How did I become an F1 driver?

Soon, it was Friday.

Before that, there were some interesting things happening on the track, at least for the fans.
Before the start of this Grand Prix weekend, Ben Sulayem was asked by reporters about the 100 million euro fine imposed by the FIA.

After all, he had been asked the question directly to his face, so Ben Sulayem could not continue to ignore it, so he gave his answer.

Ben Sulayem's answer is summarized as follows:
Everything is getting more expensive now, and the last time the FIA's penalty rules were changed was in the 90s. Changing the rules has nothing to do with money. If you follow the rules, you don't have to pay anything for it.

But I cannot tell you what kind of violation would result in the maximum penalty of 100 million euros. This is the job of the tournament stewards and something they need to consider. It has nothing to do with me as a chairman.

We naturally don't want any driver to have to pay such a high penalty, but if this happens, the money will be used for investment in motorsport.

Many professional whitewashers in the entertainment industry were amazed by this evasive answer.

Qin Miao originally wanted to retort.

Even Qin Miao's method of killing the competition was very simple. He only needed to ask one question: "Who are you investing in? Your family or friends? We need specific consumption or investment details!" to kill the competition.

However, during this period of time, Qin Miao did focus most of his attention on practicing on the simulator. Although he knew that Ben Sulayem had made a lot of remarks in the paddock, Qin Miao was not prepared to find fault with the FIA.

After all, for Qin Miao now, winning the third world championship in his career is the top priority.

After that, you can make fun of the FIA ​​however you want.

During the first practice session on Friday, Qin Miao had an accident on the track for the first time in a long time.

Not long after the start of the first practice, Qin Miao went on the track for a short-distance sprint. When testing the car's fuel consumption and single-lap speed in the short-distance sprint on the Interlagos circuit, the tire of Qin Miao's car ran over a nail on the track.

The right front tire of the car burst on the spot.

Fortunately, Qin Miao was turning at the time, and although the car was going very fast, it was still within Qin Miao's control.

So Qin Miao once again performed the trick of rolling without crashing on the track, which is often performed by top drivers.

But after stopping, Qin Miao started swearing.

You should know that the tire blowout was not caused by any problem with Qin Miao's operation, or by the quality of Pirelli's tires.

After all, after widening and thickening the tires, Pirelli tires will no longer suffer from blowouts due to excessive driving or excessive wear.

Qin Miao swore because there were nails on the track.

The most important thing is that there is only one practice session during the entire Brazilian Grand Prix.

Qin Miao stepped on a nail and caused a flat tire. At that time, Qin Miao's mentality during the competition and the remaining practice time will inevitably be affected.

This was the real reason why Qin Miao was so angry after his racing tire burst on the track.

Of course, things have come to this point, and Qin Miao can't do anything else except cursing.

But the good news is that Qin Miao's car did not stall after turning two laps on the track. Qin Miao still drove his car, which became extremely unstable after the tire burst, back to the maintenance area.

But the bad news is that when Qin Miao drove back, a piece of the Venturi channel of the car was worn out, and the suspension of the car also had varying degrees of wear and tear.

This is not a big problem, all that needs to be done is to replace them, and Mercedes has spare parts for these parts in-house.

There is no way to deal with the Venturi tunnel. Mercedes only has two new floor plates for this Grand Prix weekend.

Fortunately, the damage to this floor plate is not serious. The Mercedes team plans to let Qin Miao use this damaged floor plate to run another test lap. If it has little impact on the lap speed, he will continue to use this floor plate. If it has a big impact on the lap speed, he will replace it with the old floor plate.

The problem is that there is not enough time for training to begin with, and this change makes things even worse.

After Qin Miao's car was repaired and he returned to the track, there was only half an hour left until the end of Q1.

All Qin Miao could do at this moment was to grit his teeth and try his best to get a good result on the track.

It is worth mentioning that Qin Miao did not choose to replace the new floorpan in the end, but chose to let the team repair the edge of the floorpan during the period after the practice session and before the qualifying session.

But the repair was completed before the start of qualifying and the overall performance of the car did not decline significantly.

But the tire blowout did have an impact, and Qin Miao ultimately failed to complete the long-distance data measurement.

But apart from this, the other test items were completed, and Qin Miao also ran a good flying lap on the track.

After the final practice session, we took a short break at noon and then started the qualifying round in the afternoon.

Although the drivers were running very nervously in Q1 and Q2 due to the drastic changes in weather conditions on the track, in the end no accidents happened to the drivers on the track, and Qin Miao easily advanced to Q3.

In Q3, the track began to be covered with dark clouds.

The team's meteorological department predicted that it would rain on the track before the last flying lap of Q3 began, so the drivers were particularly active in the first flying lap.

Qin Miao did not plan to just set a basic result in his first flying lap and started to push forward with all his strength.

After all, in the second half of Q2, Qin Miao felt the impact of the crosswind on his car near the T1 braking point. As the race got closer to the second half, the conditions on the track were bound to get worse.

So we need to try to get a good result before it rains completely on the track.

What is being compared at this time is not the basic skills of the drivers, but their psychological quality. After all, everyone only has the opportunity to run one flying lap. At this time, mentality is more important than personal ability.

Qin Miao's performance in the first flying lap was still good, 1:10.888.

After finishing the race, Qin Miao naturally came in first place.

But Pan Zi was still strong in this game.

The result of the last flying lap was 1:10.727, which was 0.161 seconds faster than Qin Miao's result.

In fact, if Qin Miao was given another lap, he was confident that he could achieve a better result on the track. However, during the preparation time before the second flying lap, the track became completely dark.

Finally, I concretized the ancient poem I learned when I was a child:

Black clouds are threatening to destroy the city.

Under such track conditions, it is impossible to run.
And even if there was a chance for one last flying lap, Qin Miao didn't think he could beat Verstappen.

After all, on this track, it is indeed difficult for the W14 to fully demonstrate all its strengths.

Basically, when the drivers started to walk back, the sky on the track suddenly became dark and there was a strong wind.

Qin Miao, who had just got off his car, came to the door of the team's P room with some curiosity, looking at the rain slanting down from the sky and thinking about something.

At this time, the old man also came to Qin Miao's side, looked at Qin Miao with a thoughtful look on his face, and asked curiously: "What are you looking at?"

Qin Miao looked back and found that it was the old man before he turned back and continued to stare at the rain that was almost falling diagonally and said, "Lewis, what do you think it feels like to run a lap under such weather conditions?" If Qin Miao asked this question to Zhou Guanyu or Ye Yifei, they were not top drivers and probably would not give Qin Miao any answer, but would look at him as if he was crazy.

Buddy, are you crazy? How dare you go up there in such weather conditions?

You really don't take money seriously, do you? If it crashes, millions of dollars will be gone.

But if it were Hamilton, he was not thinking about whether he could drive a racing car under such weather conditions, but how feasible Qin Miao's words were.

After thinking for a while, the old man looked at the wind direction and said, "If the wind blows steadily to the east, I think I can still run, and I may even be able to run faster."

Qin Miao nodded in agreement: "Under such weather conditions, we don't even have to consider the issue of aerodynamic efficiency. If the wind blows from the east, I can go 4 seconds faster on this T0.2 corner."

The old man nodded, and then suddenly asked: "What about T6 and T7? It was a strong crosswind at that time."

Qin Miao thought for a moment: "If the speed is fast enough, there is no need to worry about the impact of the crosswind."

"The speed must be at least 60 miles per hour." Hamilton thought about it and felt that there was room for maneuver, so he gave a clear number.

Qin Miao nodded: "Indeed, if the speed is about 100 kilometers per hour, the car can indeed be held down by the downforce of the car, but if it rains, it will have to start slowing down in the middle of T6, and the speed should not be maintained for too long, right?"

……

While the two of them were happily chatting about the feasibility of this matter, Toto curiously approached the two drivers of the Mercedes team, wanting to listen to what they were talking about.

At this moment, the two drivers had just got out of the car. The race had only issued a red flag and had not cancelled the race yet, so the two drivers had nothing else to do for the time being and started chatting here.

So Toto was not surprised to see this scene.

But when Toto heard what they were talking about, he thought they were joking.

After all, who in their right mind would talk to their teammates about how to run a race in a typhoon?
But the key point is, the more Toto listened, the more he realized that what they said actually made quite a bit of sense.

The key point is that given their current status in the Mercedes team, if they really want to take advantage of the good weather and run a lap on the track, no one can stop them...

Even though I know no one would do this, you never know if geniuses’ ideas are different from those of ordinary people…

However, just when Toto wanted to speak out to stop the two people's unrealistic and dangerous ideas, the two got stuck when they deduced to T8.

The two world champions agreed that under the current track conditions, no matter what, the car would not be able to reach a speed of more than 8 miles per hour at the T60 corner, and with the wind speed that was blowing the raindrops sideways, the car would be blown over at that corner.

Therefore, even the two world champion drivers from Mercedes did not think they could complete a lap on the track under the weather conditions at the time.

"Oh, what a pity." Qin Miao said with regret.

The old man didn't say anything, but just looked at Qin Miao with a smile.

You're becoming more and more like those Red Bull guys.

If Red Bull knew what Qin Miao was thinking at this moment, it would definitely make a sharp roar.

"Me, me, me, look at me, I sponsor!"

Even if Qin Miao is a Mercedes driver now and will be a Ferrari driver in the future, they will still strongly support Qin Miao's ideas.

They really like someone to die.

Toto said helplessly, "Kid, give up your unrealistic fantasy. Under such track conditions, even if you were driving the original W12, you wouldn't be able to complete a lap on this track. Not to mention that the visibility on the track is already unbelievably poor. You can't even see the scenery ten meters away."

Qin Miao and the old man turned around only after hearing Toto's voice.

"BOSS."

"Toto."

They both greeted Toto.

Qin Miao called Toto by his name directly, but the old man still called him BOSS.

This doesn't mean that Qin Miao's attitude towards Toto changed after he was about to leave.

Qin Miao used to often call Toto by his name.

"The topic you two are talking about is somewhat dangerous. To be honest, I don't want to see the kind of thing you just talked about happen on the track." Toto said with his hands on his hips.

Qin Miao and the old man looked at each other and shrugged.

The old man asked, "What's the matter, Boss?"

Toto turned his head and said, "It's nothing. It's just that it's rare to see you two chatting here, so I came over curious to see what you were talking about."

Just when Qin Miao and the old man really thought that the other party was just simply curious, Toto changed the subject.

"But it's almost time. You two need to prepare for the post-match interviews. Qin Miao, you need to participate in the post-match interviews for the top three."

Old man:......

Qin Miao:......

The truth is revealed, but Toto's picture is a bit too short.

Although Qin Miao had been racing for three years and this was the first time he encountered a typhoon at a Grand Prix, the FIA ​​had a contingency plan for this, so the whole process was well organized and there was no trouble after the qualifying round.

Qin Miao also completed his post-match interview.

After that, Qin Miao took a short rest and returned to the team's simulator.

After this, the qualifying round of the Sao Paulo station in Brazil has come to an end.

The rankings after the final qualifying round are as follows:
1: Max Verstappen (1:10.727)

2: Qin Miao

3: Leclerc

4: Hamilton

5: Stroll

6: Alonso
7: Norris
8: Sainz
9: Perez
10: Piastri (end of this chapter)