How did I become an F1 driver?

At the post-race press conference, Qin Miao also expressed his helplessness when being interviewed, but at least the result of today's race was acceptable to Qin Miao personally and the Mercedes team.

After the post-race press conference, the Hungarian Grand Prix came to an end. Qin Miao was originally planning to go directly to the next stop, Belgium.

However, Leclerc called him and invited Qin Miao to dinner.

Qin Miao originally thought that Leclerc came to him to talk about the future or something else. After all, they would be teammates next season, and there must be a lot of things that needed to be coordinated.

For example, the status within the team, or the allocation of team resources and other miscellaneous matters.

But who knew that when Qin Miao went there, he found that Leclerc came to him to complain to him.

Not only did Ferrari give Leclerc an eye drop of more than 9 seconds during the race, but before the race started, Leclerc also found that there was a problem with his drinking water system. During the entire race, Leclerc had no water to drink.

It sounds like just over an hour, just not drinking water, no big deal.

But as an F1 driver, Qin Miao knows how painful it is to have no water to drink during the race.

After all, for F1 drivers, drinking water can not only relax your mind a little, but also cool down your body. The most important thing is that it can relieve physical fatigue.

And what about Leclerc? He ran 70 laps without drinking any water. He can only be called an iron man.

No wonder Leclerc came to me to complain after the race.

Thanks to the layout of the Hungaroring track, the load on the driver's body is not that great. If it were a high-load track like the Red Bull Ring and Spa, or a track with a higher temperature, Leclerc would have fainted from exhaustion on the track.

After scolding the team, Leclerc looked at Qin Miao with a puzzled look on his face and asked: "What are you thinking? You dare to come to a team like Ferrari? Is the dream of Ferrari really that important?"

Qin Miao scratched his nose. Although he had liked Ferrari since he was a child, he didn't really have much of a dream of going to Ferrari. He went to Ferrari mainly because Ferrari offered a lot: "Have I told you about the contract terms Ferrari gave me?"

Leclerc shook his head: "No, why? How much money did Ferrari give you? Or did they give you shares in the team? Apart from these two things, I really can't think of why you would jump into this fire pit."

"Hey, hey, hey, be careful with your words." Qin Miao stopped Leclerc.

After all, Leclerc is a driver of the Ferrari team. If this kind of thing were to be exposed, it would not be a good thing for Leclerc.

Then, under Leclerc's curious and even inquisitive gaze, Qin Miao explained: "Actually, these are secondary. Ferrari also knows its own nature, so in order to protect my interests, Ferrari gave me the right to appoint my crew technicians, which means I can fire the technicians I don't like at any time."

Leclerc: “?”

Although it is a bit inappropriate to say this, Qin Miao really felt that a big question mark appeared on Leclerc's head, and his eyes were full of surprise.

"What did you just say?" Leclerc looked at Qin Miao with surprise in his eyes.

Qin Miao shrugged: "I am actually a small personnel manager for the Ferrari team. Although the scope of management is very limited, the salary is very high, 5 million US dollars a year."

"Master Duo?" Leclerc's voice rose an octave.

In fact, Qin Miao’s annual salary is similar to Leclerc’s.

Qin Miao's annual salary is 5 million US dollars, while Leclerc's annual salary is 500 million euros. Calculated according to the average exchange rate in 5, Leclerc's salary is actually slightly more.

What really surprised Leclerc was that Qin Miao had both a high annual salary and the right to appoint and dismiss personnel.

With the combination of the two, Leclerc knew that in Ferrari's eyes, Qin Miao was more important than himself.

Of course Leclerc was not surprised, after all, Qin Miao is a two-time world champion.

Qin Miao has already proven his strength on the field.

Qin Miao did not continue to explain, but just looked into Leclerc's eyes and nodded.

After getting Qin Miao's confirmed answer and knowing that Qin Miao was not kidding, Leclerc sat down in the chair somewhat dejectedly.

"No...why?" Leclerc murmured in a low voice.

"Maybe I can bring Ferrari the championship?"

"You...ah, okay..." Leclerc said relieved.

"Then can you replace one of my crew members? He is the nephew of a senior Ferrari executive, and he is the best at everything he does. The key point is that it would be fine if he only slacked off in the crew, but he often messes around and gives blind commands." Leclerc suddenly jumped up and asked Qin Miao not long after he felt relieved.

Qin Miao was stunned: "Is there such a thing?"

"The guys in my crew and the ones who actually do the work have wanted him dead for a long time," Leclerc said through gritted teeth.

Snapping his fingers, Qin Miao said, "This is easy. I remember I have the right to make suggestions. I will give my opinion to the top management. If this doesn't work, then we can exchange the crew members. You can bring it to me, and then I can kill it."

"Okay, okay!" Leclerc said with a smile. "I suddenly feel that Ferrari made the right decision to give you such power. I guess they also want to use your knife to scrape off some pus and rotten flesh."

"Are you looking for a reason to kill him?"

"The reason! I am the reason!"

Qin Miao shrugged, picked up the wine glass in front of him and clinked it with Leclerc.

"Cheers, happy cooperation."

After taking a sip, Leclerc looked at Qin Miao who had put down his glass and asked, "By the way, when did you learn to drink?"

Qin Miao put down the wine glass: "Didn't you order this wine? I still don't have any idea about alcohol. If there is any, I will drink a little. If there is none, I won't refuse as strongly as before."

"Then congratulations on discovering another beautiful thing in life."

"Who knows..."

……

He had a meal with Le Laosi and discussed how to get rid of some bugs inside the Ferrari after Qin Miao went there.

Of course, Qin Miao could only clear out the bugs inside Ferrari, such as some larger tumors. Given Qin Miao's current position inside Ferrari, he still had no way to touch them.

After all, he is just a driver, and even Ferrari's team leader Vasseur knows that there is a cancer inside Ferrari, but doesn't he have any way to deal with it?

Of course, if Qin Miao really brings the championship to Ferrari in the 24th season, perhaps Qin Miao can rely on himself to bring the unprecedented influence of the championship to Ferrari again and really remove those tumors one by one.

Of course, these are all things for later.

After having dinner with Lao Si, Qin Miao went to Belgium.

The week after Hungary is the Belgian Grand Prix.

There is no need to elaborate on the Spa circuit, it is one of the classic tracks on the F1 calendar and the birthplace of countless famous scenes.

It is a challenging track for all the team’s drivers, especially his killer corner… oh sorry, El Rogge.

It is a classic among classics.

This Grand Prix weekend, Spa adopted the sprint rules.

This means that there is only one practice session during the entire Grand Prix weekend, and the rest are qualifying, sprint races and the race.

The good news is that the Spa circuit has not been re-asphalted and the track layout has not been changed for this Grand Prix weekend, so the data collected by the team last season is still of good reference value. However, according to the weather forecast of the local Belgian meteorological department, there is a high possibility of rain on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for this Grand Prix weekend.

If it rains during the first practice session on Friday, then basically all the teams will not be able to find their own settings in dry conditions, and it will directly become a blind box grand prix.

Everyone will inevitably use their own settings in the team simulator.

However, no one can say whether this tuning setting can be used or whether it is useful.

Of course, before this Grand Prix started, some more abstract things happened on the track.

Alpine got rid of its team principal Szafnauer and sports director Perelman before the start of the Grand Prix, with Bruno Farmin temporarily replacing the team principal and Julian Rouse acting as sports director.

It is probably because they saw the remarkable results after McLaren reorganized the team's R&D department. Now, they have gone from being unable to catch up with the drivers in front at the beginning of the season to being able to steadily enter the points zone.

As both of us are established racing teams, why can your McLaren take off after the modifications, but my Alpine can't?
So Alpine began a drastic reform.

But there is an old Chinese saying that goes, "Those who learn from me will live, those who imitate me will die."

In the eyes of many people, Alpine's imitation of the team's top management but not the internal operating model has basically no effect.

As expected, an accident occurred during the first practice session and heavy rain began to pour on the track.

Everyone uses semi-wet tires or full-wet tires to run the test on the track.

Although the rain stopped about five minutes before the end of the first practice session and the sun came out on the track, this period of time was not enough for the track to dry out. Therefore, the drivers of all teams could only use the tuning settings they had run in the simulator, just like before the race started.

Qin Miao is no exception.

Before the qualifying round began, Qin Miao chose to tune his car for the race.

At the end of Q2 of qualifying, some interesting things actually happened.

Verstappen was in tenth place in Q2 and advanced to Q3. If Verstappen was 0.1 second slower, he would have been eliminated in Q2.

Just when everyone thought that Verstappen's tuning settings turned out to be garbage.

Qualifying came to Q3, and the track was completely dry at this time.

At the beginning, Verstappen was still very low-key. Basically, any lap time set by another driver could be surpassed by his. Then in the last flying lap of Q3, Verstappen's lap speed was 0.5 seconds faster than that of Qin Miao, who was in second place.

After completing the last flying circle, Qin Miao, who was running back to the field, got the news and asked in disbelief: "Duo... Duo Shao?"

"0.51 seconds."

……

Of course, although Verstappen got the pole position in the qualifying stage, he will not start from the top when the race starts on Sunday.

Because in today's race, Verstappen replaced his fifth set of gearbox components this season, which has exceeded the gearbox usage limit stipulated by the FIA, so he needs to be penalized 5 positions at the start of the race.

So the correct starting order for the race is as follows:

1: Qin Miao

2: Leclerc

3: Hamilton

4: Perez
5: Sainz
6: Verstappen

7: Piastri
8: Norris
9: Alonso
10: Stroll

After this, Friday's work came to an end. However, just when everyone thought Verstappen would dominate the race like he did in Friday's qualifying, heavy rain fell on the track during the sprint qualifying on Saturday morning.

As a result, the sprint qualifying race was delayed by 30 minutes.

However, when the sprint qualifying session started, it was still drizzling on the track and the track was heavily flooded.

Also because of the current track conditions, it is naturally impossible for the race organizers to turn on DRS for the drivers to use.

Then without DRS, Verstappen was crushed by two Mercedes cars in Q3 of the sprint qualifying.

At the end of the last flying lap of SQ3, the old man was 0.2 seconds faster than Verstappen, and Qin Miao was 0.19 seconds faster than Verstappen.

The final sprint qualifying rankings are as follows:
1: Hamilton

2: Qin Miao

3: Verstappen

4: Piastri
5: Sainz
6: Leclerc

7: Norris
8: Gasly
9: Perez
10: O'Connell

From the ranking of this sprint qualifying race, it can be seen that Red Bull no longer has the dominance it had at the beginning of the season on a low-downpressure track like Spa. Without the use of DRS, it can't even outrun Mercedes-Benz cars.

Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the rain on the track had a negative impact on Verstappen.

Soon the competition came to the sprint race.

In fact, there was already a lot of sunlight on the track before the sprint race started.

But everyone knows that the Spa circuit is built in a mountainous area, and the average temperature in the summer is only 16 to 18 degrees Celsius.

People who live in mountainous areas know that it can rain at any time.

Before the sprint race started, heavy rain fell on the track.

It was a particularly large one, so the sprint had to be changed to a dynamic start out of helplessness.

The dynamic start was carried out after running 5 laps under the safety car.

Hamilton was pressing forward, and even after the safety car entered the maintenance area, Hamilton was still pressing forward.

Then when Qin Miao arrived at T19, he went directly into the maintenance area and changed into semi-rain tires.

Because the rain before the sprint race was so heavy, all teams changed their drivers to semi-rain tires.

As for why the old man was not allowed to go first...it was mainly because the Mercedes team had discussed this issue in the pre-race meeting.

After all, if Qin Miao is allowed to go in first, there is a high probability that Qin Miao will not be under cut by Verstappen after he comes out, and Qin Miao appearing in front of Verstappen can help the old man buy some time.

In this case, Hamilton will most likely be able to maintain his position after coming out of the maintenance area, and at worst he will not be overtaken by Verstappen.

The subsequent results were indeed true. On the second lap after the race started, Hamilton was still ahead of Qin Miao when he came out of the maintenance area.

The subsequent race was very peaceful and calm. Qin Miao barely made any moves and finished the entire sprint race. (End of this chapter)