How did I become an F1 driver?

After the celebration, the on-site director also gave the final finishing position and scores of today's game:
P1: Verstappen +25
P2: Leclerc +18
P3: Perez +15
P4: Sainz +12
P5: Norris +11 (fastest lap)
P6: O'Connell +8
P7: Stroll +6
P8: Ricardo +4
P9: Vettel +2
P10: Zhou Guanyu +1
Although the retirement of the two Mercedes drivers cannot be regarded as a sudden death.

However, the retirement of the two Mercedes drivers did allow many drivers to achieve good results in the last race of the year.

The first beneficiary is naturally Vettel, who is about to retire.

Originally, if Qin Miao and Hamilton had not retired from today's race, the four-time champion would not even get a single point in the last race of his career.

But with the retirement of Qin Miao and Hamilton, Vettel scored two points, putting a perfect end to the last race of his career.

The other person is Zhou Guanyu.

Zhou Guanyu can now clearly feel the performance of the Arrow car struggling in the second half of the race.

Before the start of today's game, Zhou Guanyu vaguely realized that if nothing unexpected happened in this game, he would most likely not get any points.

But with Hamilton's retirement, a point unexpectedly and surprisingly fell into Zhou Guanyu's pocket.

As for Leclerc, there is no need to say much. He picked up a podium for free and retained his third place in the driver's ranking of the year.

Except for Binotto, everyone else at Ferrari was grinning so hard that their mouths were almost crooked.

The happiest ones are Perez and Red Bull.

After all, Red Bull won the Constructors' World Championship, and Perez retained his fourth place in the drivers' championship.

The following is the overall driver standings for the year:

1: Qin Miao.391
2: Verstappen.382
3: Leclerc.280
4: Perez.266
5: Hamilton.237
6: Sainz.146
7: Norris.104
8: O'Connell.88
9: Alonso.51
10: Bottas.41
11: Ricardo.30
12: Vettel.30
13: Zhou Guanyu.27
14: Gasly.21
15: Magnussen.20
16: Stroll.14
17: Tsunoda.9
18: Mick.6
19: Albon.1
20: Russell.1
21: De Vries.1
After this race, the rankings among the top drivers did not change.

On the contrary, the rankings of the drivers at the back have changed more significantly.

On the one hand, Ricardo moved from behind Zhou Guanyu to 11th place.

Although he has the same points as Vettel this season, Vettel's best finishing position this season is only P7, while Ricciardo's best finishing position this season is P6, so if the points are the same, Ricciardo ranks ahead of Vettel.

At the same time, Zhou Guanyu, who scored in today's race, actually dropped one place in the driver's standings, after all, Ricciardo scored four points.

Zhou Guanyu's 1th place in the year was much better than many people expected. After all, Zhou Guanyu was not like Qin Miao. He entered F with sponsorship. Many people called Zhou Guanyu a paid driver at the beginning of this season.

No one has high expectations for paying drivers.

But Zhou Guanyu proved to everyone in the first year of his professional career that A Luo's choice was not wrong, and A Luo even made a lot of money.

In addition to receiving 30 million euros in sponsorship, they also acquired a driver who is very competitive in the midstream group, has huge room for growth, and most importantly, has a bigger market behind him.

Haas saw Zhou Guanyu's performance, and then looked at Mick and Magnussen in his own team, and he wanted to slap himself in the face.

But there is no way. Before the start of this season, no one thought that Zhou Guanyu would perform so well this season. After all, Zhou Guanyu could not escape the title of paid driver at the beginning of the season anyway.

Meanwhile, the team standings are as follows:

1: Red Bull: 648
2: Mercedes: 628
3: Ferrari: 426
4: Alpine: 139
5: McLaren: 134
6: Alfa Romeo: 68
7: Aston Martin: 44
8: Little Red Bull: 30
9: Haas: 26
10: Williams: 3
It can be clearly seen that the Red Bull Racing team won the 20 Formula One World Grand Prix team championship with a 2022-point lead.

Mercedes lost mainly because of the retirement of two drivers in the last race.

It is indeed a pity that the two top drivers retired from the race like this, but things have come to this point and no matter how much they regret, there is no room for remedy.

Although Ferrari did not go directly downhill in the middle and late stages of the season, compared with the progress of Red Bull and Mercedes, Ferrari's progress can only be said to be inconspicuous. Compared with Mercedes and Red Bull, Ferrari seems to be regressing.

It can be seen that the technical instruction TD039 has a great impact on Ferrari.

Although Ferrari's performance did not decline directly after the release of TD039, it was obvious that this technical instruction hindered Ferrari's upgrade in the middle and late stages of the season.

On the other hand, Alpine won fourth place in the team championship this year.

This is a great encouragement for the entire Alpine team. After all, they were fifth last season and were 113 points behind McLaren.

Although there is only one place difference, the points gap is so big that it makes people feel despair.

But this year is different, Alpine is 5 points ahead of McLaren in the standings.

It was a narrow victory.

In fact, for this year's fourth place, the person Alpine should thank most is not themselves, but Ricciardo.

It can even be said that 80% of the credit for Alpine's fourth place this year can be attributed to McLaren's Ricciardo.

Because he has really been slacking off on the track this season.

In one season, the points gap between him and his teammate could reach a terrifying 74 points. If Ricciardo had scored 6 more points in any race this season, no matter how bad McLaren was this season, it would have been able to maintain its fourth place in the team's annual ranking, the same as last year.

It’s no wonder that McLaren didn’t want to keep Ricciardo. They gave him a year’s salary in advance and sent him away as if he were sending away the plague god.

However, Ricciardo is a driver who came from Red Bull after all, so after Ricciardo left early, he announced his joining Red Bull 23 years ago.

However, Ricciardo did not get a driver seat for Red Bull or Toro Rosso, but became a test driver for the Red Bull team. At the same time, due to Ricciardo's own popularity, Ricciardo was also responsible for participating in the marketing activities of the Red Bull team. This greatly reduced the marketing burden of Verstappen and Perez, allowing them to spend more time on the track.

Apart from McLaren, the rankings of the teams at the back have been relatively normal this season, with no team appearing in a position that does not belong to them.

As for Alfa Romeo, which ranks sixth this year... they are indeed the first in the Earth Group, there is no doubt about that.

The main reason is that Vasseur has the ability to make Kimi sit in jail for a season. He made the 2022 season's car lightweight to the extreme, and all the funds were used to develop the 2022 season's ground effect car. Therefore, Bottas could even compete with the front-row drivers for the podium at the beginning of the season.

However, Arrow's own lack of research and development capabilities was gradually exposed in the later stages of the race. In addition to the performance of Zhou Guanyu and Bottas, his points depended more on luck.

If drivers from other teams retire, they can take advantage of the situation and get points.

But at least Ferrari has made the mistake that the team often makes. This season, Arrow has done very little calculations. Although the tire changes are slow, they are stable. The team's pit stop and tire change strategy is also eye-catching, and there are no major mistakes.

The above are also the final rankings for the 2022 season. Unless there are any unexpected changes, there will be no other changes.

The time is up and the post-match award ceremony is over.

Although Red Bull's Verstappen unfortunately missed the driver's championship, winning the team championship gave everyone in the Red Bull team a shot in the arm.

At least I've been busy for a year and have gained something.

Everyone in the Red Bull team raised their glasses of champagne and toasted Verstappen and Perez on the podium, thanking the two drivers for their contributions to the team this year and also thanking themselves for their unremitting efforts for the team this year.

It is conceivable that the Red Bull team will definitely celebrate big next.

Everyone in the Mercedes team adjusted their mood soon and put smiles on their faces.

After all, no matter what the Mercedes team's performance is this season, the season is finally coming to an end. After completing the winter testing, everyone can wrap up and go home to rest.

The word "rest" has a fatal attraction for the team staff who have been busy for a whole year.

And even though they didn't win the constructors' championship and the prize money was a little less, the second place in the team still received an extremely generous bonus, not to mention the bonus for the driver's world championship.

Oh... this bonus can only be obtained by Qin Miao and his crew... that's fine...

But no matter what, everyone will have a relatively happy holiday.

Therefore, after the game, all that was left was happiness after all the regrets.

The only ones who were in a different mood from the employees were Toto and other senior executives of the Mercedes team. At this moment, their mentality was definitely not as good as that of ordinary team staff.

Losing the constructors' championship cost Mercedes at least close to 5000 million euros, not to mention the incalculable collateral losses.

However, despite this, the process after the game continued as normal step by step.

At the end of the 2022 season, all the team staff, including the cleaning drivers and logistics, came to the door of the team's P room, surrounding the two W13Bs and the two drivers sitting on the racing tires.

Here is a group photo of 2022.

After the group photo, there were photos between the crew and the drivers, and between the drivers and the fans on the scene. The whole process was quite enjoyable.

After Qin Miao finished his work, he was strolling around and saw the people from A Luo's team taking a group photo. Qin Miao simply went over to join in the fun and poked his head next to A Luo's group photo.

As expected, Qin Miao's head sticking out from the side was captured in the light.

Then Qin Miao was caught, and at Vassell's call, Qin Miao was dragged to the crowd of the Arrow team to take a group photo. What's funny is that Vassell made a stand that was used to remind drivers on normal race days, and then put the words [2022 Formula One World Championship World Champion] on the stand.

Then I found this picture.

It was as if Qin Miao was A Luo's man. After the incident, A Luo later added a photo without Qin Miao making trouble.

Anyway, everyone uses digital cameras for taking photos now, so there is no need to worry about the camera memory being consumed by one or two extra photos. On the contrary, everyone is quite happy when Qin Miao makes a fuss.

However, A Luo later posted the photo of Qin Miao and captioned it, "We also have a world champion!"

Of course, this tweet was clearly a joke, and everyone understood that.

After all, your world champion Arlo is wearing Mercedes clothes.

After the game, Qin Miao also went to visit Ferrari, but Qin Miao was not as naughty as when he was in Arrow.

After all, he was interacting with the official Arrow team, so both the fans and the team would think that Qin Miao was just joking when he went to find Zhou Guanyu.

No one would think that Qin Miao, who is now at the peak of his career, would want to join the Arrow team.

But Ferrari is different. After all, it is Ferrari. This damn team has a drug-like attraction to all drivers.

If Qin Miao interacts with Ferrari more frequently, it will inevitably make the Mercedes team and its fans think too much.

The key is that it will also send a signal to Ferrari, that is, Qin Miao may consider joining Ferrari, otherwise why would he flirt with your Ferrari people for no reason?
So Qin Miao just found Leclerc, and the two of them found a place to chat.

"Congratulations, world champion. When will you return to Monaco? You must treat me to a meal then!" At this time, Qin Miao and Leclerc were in the rest area above the Ferrari team's P room.

Now that the race is over and it is getting late, although there are still many fans lingering in the paddock, most of the people in the team's P room have already left.

So Qin Miao and Leclerc can chat here for a while without worrying about being disturbed.

After hearing what Leclerc said, Qin Miao looked at him in surprise: "I won the world championship, if you want to congratulate me, shouldn't you treat me to a meal or give me a gift? You are doing the opposite!"

Leclerc's mouth twitched: "There is no such thing in this world. Anyway, no matter what, after winning the championship, you have to treat me to a meal!"

Qin Miao spread his hands indifferently: "Okay, I remember there is a Chinese restaurant downstairs from my house. Qiu Meng and I said when we were chatting that the food there is very good. When I return to Monaco, I will invite you and Arthur to have a meal there."

For Qin Miao, a problem that can be solved with money is not a problem.

Although Qin Miao is not rich now, he has enough food and clothing, and it is no problem for him to treat his friends to a meal.

However, the purpose of Leclerc's words could not be as simple as asking Qin Miao to bleed and treat him to a meal.

After all, we are all rich people. If the restaurant downstairs from your Qin Miao's house is really delicious, wouldn't I spend my own money to eat there?
"That's too perfunctory. Do I need your money for a meal?"

After talking about this, Qin Miao gradually came to his senses. Leclerc was not a good guy.

After thinking for a while, Qin Miao complained: "Your plan is about to fall on my face."

Leclerc saw that his plan was exposed, so he simply stopped pretending: "Yes, for meals, you can go to eat anytime, even in France, you can pick any restaurant and I can go there to scan my face without making a reservation, and you can eat right away. If you really can't afford it, it's not that difficult to spend some money to buy a spot. But the food cooked by a two-time champion like you is usually not available."

"Hehehe, this way of treating us shows sincerity. There's no need to distinguish between us two brothers, right?"

Qin Miao complained: "If you really can't tell the difference between us, then when the time comes, I'll just make you some noodles to deal with you."

Leclerc's expression became serious. "That won't do. Two championships, and two championships in the second season of his career. Such a big thing is worth celebrating. I'll go buy groceries then!"

Seeing Leclerc's positive attitude, Qin Miao couldn't help but complain: "I worked hard for a whole year, and after winning the world championship, I still have to cook for you guys at home, right?"

"You're being a little polite when you say that, aren't you?"

Qin Miao rolled his eyes and suddenly slapped his right hand with his left hand.

Just when Leclerc was in a daze and didn't know what Qin Miao was thinking, he heard Qin Miao say angrily: "I shouldn't have let that trick slip in the first place. Why are you pretending to be so good?"

Leclerc: Yes.

"Regret now? It's too late!"

"Hey~"

The two of them were just chatting after work. The topic they were talking about was very relaxing and there was no other purpose.

"Where are you planning to go during the winter break? How about we make an appointment to go skiing in the Alps together?" Leclerc asked.

Qin Miao glanced at Leclerc, then shook his head and said, "I can't go out. Qiu Meng is pregnant. I will return to China after staying in Monaco for two days, and then I will stay in China until the pre-season test begins."

Hearing Qin Miao's words, Leclerc was more envious: "I really envy you."

"What do you envy me for? I have children? I have a happy family?"

“You can let it go,” Leclerc said.

A question mark popped up in Qin Miao's head.

What about JB? How come you have become a riddle man too?

Seeing Qin Miao staring at him with ill intentions, Leclerc spread his hands and said, "I, including my teammates Sainz and Hamilton. After becoming F1 drivers, we all have endorsements and commercial activities. In the final analysis, these commercial activities can make us make more money, but you are different. You have rarely accepted these commercial contracts from the beginning to the end. You rarely participate in the team's marketing activities. You are willing to spend your money to entertain yourself and spend time with your family."

"Just like you are the first person in F1 history to win two championships in two years, your attitude towards life is unique to you in the paddock."

"Are you envious?" Qin Miao joked with a smile.

But to be honest, Qin Miao didn't think there was anything wrong with his attitude towards life.

There is no end to making money, and Qin Miao and Qiu Meng did some calculations in his first year in F1. At the end of the year, the money he earned in F1 was enough for him, Qiu Meng and their two parents to live a life of ease. In this case, Qin Miao naturally did not care much about making money.

And even so, Qin Miao's assets have been increasing rapidly at a speed that Qin Miao cannot understand.

This may be what is meant by: the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer.

Of course, it is also possible that Qin Miao has never encountered a time when he was really short of money.

But what Qin Miao didn't expect was that after hearing Qin Miao's question, Leclerc replied: "I'm not envious."

"Although your life is indeed very pleasant and comfortable, I prefer my current life. At least watching my account balance continue to increase is a very happy thing for me."

Qin Miao did not comment on Leclerc's idea.

However, just as the topic came to an end, Qin Miao's cell phone rang.

He didn't turn his back on Leclerc and answered the phone directly.

"Qin Miao, your racing car has been repaired. We found that the fuel pump of the engine was broken. We have replaced it with a new one, and the floor has also been replaced with a new one. The racing car has been repaired and sealed. We are off work now. Will you drive to the party by yourself or take our car?"

I looked at the time, it was almost ten o'clock in the evening.

Normally at this time Qin Miao and the others would have returned to the hotel to rest. Today all the competitions were finally over, so everyone's schedule could be adjusted slightly later.

"I'll drive over there myself in a bit. You guys go ahead. Thank you for your hard work."

"Okay, don't be late. I heard someone is coming from Daimler."

"understood."

After hanging up the phone, Qin Miao stood up and stretched.

When Leclerc saw Qin Miao's actions, he knew that the other party was about to leave.

Without getting up to say goodbye, Leclerc waved to Qin Miao and said, "Bye, see you in Monaco."

Qin Miao nodded to Leclerc and left.

After returning to the team home and picking up his car keys, Qin Miao went to the parking lot prepared by the track organizer for the drivers and team senior staff. After driving his AMG GT, Qin Miao followed the navigation on his mobile phone to the hotel booked by the Mercedes team tonight.

Because there was basically no delay on the road, Qin Miao was not late when he came here today. In fact, when Qin Miao arrived, many senior executives of the team had not arrived yet, so Qin Miao arrived relatively early.

After arriving, Qin Miao was naturally greeted by many people.

Qin Miao became familiar with his colleagues in the team and quickly blended into the crowd with a smile. After chatting with his colleagues for a while, Qin Miao found his comfort zone and started eating and playing with his mobile phone.

After waiting for about five minutes, Hamilton arrived.

Because it was an internal gathering, the old man did not need to appear in the camera, so Hamilton at this time also changed into less eye-catching clothes, just a very regular set of jeans and a gray windbreaker.

Although this outfit still looks quite conspicuous, at least compared to what Hamilton has always worn in the paddock, Hamilton's current outfit can be described as simple. (End of this chapter)