leclerc is still gradually thrown out of the DRS zone by Qin Miao at a speed of 0.15 seconds per lap.

To be honest, Leclerc really had high blood pressure looking at Qin Miao's car.

But there was nothing he could do about it.

But the track soon ushered in a turning point.

Qin Miao had just passed T1 on the eighth lap, and the yellow flag was sent out in the race.

(End of this chapter)