How did I become an F1 driver?

Therefore, Qin Miao needs to compare many tracks on the race calendar one by one and then make adjustments.

This is also why Qin Miao is either running the simulator or reading materials after returning home.

It can be said that although the system displayed that Qin Miao's proficiency in the tracks he had run on did not decrease, after changing to an F1 car, Qin Miao's proficiency in those tracks had actually dropped by nearly half.

This is generally due to the different characteristics of the racing cars.

To quote my teacher, practice makes perfect.

However, Qin Miao has no way to put it into practice now. He can only make some predictions based on his memory of the track and his experience with SF24 after a race.

At least after doing this, Qin Miao will not encounter the situation where he is completely in the dark on the track and needs to learn everything all over again.

Soon, it was Thursday.

The day of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

On Thursday, Qin Miao only took half a day to attend the pre-race press conference and the track walk.

Qin Miao spent the rest of the time studying materials.

After all, the 24-season calendar is too long. It is the longest season in F1 history, with 1 Grand Prix races to be held in a year.

The 24 new tracks are definitely a big challenge for Qin Miao.

Therefore, Qin Miao's preliminary preparations will be particularly cumbersome.

Qin Miao will try to squeeze out as much time as he can.

However, when Friday comes, Qin Miao still needs to appear in the paddock to start his practice session.

We still need to distinguish the primary from the secondary.

In this race, Ferrari was the first of the three major teams to bring upgrades.

In addition to the low-drag rear wing that almost everyone has, the Ferrari team also brought new side boxes and beam wings. The beam wings are the four black aerodynamic kits under the rear wing that are not visible under normal conditions.

This overall upgrade is to optimize the SF24's tail speed and the car's stability at high speeds.

It's a small upgrade.

This is the foundation accumulated over half a season.

Now the main factor limiting Ferrari's further upgrades has shifted from R&D speed to production speed.

Of course, Qin Miao also made a great contribution here. After he joined Ferrari and Ferrari's R&D personnel gained the benefits of Qin Miao's skills, everyone in the design department reported to their superiors that they felt their minds had become clearer, and many problems that used to take a while to study could be solved with a little thought.

Therefore, Ferrari's research and development speed for racing cars has naturally accelerated.

After the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Ferrari will have a small upgrade in the next race.

It even goes beyond that. Due to transportation issues between the Middle East race and Italy, in order to save upgrade costs, many upgraded parts that have been verified in the wind tunnel and CFD will be taken out all at once after the race calendar returns to Europe.

Even in Vasseur's plan, there will be two major upgrades at the two Italian Grand Prix.

The team estimates that the lap time can be improved by 0.3 seconds.

All in all, although the Tiefu Temple fans were disappointed with Qin Miao's defeat in the opening race, everything is moving in a stable and positive direction for Ferrari, and Ferrari's performance on the track in the next race is still worth looking forward to.

And with Qin Miao here, Ferrari can at least get second place. To be honest, the Iron Buddha Temples now have no more requirements for Ferrari.

They just hope that Leclerc's car won't have any more problems at this week's Saudi Grand Prix.

Then Leclerc can beat Perez on the track. Even if Qin Miao doesn't win the driver's world championship, with Qin Miao and Leclerc, Ferrari can at least win a constructors' world championship, right?

Soon, it was Friday.

One or two days of practice.

Qin Miao's testing process went smoothly during the first practice phase.

Basically, Qin Miao can raise any questions before getting on the bus.

However, it was impossible for Qin Miao to directly say where the problem was, so Qin Miao usually asked Fabio and others to recheck the location where Qin Miao found the problem. If no problem was found, he would ask them to continue checking until the problem was found.

Although Qin Miao's crew had some complaints about his tyrannical behavior at the beginning, they only dared to speak about it in private, because if they said it in front of Qin Miao, Qin Miao could really fire them directly.

Not to mention that problems can actually be discovered after inspection.

Therefore, during the first race, there were still people gossiping behind his back. But when it came to the second Grand Prix in 1 years, Qin Miao discovered that there was a problem with the brake system of the car during the practice session. When they asked them to help check it, what they thought in their hearts was not that Qin Miao was meddling in other people's business, but: That's not right, I remember I checked it and there was no problem, let's just wait and see!

All in all, Qin Miao's joining has greatly reduced the workload his crew has to perform during the Grand Prix.

To be honest, it's really fun to work under Qin Miao. The pay is high and the work is minimal... As for being close to home... I can only say that as long as you work for an F1 team, don't even think about being close to home.

But Leclerc was not as lucky as Qin Miao during the first practice session.

It can even be said that he was not as lucky as Qin Miao.

Because during the practice session, his car hit a garbage bag on the track, and the plastic garbage bag was hanging at the entrance of the Venturi channel of his car and shaking wildly.

Finally, we had to go back to the maintenance area to remove it, but this set of soft tires was ruined.

The team did not obtain any useful data during this race on the track.

Nothing major happened in the second practice session. Everyone was busy conducting various tests. After all, it was a night race and during the entire practice session, only the environment of the second practice session was closest to qualifying and the race.

Therefore, the second training phase is the time to collect the main data.

In the end, both practice sessions were over, and Qin Miao and Leclerc's results in the two practice sessions were not very good, one ranked sixth and the other seventh.

However, no one cares about their performance in the practice rounds, as long as they perform well in qualifying and the race, that's enough.

But after work on Friday, there was some big news in the paddock.

That is, Audi officially took over the Sauber team and achieved 100% control.

So now the Sauber team completely belongs to Audi.

However, Audi will have to wait until 2026 to enter the market as a factory team.

After learning the news, Qin Miao put down the documents in his hand and called Zhou Guanyu.

After all, Qin Miao himself knew that Audi had been ambitious since its entry into F1 and wanted to join the championship race. After all, the current F1 is different from the past. Now having a team in F1 is pure profit. Now all 10 F1 teams are in a profitable state, the only difference is how much they make.

Who wouldn’t want to participate in an event like this that can both boost brand awareness and make money?

Also because of Audi's plan to compete for the championship, Qin Miao knew very well that Audi would not be able to keep Zhou Guanyu.

After all, as a German manufacturer, Qin Miao expected that Audi's idea should be to sign Hulkenberg and then find a young driver from F2 to train.

Actually, Audi's idea has something to do with Qin Miao.

After all, Qin Miao's brilliance is too dazzling. He has not lost a season since he came up from F2.

Therefore, other teams have also changed their selection preferences for new drivers joining their teams from using old drivers to discovering new drivers. They also want to use scratch cards to pick out a Qin Miao from among the F2 drivers.

But during the phone call with Zhou Guanyu, Qin Miao learned that although Zhou Guanyu would not continue to sign with Sobo next season, they were already negotiating with Lynk & Co.

Lynk & Co's idea is to sign Zhou Guanyu next season no matter what. The current decision is to kick out Yuki Tsunoda, but if Ricciardo's performance is not as expected, Lynk & Co will also kick out Ricciardo. If both of them leave, Lynk & Co's idea is to introduce Ye Yifei and Zhou Guanyu to form the first pure Chinese team in F1 history.

By then, Lynk & Co had already anticipated how fanatical the support of the fans at the Shanghai Grand Prix would be for its own team.

It is worth mentioning that in January this year, the Shanghai International Circuit, the venue for the Shanghai Grand Prix, started a new round of expansion due to the entry of Qin Miao and Lynk & Co.

This expansion will add another 20 seats to the already existing 5.

But these 5 seats cannot be repaired this year and will have to wait until next year to be put into use.

The organizers of the Shanghai Grand Prix also believe that with the renovation of these 5 seats, it will not be difficult to sell these tickets. Even in the F1 paddock, tickets will still be hard to come by.

Do you really think the domestic population base is a joke?

After making sure that there was no major problem with Zhou Guanyu, Qin Miao also sent a message to Ye Yifei.

Although Lynk & Co had a strong intention to sign Ye Yifei last season.

After all, his performance in those races was really good, and coupled with his status as a Chinese driver, Lynk & Co had a strong intention to sign him.

At least in Lynk & Co's own opinion, Ye Yifei's performance is better than Ricardo's.

But the team’s ideas are sometimes different from those of the sponsors. Sponsors want the drivers in the team to be influential, because only with influence can they make money for themselves.

Plus, Ricciardo has indeed proven himself on the track, after all, he also came from Red Bull.

So at that time, Lynk & Co still chose to retain Ricardo's seat, but gave Ye Yifei the status of a reserve driver.

Let Ye Yifei continue to participate in endurance races for 24 years and wait for an opportunity.

The reason why Tsunoda stayed in the team was because of Honda's strong request. After all, Lynk & Co is still using Honda's engine. The framework of the cooperation project between Lynk & Co and Red Bull has just been set up, and the engine research and development has just got on track. It is impossible to produce an engine that can be used on the track in a short period of time. Even if it is forcibly taken out, it is likely to become a mess in the hands of the driver.

So after weighing the pros and cons, Lynk & Co finally retained the original driver lineup, but Lynk & Co is the actual person in charge of the team after all, so if they find that these two people are really not up to standard, they also have the possibility of replacing them.

Perhaps Ye Yifei was busy and did not reply to Qin Miao's message immediately.

However, Qin Miao was not in a hurry about this. After all, strictly speaking, he and Ye Yifei were colleagues now, and in terms of rank within Ferrari, Qin Miao was higher than Ye Yifei. Ye Yifei even had to call him boss when he saw him.

Although Qin Miao only holds shares in the Ferrari F1 team, because of his status as a Ferrari shareholder, Qin Miao's rank within the Ferrari team is even half a level higher than Ferrari's team leader Vasseur.

The job title is special adviser.

Of course, this is just a nominal position. Qin Miao still works as a driver at Ferrari.

……

Time quickly came to Saturday, the date for the third practice session and qualifying.

I won’t go into details about the content of the third practice session. Qin Miao completed most of his work for this Grand Prix weekend in the two practice sessions on Friday. On Saturday, Qin Miao’s main job is to finish up.

Even after finishing, there were still more than twenty minutes left before the end of the third practice.

Then Qin Miao got off the bus and left work early.

Vasseur actually still had some doubts. He felt that Qin Miao should go to the track to familiarize himself with it if possible, but Qin Miao was very confident.

If Qin Miao's behavior happened in the first season of his career, he would be scolded to death by fans and management.

But Qin Miao is now a triple champion after all, and he often did this when he was driving for Mercedes-Benz. On those tracks he was particularly familiar with, he would basically start slacking off after two practice sessions.

So Ferrari acquiesced to his behavior.

After Qin Miao had some free time, he couldn't leave the team's P room until the practice session was over.

So with nothing else to do, he ran directly to Leclerc's parking area, looked at Leclerc's racing data chart and started remote command.

When Leclerc heard Qin Miao's voice in the team TR, he even thought that Qin Miao's car was broken and was being repaired. He had nothing to do, so he slipped to his parking area.

Qin Miao was too lazy to explain anything to Leclerc at this time. He just looked at the data of Leclerc's car and recorded it.

After Leclerc came back, under the complicated gaze of Leclerc's track engineer, Qin Miao helped Leclerc modify the car's tuning and let Leclerc run two laps.

After coming back, Qin Miao waited for Leclerc to give his feedback and then helped Leclerc modify his training.

Then after the practice session was over, when Leclerc came down from the track, he saw Qin Miao and wanted to kneel down and kowtow to Qin Miao.

“Fuck it, this is amazing!”

"Oh, this is just the beginning. Watch carefully and learn well." Qin Miao crossed his arms.

"I'll treat you to dinner tonight!" Leclerc said with gratitude on his face.

The conversation between Qin Miao and Leclerc was heard by Wasser who was standing nearby.

To be honest, Vasseur has a feeling that if Qin Miao doesn't want to drive one day and just wants to be a track engineer, he can give his drivers a racing car that is easy to drive.

Qin Miao's intervention made Leclerc's last bit of concern about his car disappear. While the car was fast, Leclerc also felt that he was becoming more and more comfortable controlling the SF24, as if the car was an organ extending from his body.

It is worth mentioning that before leaving the track, Leclerc ran the last flying lap of his practice session on the track.

Although the old soft tires were still used, after calculation by the Ferrari team's AI, if Leclerc used new soft tires on this lap, his lap speed would be about 0.1 second faster than the set of settings he found himself.

For top drivers, 0.1 second is a huge improvement.

No wonder Leclerc was so excited. (End of this chapter)