F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 94 Driving? Like driving!

The first few activities were quite simple.

The first challenge was to have Shu Long arm wrestle with several male up-and-coming hosts to demonstrate just how much stable and powerful arm strength each F1 driver needs to maintain precise control of the heavy steering wheel throughout the nearly two-hour race.

Without exception.

Whether it was the seemingly sturdy leader and hall master, or Wang Jieke, who supposedly maintained a fitness routine, Shu Long had already grabbed them by the wrists, but they were still instantly killed.

Of course, this is a bit unfair. Generally speaking, most F1 drivers consciously control their muscle mass, so it's unlikely that anyone would have superhuman strength like Shu Long.

Shu Long's body has been specially tuned by the panel, which controls the muscle mass within a moderate range while having muscle strength close to the theoretical peak of human strength. This allows him to have stability and keen perception far exceeding other drivers when controlling the race car.

This might also be the most testosterone-fueled moment in the entire video. When the camera shows Shu Long's arm visibly developing distinct muscle fibers as he exerts force, the comments section explodes with excitement.

"I'm drooling over the screen!"

"I'm a man, I'll lick it first!"

"Let those 'traffic-obsessed' losers see what a real man is!"

I wonder if those female streamers who flirt with the edge of fame feel anything like this when they see the comments section. Anyway, as Gan Mengning watched those crazy subtitles slowly scroll by, she felt a mix of annoyance and a subtle sense of smugness.

this is mine!

She turned her head and secretly glanced at the strong arms that were wrapped around her, wondering whether she should put those sour comments next to her pillow as seasoning when she was savoring those tempting lines.

Ugh, that's so perverted!
Shu Long's hands were also getting restless; he had already begun to sneakily taste the appetizers before the meal, little did he know that he was already being treated as a gluttonous feast by Gan Mengning.

Otherwise, why would they say, "The real hunter often appears in the form of the prey"?
Shu Long, lost in thought, wasn't focused on the video, nor did he notice that the delicate body in his arms was now burning hot.

As the [Friction Control] took effect unintentionally, Gan Mengning's hand holding the phone trembled more and more. Then she suddenly froze and arched her back in Shu Long's arms for a while before finally collapsing softly.

"Huh? What's wrong with you? My goodness!"

"Get out of here! The blankets were just changed!"

Shu Long shifted his position somewhat awkwardly, vaguely sensing a warmth slowly spreading along the sheets. After letting the girl weakly resist for a moment, he shamelessly maintained the status quo.

"It's a small problem, it's a small problem."

After a while, Gan Mengning struggled to pick up her phone, which had slipped from her hand earlier, and pulled the progress bar back to the scene she had seen before briefly losing consciousness.

In the scene, Wang Jack's face turned red again. He tried to budge the iron arm with both hands but couldn't budge it at all. Then, he pretended to be calm and let go to brush off non-existent dust from his clothes.

"Alright! As far as we know, an F1 driver often experiences lateral forces of up to 6G during a race!"

"That topic change was so abrupt!"

Ignoring the criticisms coming from off-screen, Wang Jieke demonstrated his professionalism to the fullest.

It was just a little awkwardness, nothing more than a few damp patches of frost on the hem of my clothes.

"What does this mean? The force that a driver's neck experiences in that instant is basically equivalent to the weight of two water jugs! An average person's neck might be sore for a week after just one lap!"

The cult leader and the hall master were quite good at enlivening the atmosphere. They used all the exclamations and exclamations they had learned in their lives, and then volunteered to be the test subjects for the next segment.

Neck strength test.

This step involves testing the neck strength limits of each person present in turn. After putting on a resistance neck and shoulder training cap, another person applies tension from the side, and finally, the peak data of the tension display device in the middle is observed while maintaining stability.

Because of their frequent exposure to racing and track driving, the headmaster and the leader both have a neck strength of around 40kg, while NANA and Sister Xuan are slightly weaker, but still generally above 35kg.

So what are the standard values ​​for a normal adult male? Wang Jieke immediately pulled out an unlucky guy from among the photographers, and in the end, he was humiliatingly measured at 21kg.

After building up suspense for so long, when it was finally Shulong's turn, the live chat was filled with comments announcing the outcome.

Some guessed 50, some guessed 60, and of course, some just made wild guesses and guessed half a ton.

After removing the overly exaggerated answers, the boldest guess in the comments was basically 90kg.

Then an extremely comical scene unfolded: the leader, his face flushed with embarrassment, took turns pulling with the cult leader and Wang Jack, even having the two of them grab the rope together. After pulling up a maximum of 95kg, they stopped there.

Normally, a person who has not undergone systematic training may not be able to lift more than 80 kilograms vertically. Without a direct point of leverage, it is difficult to exert even half of one's strength limit if one does not know the techniques for generating force.

Of course, no matter how one tries to justify it theoretically, the visual impact at this moment is immense.

Two or three relatively robust adult men were tug-of-war with another person who was only using his head, using their hands and whole body to exert force. As a result, the one who used his head was completely unaffected except for the bulging veins on his neck, while the others who used their hands and feet were panting heavily.

"Holy crap, that's insane!"

"Pure animal!"

"The titanium alloy mouthpiece is tough enough. With this level of strength, you only have a neck ache for a week? I think if I went up and drove it for one lap, I could leave my head on the track!"

The barrage of comments was so noisy that it was seriously affecting my eyes and my viewing experience. Shu Long raised his hand to block out the densely packed subtitles, but instead left a few streaks of water on his phone screen.

"Tsk~ Don't mess around! Look how interesting it is."

Gan Mengning slapped Shu Long's hand away, wiped the screen clean on the blanket next to her, and then turned the barrage back on.

Most of it was probably just meaningless repetition of nonsense, but Gan Mengning, who had already experienced it firsthand, sincerely agreed with a few of them.

Especially those words like "pervert" and "animal."

After removing the various power equipment, Wang Jieke finally brought up another issue that deep F1 fans are most concerned about: Shu Long's abnormal clutch response in all three races. "I believe fans who have been following F1 have also noticed that Shu Long's starting response is not only ridiculously fast, but more importantly, his performance in all three races has been frighteningly consistent, as if a predetermined starting program has been implanted in his body!"

"Earlier this year, there was a report that mentioned a reporter questioning whether your starting line was actually based on a guess, and your response at the time was..."

"I said we can look forward to their performance in the upcoming matches."

"That's right. Judging from the results of the two matches that have already concluded, what you said back then was indeed true! So, may we ask you how you did it? What kind of training do you usually do?"

Shu Long straightened his expression slightly in the picture, trying his best not to look too smug.

"Well, there's definitely a part of talent involved. Of course, we also do a lot of training to improve concentration and reaction time, such as softball drop tests, light-up drills, and boxing dodge training."

Wang Jieke also took out two tennis balls from his pocket at the right time, wanting to test Shu Long's reaction and hand-eye coordination on the spot.

"Actually, I haven't done this in a long time either."

"It's okay, it's okay. If you embarrass yourself because of nervousness, our post-production team will cut out that part!"

"I didn't mean... well, whatever."

The audience quickly understood what Shu Long was trying to express.

Typically, this training game goes like this: one person holds a tennis ball, while another person holds it above the ball holder's hands with their palms down, without making direct contact.

Next, the ball holder will randomly release the tennis ball into free fall, and the test subject's task is to react in the shortest possible time and catch the falling ball accurately.

Shu Long said he hadn't done this training for a long time, not because he was worried about making a mistake and embarrassing himself, but because this training had become completely ineffective for him about two years ago.

Most people react immediately based on the ball handler's release action, rather than relying entirely on the dynamics of the ball's descent.

However, for Shu Long, who could even detect the gradual decrease in brightness of the starting signal lights due to capacitor discharge delay, no matter how much the ball handler reduced their range of motion or how suddenly they launched a surprise attack, the signs of muscle activation were still too obvious in Shu Long's eyes.

So the result of the filming was like this—it didn't look like Shulong reacted in time to catch the falling ball, but rather like Shulong directly snatched the ball from the person holding it.

"Wait a minute, is this exercise really that easy? I can swear to the audience! I really did use a release motion to catch the tennis ball, there was no deliberate coordination for the sake of the show!"

"Do you know what I even thought just now? For a split second, I actually thought that to become an F1 driver, you have to learn to read minds, you know? That's really outrageous!"

Wang Jieke was practically the mouthpiece for the audience on the other side of the screen, shouting out everyone's thoughts, and then calling over the others to test it out again.

It turns out that this was really not easy, it's just that one person was a little too twisted.

Nana and Xuan Jie performed slightly better. After dropping the ball a few times at the beginning, they adapted to the rhythm of the ball's descent and their success rate was relatively high.

On the contrary, whether the cult leader and the hall master were deliberately playing the game of personal relationships, after succeeding a few times by chance, they kept failing. In their frustration, they also attracted a lot of knowledgeable people.

It's probably because they finally saw an action they were able to perform, and after a series of suffocating moments, they finally found a way to release their pent-up emotions.

A barrage of comments like "Anyone can do this!", "Surely no one can't do it?", and "It's not as hard as it looks, you can learn it with a little practice" kept popping up.

Then, once the next project was announced, all such comments simply died out.

Wang Jieke was genuinely shocked because he had only briefly explained the process to Shu Long beforehand and had not rehearsed anything in advance.

However, his current reaction is indeed a bit exaggerated, mainly to lay the emotional groundwork for the upcoming project.

This is a small tool specifically designed for reaction time testing. The main principle is that nine small lights will light up randomly, and the tester needs to swat the lights out in the shortest possible time. After one minute, the computer will calculate the average reaction time.

The results from the other people were mostly between 0.3 and 0.5, but Shu Long's average reaction time was only 0.17 after a series of rapid-fire punches.

The reason why the clutch response is slower than that of the starting clutch is because the clutch response only involves a relatively fixed finger lifting motion. This test requires Shulong to first determine the position of the light before using his hand to locate it on-site.

Of course, if this prop allows a small number of people to continue to be stubborn because it's behind a screen, then the next test is a project that allows for direct and highly interactive interaction with the audience in front of the screen.

Simply put, it's like a video playing on the screen, divided into two adjacent sections, each containing a complex set of geometric shapes that are rapidly and randomly rotating and moving within their respective sections.

Shulong's task is to identify the number of geometric shapes in each of the two blocks in the shortest possible time, and to accurately determine the number of each geometric shape.

The difficulty of this project is so great that even the hall master and his team don't need to compare it to anything else. It goes without saying that they definitely couldn't do it, because 99.9% of the viewers watching the screen at the same time also couldn't do it.

"Holy crap, guys, the 0.75x speed challenge has failed!"

"There's no need to even try 0.5, challenge failed!"

"You guys are playing it on double speed? My eyes are hurting from counting even when I'm pausing! This guy's got some serious issues!"

But what about Shu Long? He only stared at the screen for a second or two before giving his answer on the spot.

"7 on the left and 9 on the right. There are four squares, one triangle and two pentagons on the left, and five triangles and four hexagons on the right."

"Is that right or wrong?"

No one paid any attention to Wang Jieke's question because no one on the scene could give an immediate answer. They had to pause the video to know if Shu Long's answer was correct.

The result was that it was exactly the same!
This test assesses a combination of abilities, including reaction time, dynamic vision, and brain information processing. Not to mention the time limit, even if an average person were given half an hour or an hour to watch it, they probably wouldn't be able to count the number of seconds.

By this point, many viewers already had their own answer regarding whether money alone could make one an F1 driver.

However, if such a long video of more than an hour and a half only contains this much content, it would be somewhat boring.
"Okay, viewers, some of you might be wondering, didn't we agree that this episode would be about 'speed'?"

"Don't rush! After all, those two Ford Mustangs we borrowed at great expense at the beginning haven't even had a chance to play yet. So the next segment is the real highlight that everyone has been waiting for!"

(End of this chapter)