How did I become an F1 driver?

But after hearing what Leclerc said, Qin Miao's mouth twitched uncontrollably, and he said unhappily: "You buy some food and come to my house and let me cook for you. Do you call this treating me to a meal? I'm too lazy to expose you."

"Hey, hey." Leclerc touched his nose and smiled. "Hey, why are you so polite, bro? And just tell me whether I spent any money or not, okay?"

Qin Miao shook his head helplessly: "I shouldn't have come to meddle in other people's business if I had known earlier. It's really unlucky."

"How can this be called meddling in other people's business?" Leclerc said with a serious expression, "I am your dearest friend, brother."

"Okay, okay, if you keep talking like this, I suspect you will betray me if someone gives you a little extra money." Qin Miao waved his hand.

After chatting with the fourth brother for a while, all the work for the qualifying stage of the Saudi Grand Prix was completed. After a few hours of rest, it was time to test the results of this period of work.

Qualifying stage.

In Q1, Qin Miao and Leclerc advanced easily.

But the unlucky guy appeared again.

Zhou Guanyu did not make any effective flying circles during the entire qualifying phase, and Sauber's C44 broke down directly in the team's P room. All Sauber technicians were busy helping Zhou Guanyu repair the car.

I won’t go into too much detail about Q2. Qin Miao and Leclerc also advanced easily. Qin Miao even advanced on a set of old soft tires.

Qin Miao's panel 99's tire-preserving ability is so terrifying that the single-lap speed of the old soft tires in the qualifying round is only 0.09 seconds different from Leclerc's new soft tires.

Although Leclerc was running at full speed with heavy fuel and not at full strength at the time, Qin Miao was running at half full strength.

When the people from Pirelli saw Qin Miao's performance, they immediately had a bad feeling.

In Q3, Red Bull's Verstappen continued to show his dominant performance on the field.

With DRS, the RB20 is like riding a rocket, with an incredibly fast speed at the end of the straight.

Qin Miao tried his best but still couldn't win.

In the final qualifying round, Qin Miao's result was 0.15 seconds slower than Verstappen and he came in second.

Leclerc is still behind Qin Miao.

After Qin Miao helped optimize Leclerc's car tuning, Leclerc was obviously driving more confidently in the qualifying stage.

Coupled with the team's upgrades, Leclerc narrowly beat Perez, who was in fourth place, by 0.09 seconds and once again came in third.

After the qualifying race, Qin Miao, who was also sorting out his equipment, looked down and said jokingly, "If you can get third place a few more times in qualifying this season, you can change your nickname from fourth to third."

"roll!"

……

Finally, after the qualifying round, the drivers' rankings are as follows:
1: Max Verstappen (1:27.472)

2: Qin Miao

3: Leclerc

4: Perez
5: Alonso
6: Piastri
7: Norris
8: Russell
9: Hamilton

10: Yuki Tsunoda

In the qualifying stage of this race, the ranking between the top three drivers was exactly the same as the qualifying results in the previous Bahrain.

I can only say that this is a special fate.

After the qualifying round, Qin Miao completed the post-race process and held another meeting, and his work on Saturday was completed.

As for his performance on the track today, Qin Miao could only say that he had expected it.

After all, the upgrade that Ferrari brought this Grand Prix weekend is only a small upgrade and cannot bring a major improvement in the performance of the car.

Moreover, on high-speed tracks such as Saudi Arabia's Marina Bay, where the DRS zone is relatively long, the RB20 can indeed more easily take advantage of its own high DRS efficiency.

So after getting this result, both Qin Miao himself, Ferrari, and Ferrari's fans were relatively calm, after all, it was expected.

Soon it was Sunday, the day when the main race began.

For this Grand Prix weekend, Ferrari's pit stop strategy for Qin Miao was to stop once during the yellow and red seasons.

When other drivers stopped racing, Ferrari wanted Qin Miao to rely on his tire-preserving advantage and use soft tires to make the last stint on the track in the later stage of the race, so that Qin Miao would have the possibility to threaten Verstappen.

As for the last game, Ferrari chose a conservative strategy, but in this game, Qin Miao returned to his regular tactics when he was in Mercedes-Benz. Naturally, it was because in the two practice sessions, Qin Miao once again demonstrated his incredible ability to protect the tire when he was in Mercedes-Benz.

Ferrari also has its own understanding of this. After all, when you are new to a team, even if you are as strong as Qin Miao and can quickly master the performance of the car you are currently driving, you still have to spend some time to incorporate your own characteristics and professional skills into this car.

Therefore, in the eyes of Ferrari staff, Qin Miao's extra points were equivalent to using the time of a Grand Prix to thoroughly familiarize himself with the SF24 under his seat, and only then could he fully utilize his talent for tire preservation that violated the laws of physics.

While once again experiencing the happiness of the Mercedes strategy team staff, Ferrari was naturally happy to arrange for Qin Miao this pit stop strategy which would greatly slow down the driver's race rhythm under normal circumstances.

Of course, this is actually just an alternative strategy, because from the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix to 2023, the safety car deployment rate at the Jeddah Marina Bay Circuit for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is ​​100% during the two years.

Therefore, the team has prepared several pit stop strategies to prevent the sudden appearance of the safety car on the track from catching the team's drivers off guard.

After going through all the pre-race procedures, Qin Miao came to his own car, took a look at Verstappen's car next to him, and then got into his own car.

The warm-up lap started and just after the lap, Gasly's car had a problem. The gearbox failed and he was unable to shift up or down. The gearbox was stuck in second gear and could not be switched no matter what.

But Gasly is already on the starting grid, and he will be penalized if he does not follow the starting procedure.

So it is not surprising that Gasly will retire directly after the starting procedure is completed.

Fortunately, Gasly reported the fault early, and Sauber also happened to hear from Alpine's team TR.

So at the start they still reminded Zhou Guanyu that there was a problem with Gasly's car and he had to take shelter after the start.

After all the drivers were in position, five red lights came on one by one.

Game start.

After the start, Verstappen squeezed towards Qin Miao on the inside as usual.

Although he knew that Leclerc behind him could pose a huge threat to him at the start, Verstappen knew even more that the person who posed the greatest threat to him from beginning to end of the race was Qin Miao.

Leclerc overtook him from the outside, and Verstappen could use the advantages of DRS and car performance to regain his position in the DRS zone in the later stage of the race. But if this person becomes Qin Miao, although the Jeddah Marina Bay Circuit is a high-speed track with many overtaking points and many heavy braking areas, Verstappen still has no confidence that he can 100% take down Qin Miao in a full-defense state.

This is the psychological shadow that Qin Miao has created for Verstappen over the past three years.

In short: Pan Zi became a little unconfident because of Sanshui's defense.

So Verstappen chose the lesser of two evils and gave Leclerc, the soft persimmon, a position instead of giving Qin Miao any chance to overtake him.

There is a difficulty to choose from, and there is no reason for Verstappen to choose Qin Miao's difficult difficulty instead of Leclerc's easy difficulty, right? After all, this is reality, not a game, and no one likes to challenge high difficulty in reality.

Qin Miao in the inside line saw Verstappen approaching and guessed what he was thinking.

He pushed forcefully towards the outside line. After all, Qin Miao's reaction speed at the start today was the fastest among the 20 drivers. Although the distance from the starting position in Jeddah to T1 was not as long as that in Bahrain, Qin Miao still had a chance to overtake Verstappen at the start.

Also because of Qin Miao's excellent start, Verstappen did not close the gate in time.

So Qin Miao inserted himself into Verstappen's inner line before Verstappen completely closed the door.

But Verstappen is Verstappen. Verstappen doesn't care whether you are a three-time champion or not. Even if you are a seven-time champion, he will still bump into you.

So even though Qin Miao has reached Verstappen's inside line, as long as Qin Miao is not suppressed to the wall position of the inside line and has no way to retreat, Verstappen will continue to squeeze towards the inside line.

He bet that although Qin Miao would not brake, he would give up his position on the track.

Unfortunately, he made the wrong bet this time.

With a "bang" sound.

Verstappen's left rear wheel hit Qin Miao's right front wheel, raising a puff of white smoke.

Fortunately, when the collision occurred, both cars were just starting to accelerate and were about to reach the braking point, so their speed was not too fast.

And after discovering that Verstappen's rate of approaching him had not decreased, Qin Miao deliberately adjusted the position of his car. This collision was a collision between the wheel arches of the two racing cars, not a collision between the tire treads, so the collision was not serious.

There was no equipment explosion, but there was an obvious scratch on the wheel arch of the tire.

However, Qin Miao would not let it go if Verstappen took the initiative to hit him, so he complained on the spot.

"F******! Verstappen ***can't drive a *** racing car at all! ******! ***, is there anyone who drives like this?" After the collision, Qin Miao naturally let off the accelerator, otherwise, who knows what outrageous thing Verstappen would do next.

He really didn't expect Verstappen to crash into him directly. After all, in the past Verstappen always forced him into a very unfavorable position and then wouldn't let him move.

Although Pan Zi's car shifted slightly to the inside after the collision, he counterattacked and corrected as if he had been prepared, stabilizing his car and successfully entering T1.

Even after this collision, Verstappen steadied the car so quickly that he didn't give Leclerc on the outside any chance to overtake.

Moreover, because Qin Miao braked in advance, a large gap appeared in front. At this time, Leclerc didn't even need to do anything. He could overtake Qin Miao by entering the corner normally and move up to second place.

Even Qin Miao, who was behind, saw this gap and his first thought was that Leclerc would go straight into this loophole.

But to Qin Miao's surprise, Leclerc didn't do that.

He even slowed down.

Qin Miao entered the curve only after his car had recovered its speed.

As a result, Leclerc's ranking slipped from third to fifth, and he was even overtaken by Alonso.

Qin Miao was really scratching his head after seeing this scene.

Although Qin Miao and Leclerc had agreed before the start of this season that the other party would be his number two driver for two years, who would be the number two driver like this?

This is no longer just being the second driver, this is like being your own son.

So after Qin Miao's car left the first timed section and entered a section with less pressure, Qin Miao scolded Verstappen again and said in the team TR: "Leclerc didn't have to do this at all."

Franky had always had Qin Miao's first-person perspective, so he naturally saw Leclerc's obvious behavior of giving way.

At the time, Franchi also felt that Leclerc's approach was a bit thankless because it was completely unnecessary, but as the driver's track engineer, he could not show his emotions.

Therefore, after hearing what Qin Miao said, Franky said: "We have already put pressure on the race committee regarding Verstappen's matter. As for Leclerc's matter, we will discuss it after the race."

To be honest, although Qin Miao told Leclerc that he would be his No. 2 driver for a season, Qin Miao did not expect that this was how the No. 2 driver worked.

But there was no way. Leclerc had already dropped to fifth place, and even if Qin Miao wanted to help him, he couldn't do anything.

All Qin Miao could do at this time was to try not to waste Leclerc's help.

So after returning to the track, Qin Miao tried his best to keep himself in the wake behind Verstappen and not be left behind by Verstappen.

On the second lap, after DRS was turned on, the race organizers also announced that they would investigate the collision between Qin Miao and Verstappen.

But this is actually more of a nominal announcement. In fact, everyone knows that the FIA ​​will definitely impose lighter penalties for accidents that occur on the track at the beginning of the race.

There is a high probability that Verstappen will be penalized 5 seconds, but there is a low probability that nothing will happen.

After all, Qin Miao did not retire because of the collision with Verstappen.

Focus back on the track.

After DRS was turned on on the second lap, Qin Miao still stayed in the DRS area behind Verstappen.

By the third lap, Qin Miao still relied on the characteristics of the track and the DRS provided by Verstappen to avoid being left behind by Verstappen.

Perez behind Qin Miao had been left behind to 1.9 seconds.

All I can say is that Qin Miao and Verstappen are indeed fast.

However, Verstappen's speed was indeed too fast. In a short period of time, Qin Miao could only follow behind Verstappen. It was basically impossible to attack Verstappen.

Therefore, Qin Miao was prepared to continue to exert pressure and take action himself after Pan Zi's tires failed.

On the fourth lap, Leclerc overtook Alonso in front of him and returned to fourth place.

It seems like it was destined by some unknown fate. (End of this chapter)