How did I become an F1 driver?

Leclerc will face Perez next.

But with Perez's speed, Leclerc is not in the DRS zone behind Perez yet, so it is equally difficult for Leclerc to catch up with Perez, even more difficult than Qin Miao facing Verstappen.

In this way, the two Ferrari drivers were suppressed by the two Red Bull drivers.

Of course, things soon turned around on the track.

On the seventh lap, as expected, an accident finally happened on the track.

Stroll, who was in ninth place, had his left front wheel slightly scrape against the guardrail when he was in T22.

But T22 is a high-speed corner, and the kinetic energy generated after the car hit the guardrail was huge. The huge kinetic energy destroyed the steering rod of the left front wheel of Stroll's car in the first time. The left front wheel of the car lost its steering ability, and Stroll's car lost control.

The car hit the tire buffer zone on the outside of the track.

With the car severely damaged, Stroll had to retire from the race.

The race also deployed the safety car because of this accident, and the record of deploying the safety car every Grand Prix weekend at the Jeddah Marina Bay Circuit continued.

The safety car was deployed, and this was a point in time where the rest of the race could be completed on white tires.

Therefore, except for the five drivers who wanted to take a gamble, the other drivers all chose to pit and change to hard tires.

This naturally includes Verstappen and Qin Miao.

Of course, because of the existence of the safety car, for Ferrari and Red Bull, this was a double pit stop, but the time difference in between was just a little longer.

After seeing this scene, almost all the Iron Buddha Temples became nervous involuntarily.

After all, Ferrari has a long tradition of doing things when changing tires, and they are also worried that Qin Miao will be messed up by the team when changing tires. If the tire change takes more than 10 seconds, Qin Miao may not even be able to enter the points zone after coming out of the maintenance area, let alone compete for the championship under the safety car.

But perhaps it was Vasseur's arrival that brought changes to Ferrari, or it could be the pressure from Qin Miao who was in charge of their life and death. This time, Qin Miao's pit stop for changing tires did not raise the blood pressure of the fans and Qin Miao. Qin Miao's tire changing speed was 2.2. Because Leclerc came in later, he waited a little longer for the tire change, but because Qin Miao's tires had been changed before, the staff who changed the tires were more familiar with it, so Leclerc's tire changing time this time was 2.1 seconds, but the overall time was about 2.5 seconds.

Ferrari completed a set of tire changing tasks that were very difficult for the Ferrari tire changing team.

For Red Bull, changing tires is just a routine operation. It can even be said that it is abnormal if they make mistakes when changing tires.

After the tire change, some drivers at the back were under cut in the pit area, but there was no position change among the top six drivers.

After Qin Miao came out, he was still behind Verstappen.

After running two laps, the team sent us a message: "This is our last pit stop in this race."

"And the result of the accident just now is out. Verstappen received a warning and two points were deducted from his super license, but there was no time penalty. The explanation given by the FIA ​​was that the accident at the start was unavoidable."

Qin Miao was naturally dissatisfied with the FIA's punishment, but at this time he couldn't do anything. He could only say in the team TR: "FUCK!"

But from another perspective, this time Franky brought Qin Miao both bad news and good news.

Looking at the same hard tires he and Verstappen were wearing, Qin Miao knew he had a sure win in this race.

With his current ability to protect his tires, even if Verstappen used this set of hard tires with all his might now, and then pitted at the second pit window to change tires, Verstappen would definitely fall behind Qin Miao after coming out. At that time, Qin Miao would have the confidence to finish the race before Verstappen caught up.

I can only say that sometimes man proposes, God disposes.

Of course, if you insist that Stroll's crash this time should be counted as a human error, then just ignore what I said.

This time the safety car directly blocked the possibility of Verstappen making a second pit stop. Verstappen could only use this set of hard tires and bet that Qin Miao’s ability to maintain the tires would prevent him from catching up with and overtaking him in the later stages of the race.

After Verstappen came out of the maintenance area, Red Bull's strategy team was not in a hurry.

After all, their data at this time was calculated based on the data from the previous game, so they expected that Qin Miao, using Pirelli's new tire formula, would not be as durable as before.

But they didn't expect Qin Miao to open something.

So at this time, both Verstappen and the Red Bull Racing team were confident that they could win the race.

Then on the 14th lap, in order to protect the tires, Qin Miao no longer held on to Verstappen, but entered his familiar cruising rhythm.

Verstappen couldn't help but secretly breathe a sigh of relief when he saw that Qin Miao was finally left behind.

However, time soon proved that Verstappen was too happy too early.

The farthest Qin Miao was left behind by Verstappen was 35 seconds around lap 5.1.

From this time on, Qin Miao's lap time was no longer at a disadvantage compared to Verstappen.

It was also at this time that Qin Miao began his pursuit.

In the middle of the race, other drivers on the track were able to get some shots, after all, there were some position exchanges between them.

But as time went by, the camera on the track returned to the space between Qin Miao and Verstappen.

After all, starting from the 43rd lap, there was basically no overtaking on the track. Everyone was cruising and the distance between drivers was constantly widening.

Only Qin Miao is unique and is getting closer to Verstappen.

It took Qin Miao ten laps to catch up from 5.1 seconds behind Verstappen to the DRS zone behind Verstappen.

There were still 5 laps left to the end of the race.

To be honest, when Qin Miao no longer had a disadvantage compared to Verstappen on the 35th lap, Red Bull had already realized that something was wrong.

When they imported Qin Miao's tire degradation rate into their own system and calculated it, they found out with some despair that even if Verstappen pitted to change tires at this time, he would not be able to catch up with Qin Miao after coming out.

gtmd Pirelli, you changed the tyre compound this season! ?

Why is Qin Miao's ability to preserve the fetus still so foul? ? !

Pirelli's tent also had data from the track. They might not have noticed anything at the beginning, but as the race progressed, Qin Miao's lap speed remained extremely stable, so stable that their hearts were pounding.

It wasn’t until Red Bull called that Pirelli’s people realized: Marula!
As for the content of the phone call between Red Bull and Pirelli, Qin Miao and Ferrari did not know. But it was possible to guess that Red Bull must have been constantly questioning Pirelli whether it was balancing the tires with its feet like some game planners.

But to be honest, Pirelli himself was also helpless when facing Qin Miao.

They didn't expect that the new tire compound would only limit Qin Miao for one race. In the second race, Qin Miao turned back into the Qin Miao who gave them such a headache.

The point is, they did make modifications to the durability of the tires, and other drivers were more or less affected, but why the hell did it not work for Qin Miao?
Return your attention to the track.

After catching up to the DRS zone behind Verstappen, Qin Miao knew clearly that there were only 5 laps left in the race. Therefore, Qin Miao was not in a hurry. Instead, he tried to blow cold air to cool the engine of his car while charging his car battery.

Although Qin Miao did not feel that there was anything wrong with his car at the moment, the stability of the Ferrari engine was not as good as that of the Mercedes-Benz. At this time, cooling the engine a little would help the engine to perform well in the next overtaking.

After all, the characteristics of the teams are different, so the performance of the cars will naturally be different.

The reason why Qin Miao did this was mainly because Verstappen's defensive ability was not as good as Qin Miao's. However, in the opening stage of the game, Verstappen torpedoed Qin Miao, which made Qin Miao realize that Verstappen was a little too angry in this game.

If Qin Miao got into a fight with Pan Zi at the bend in the track, there was a high chance that he would be torpedoed by him again.

For a normal human being, after making a mistake and accepting the punishment, he or she will definitely be more restrained for a period of time.

Let’s not talk about it for too long, but at least for the rest of the game, Pan Zi would subconsciously think about avoiding a collision with Qin Miao.

But is Verstappen a normal person?

Who among those who can become F1 drivers is not a genius selected from among thousands of candidates?

The F1 paddock is not a place for normal people.

So Qin Miao chose to play it safe.

But while charging his car, Qin Miao did not forget to take advantage of the tires of his car. He kept pulling inside and outside lines at some braking points to put pressure on Verstappen, forcing him to take a defensive route to further consume his tires.

After all, Qin Miao's single lap speed is at least 0.4 seconds faster than Verstappen. Qin Miao did not overtake Verstappen but was simply waiting for an opportunity to defeat Verstappen in one fell swoop.

If it were any other track, Qin Miao might not have so many ideas. After all, the overtaking points on other tracks are not as...academic as the overtaking points on the Jeddah Marina Bay Circuit.

The straight road before the overtaking point in Jeddah is too standard. Even if Qin Miao surpasses Verstappen, there is still a possibility that Verstappen will overtake him in the next section of the road, so Qin Miao needs to completely eliminate this possibility.

On the 47th lap, after Qin Miao charged the battery of his car to 80% behind Verstappen, he finally took action.

In the third DRS zone on the 47th lap, Qin Miao tried his best to narrow the distance between himself and Verstappen. At the closest point, the time difference between the two was only 0.2 seconds.

After leaving T27 and coming to the starting straight, the time gap between Verstappen and Qin Miao was widened to 0.3 seconds, but this did not affect Qin Miao's attack.

Next is a very long straight road.

After coming out of the corner, Verstappen initially accelerated on the normal driving line. In fact, after seeing Qin Miao approaching, Verstappen was thinking about going to the inside to defend.

But after taking a look at Qin Miao's closing rate through the rearview mirror, Verstappen knew: he couldn't defend it!

However, even though he was aware of this, Pan Zi still waited until Qin Miao was chasing him from behind before going to the inside to defend.

But Qin Miao's 80% ERS power is no joke to Verstappen. He quickly approached Verstappen and absorbed Verstappen's wake. When Verstappen changed lanes to the inside, Qin Miao also changed lanes to the inside and continued to absorb Verstappen's wake.

Soon, when Qin Miao's car was about to hit the back of Verstappen's car, Qin Miao, like an old smoker who had not smoked for a long time, reluctantly let go of the cigarette butt in his mouth and let out a long breath (outside line puff).

Qin Miao was right at the finish line when he tapped in on the outside of Verstappen.

At this time, there is still a long way to go to the braking point of T1.

As a result, Qin Miao was able to completely overtake Verstappen before the braking point.

However, despite Qin Miao's huge advantage, he still kept a watchful eye.

Qin Miao did not choose the conventional outside cornering position, but chose to turn in the center of the track.

After all, those who understand will understand that if you give Verstappen any possibility of overtaking, he will grab this opportunity like a mad dog, even if doing so may easily cause a collision with Qin Miao on the track.

To put it nicely, this is Verstappen's desire for victory, but to put it bluntly, Verstappen is simply behaving like a mad dog.

Qin Miao successfully predicted Verstappen's prediction, and Verstappen did think so.

He thought about sucking in the tail flow from behind Qin Miao and then using the slingshot effect to force his way into Qin Miao's inner lane and brake to try his luck.

Fortunately, Qin Miao had anticipated this and reached the center line of the track before the braking point of T1.

After seeing this, Verstappen knew that there was no chance for him to regain his position in this race, but despite this, Verstappen still tried to brake at a point closer to the inside of the track.

Although Verstappen's brute force approach did allow him to briefly edge past Qin Miao on the inside of the track, Verstappen had to enter the corner slower than Qin Miao because of the angle of entry, otherwise he would not be able to turn his driver in.

So it turned out that Verstappen's late braking was useless.

As a result, Qin Miao overtook Verstappen on the 48th lap and took the lead for the first time in the 2024 season.

After seeing Qin Miao's surpassing, the three commentators of Five Star Sports did not seem very excited. After all, they had seen this kind of scene too many times in the past three years and were more or less used to it.

Therefore, after seeing this scene, they were mostly happy.

"Finally surpassed Verstappen." Bing Ge let out a long sigh and said, "Judging from Qin Miao's performance in today's race, Qin Miao has completely mastered the Ferrari SF24."

"That's true. Now Qin Miao can fully utilize his advantage in tire protection on the track, just like last season."

"I believe Ferrari should be very happy at this time, because Qin Miao has proved to everyone that Ferrari's decision is correct."

And just as Fei Ge said, at this time in the Ferrari team's P room, the team staff who had been waiting for a long time were all excited and blushing after Qin Miao completed the overtaking of Verstappen.

They all stood up from their seats and applauded and cheered as they watched Qin Miao's car broadcast. (End of this chapter)