How did I become an F1 driver?

After quitting her job, my mother completely let herself go. Out of 365 days a year, she spends more than 200 days traveling abroad, and the remaining 100 days are also restless, traveling around the country.

I probably only stay at home for one or two months a year.

Qin Miao was quite happy about this, at least it could prove that his mother was not bored and had something to do.

Qin Miao, who often receives psychological counseling, knows that sometimes the most taboo thing for people is to be completely idle and do nothing.

After all, no one knows what specific thoughts will pop up in your mind when you have nothing to do, and how much impact these thoughts will have on your own state.

Friday.

The day when the first and second training sessions begin.

Before Qin Miao arrived at the team's home, he was stopped by Barber.

Facing Qin Miao's puzzled look, Barber explained, "You will leave after this game, so according to the tradition of the team, everyone in the team will prepare a farewell process for you before you enter the team house."

Qin Miao scratched his head, and then quickly remembered that basically every time a driver retired or left the team, the team would hold a similar farewell party.

The scene is basically that all the team staff are lined up in two rows to welcome the drivers to the team's P room or the team's home.

In the past, Qin Miao just watched other drivers, like Vettel, receive such treatment.

At that time, Qin Miao had no idea that this day would come.

And when that day really came, Qin Miao was not as calm as he had thought when he saw Vettel's retirement ceremony.

After the Mercedes team was ready, Qin Miao entered the team home amid the applause of everyone in the team.

During this period, Qin Miao met many familiar faces from the Mercedes-Benz team.

Some people had smiles on their faces, while others looked reluctant.

Qin Miao was also somewhat emotional for a moment.

He had a smooth journey and only spent one year in Ferrari's youth training. During that year, Qin Miao basically had no social activities and only trained and competed.

Therefore, even after leaving his original Prema F2 team, Qin Miao did not have too much attachment to that team. The only track engineer who had a deep affection for Qin Miao was Frankie, who was even directly brought to the Mercedes team by Qin Miao and has now been his track engineer for three years.

So even though Qin Miao left Prema and Ferrari Youth Training Academy at that time, he did not feel much sadness about parting. He was more like a child who was about to leave home, and could not wait to run towards the unknown distance.

But just after walking around this time, Qin Miao couldn't help but feel a little melancholy.

He did not regret leaving, and what he felt at this moment was more of a reluctance to part with his colleagues with whom he had worked for such a long time.

But Qin Miao soon came to his senses.

It’s not like I’ll never see these guys again, they’ll still have to work in the paddock next season.

Although there is a Red Bull team between Mercedes and Ferrari in the team standings this season, there will be a Red Bull team's P room between the Mercedes and Ferrari team's P rooms next season.

If Qin Miao wanted to visit, he had to jump through a team's P room to get to Mercedes-Benz's P room.

But at least it's more convenient than visiting Sauber.

So after being melancholy for a while, Qin Miao was left with only gratitude in his heart.

After all, without their hard work, I would not have achieved what I have today.

Therefore, Qin Miao high-fived everyone in the convoy along the way.

After completing this process, everyone knew that their main goal was still the current work at hand, so everyone returned to their respective positions and started working.

Although this is the last Grand Prix of the 2023 season, it is also Qin Miao's last Grand Prix for Mercedes.

But today's daily work and preparation process is no different from a normal Grand Prix.

It’s still the same thing.

The only slight difference from the normal state is that Qin Miao is no longer running on the track during the first training phase.

The driver who participated in the practice for the Grand Prix on behalf of Qin Miao today was Mercedes' youth driver Antonelli.

After all, the FIA ​​has regulations that each team must have two practice sessions for young drivers to participate.

Mercedes has completed this mission once before, and the last one was saved for today.

In fact, considering the championship competition between Qin Miao and Verstappen, the Mercedes team originally planned to let Antonelli drive Hamilton's car in this test drive.

But after some discussion in the pre-match meeting, they finally let the other party drive Qin Miao's car.

After all, Qin Miao is very familiar with this track, and before the race started, Mercedes' strategy team had already decided that Qin Miao would not compete for the championship in this race, but would instead strive for third place and fight for second place.

In addition, Qin Miao has been stable and has basically not made any big mistakes on the track in the past three years. In the end, it was decided to let Antonelli get on Qin Miao's car for a practice race for the sake of the overall situation.

This does not involve any internal team political struggles where people are forgotten.

This is purely for overall considerations.

And Qin Miao, the person involved, had no objection to this, after all, most of the competition was held at night.

The first practice session is during the day, so the data collected during the first practice session is not that useful for the team, so it is okay to let young people help out.

At this stage, Qin Miao's only worry was whether Antonelli would crash his car while driving it.

Of course, facts have proved that Qin Miao was a little too worried. The young talents who can be noticed by Mercedes-Benz are definitely not mediocre.

Not to mention the training phase, no rookie driver would push the performance monster under his butt with all his might. They are more focused on getting familiar with the feeling of F1.

After the first training session was over, Qin Miao took over the work of the second training session.

In fact, when Antonelli tested Qin Miao's car, he modified many settings of Qin Miao's car.

However, Franky was still very considerate. Before the start of the second practice, he directly imported the tuning settings that Qin Miao used on this track last season.

During the second practice session, a red flag appeared on the track.

It was Sainz who triggered the red flag.

Sainz was probably taking revenge on Ferrari or something else. Sainz's car bottomed out in T3 and hit the outer shoulder of T3.

The car lost control and crashed into the guardrail.

Because Sainz's car was driving at a high speed during this process, the collision was relatively more serious than normal.

The car hit the guardrail of the track at a speed of almost 200 kilometers per hour.

While Sainz endured an impact force of more than 20G, the left floor, front wing suspension, rear wing and side box of the Ferrari were all damaged.

Almost half of the entire F1 car was damaged.

The good news is that Ferrari has enough spare parts, the bad news is that it will have to race tomorrow with the old engine and gearbox.

However, for Ferrari, it doesn’t matter whether Sainz gets a ranking in this race.

Ferrari should be thankful that he was able to race his final grand prix weekend at the track.

Anyway, there will be no such person next season, and Ferrari finally doesn't have to worry about the team's budget being knocked out on the track... At least there is no need to worry about Qin Miao knocking out the team's budget next season. Sainz's accident was so serious that it directly brought a 25-minute red flag.

You should know that the timing of the race will not be stopped if a red flag appears during the practice session, so these 25 minutes will continue to pass.

When the track was finally cleared and other drivers were able to return to the track to set lap times, there were only 25 minutes left until the end of the second practice session.

Of course, this still does not affect Qin Miao's training and practice during this Grand Prix weekend.

Even if you don’t complete all the test tasks in the second practice, isn’t there still a third practice?

After the red flag ended, Qin Miao was still quite confident about the remaining time.

Then not long after the red flag ended, another red flag appeared on the track.

Hulkenberg had just come out to run his first flying lap when he skidded on the corner above the exit of the maintenance area.

Then he hit his butt against the guardrail.

Although the collision did not appear to be serious.

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Even during the broadcast, the audience felt as if it had lightly knocked against the wall.

But in fact, the collision directly shattered Hulkenberg's engine and gearbox, and the right rear wheel was completely scrapped.

After this accident, the race organizers issued the second red flag for the second practice session. At the same time, there were only 2 minutes left in the second practice session.

Qin Miao's heart skipped a beat: It's over! There's not enough time.

In the end, it was proved that the time for the second practice session was indeed not enough for Qin Miao to complete the qualifying test.

Therefore, this directly led to Qin Miao being a bit busy during the third training session on Saturday.

But no matter what, Qin Miao completed all his work before the third training session on Saturday.

Although there are some missing data, for example, Qin Miao thinks the suspension tuning is already very good, but Franky thinks there is still room for optimization.

Because there was not enough data and control group to support reference, Qin Miao and his track engineer could only discuss how to set up the suspension.

This can be said to be a disguised reinforcement of Qin Miao's intention not to compete for the championship in this race.

But in any case, after the countdown of the third practice session reached zero, the last practice session of the 2023 season came to an end.

Qin Miao drove the car back to the maintenance area.

A meeting was held in the middle to discuss Qin Miao's final car tuning settings for the qualifying stage.

In the end, it was decided to bring out the best in the W14's racing performance and optimize its straight-line speed.

Although this tuning setting will cause the W14 to lose a lot of time in the technical sections of the third timing period of the track, considering Qin Miao's defensive ability and the characteristics of the car, basically as long as the driver falls behind Qin Miao, coupled with this set of tuning, it will be impossible for the driver behind Qin Miao to overtake Qin Miao on the track by conventional means.

In this final race, Mercedes' goal is to let Qin Miao finish in the top 4.

It is natural to choose this more stable training during this special time period.

After the third practice session, time quickly came to the qualifying round.

Xiao Muchu also came to the scene today, and also Qin Miao's father-in-law, mother-in-law, and mother and daughter-in-law were there.

Basically all of Qin Miao's close family members came.

However, except for Qiu Meng and Xiao Muchu, the other three elderly people did not appear at the Mercedes-Benz team's P room.

On the one hand, during the time you are in the pit room, as long as the race is not over, you cannot leave the team pit room and can only go to the toilet.

On the other hand, it was a bit too noisy here, so the three old men stopped coming here after staying there a few times, and went to the viewing area above the team's P room.

There you can enjoy the air conditioning, eat, and lie comfortably on the sofa to watch the game broadcast from the best perspective.

It can be said that this is the best viewing angle for ordinary people to watch the game.

The elderly now see things more clearly than the young. If you can enjoy yourself, try not to make yourself suffer.

At the same time, before Qin Miao entered his car to start the qualifying race, Qiu Meng put some edible paint on Xiao Muchu's fingers and then drew a lightning bolt on Qin Miao's helmet.

Then Qiu Meng grabbed Qin Muchu's little hand and waved it at Qin Miao, saying, "Come on, Dad!"

But at this time, the daughter did not give Qin Miao any face. Now Xiao Muchu was staring at the yellow edible paint on her fingers with great curiosity.

Qin Miao didn't care. He smiled and kissed his daughter's forehead. Then he hugged Qiu Meng and said, "Just watch me!"

……

Qualifying begins.

But three minutes before qualifying started, no driver came out of the pit area.

The reason is that the drivers don't want to come out to clear the streets for the drivers of other teams.

As for why we use the term street sweeping at this time...

Geographical factors should be taken into consideration.

Although the Arthur Bay Marina Circuit is a seaside circuit, it cannot be ignored that Abu Dhabi is also a city built on the desert.

It is also windy in this area in winter. Although there are F2 and F3 warm-up races, there was a small sandstorm on the track before the qualifying session started in the evening.

The racing lane, which was originally relatively clean, was now covered with fine sand because of the sandstorm.

Although there are cleaning vehicles that roughly sweep the sand on the track, there are always some very fine sand particles that get stuck in the gaps between the asphalt.

So the track was very dirty at the moment, and therefore in the first few minutes before the qualifying session started, few drivers were willing to go on the track and be the scapegoat.

It was Haas's Hulkenberg who finally broke the deadlock.

After some drivers hit the track, other drivers came out of the team's P room one after another.

The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix track is relatively spacious, so there was no congestion during the race.

Qin Miao's first flying lap was average and he ranked fifth.

If it was a normal Grand Prix weekend, Qin Miao would definitely be fired on the spot after this result.

But unfortunately the track conditions were somewhat harsh during this Grand Prix weekend.

Because as the car continues to run, the track conditions are getting better and better, just like the track conditions on rainy days.

So Qin Miao still ran a second flying lap, and his result in the second flying lap was 0.5 seconds higher than the first lap, but in the end he still ranked seventh and advanced to Q2.

It is also worth mentioning that Qin Miao used the soft tire that he had used in the first flying lap for his second flying lap.

This shows the necessity of this second flight circle.

ps. There is a BUG. Mercedes didn't win the championship last season. I remembered it wrong. It has been fixed now. (End of this chapter)