How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

Old Man watched as Qin Miao seamlessly inserted himself into his inner line with perfect timing, both at the start and in his brake control. After a long sigh, he decided not to stubbornly take the outer line and instead yielded the track to Qin Miao.

Although you’ve had a significant advantage this season, you still have to fight for the world championship title. I have no hope left; even if I get 8 points from this race, I might not catch up to Perez in the next two races. So go ahead and be arrogant for this season. If I don’t thrash you next season, then I’m not Hamilton.

With Hamilton voluntarily easing the pressure on the outer line and even yielding the line to Qin Miao,

Qin Miao naturally found himself behind Verstappen.

From then on, Qin Miao focused more on Verstappen ahead.

However, the Interlagos track’s overtaking-friendly nature is hard to capitalize on when a Red Bull is ahead.

Even though Red Bull was fined $7 million US Dollar due to budget cap violations, they still had upgrades planned that were applied to their cars this week.

Thus, trailing behind Verstappen without DRS made it unexpectedly difficult for Qin Miao to overtake Verstappen.

But as Verstappen caught up to Magelsen, Qin Miao’s helplessness in not catching up to the opponent dissipated significantly.

Because Verstappen’s pace was also slowed by Magelsen.

With the drivers ahead in a stalemate waiting for DRS activation, Alpine’s two drivers gave spectators a taste of the French team’s traditional antics as the two began to clash again.

Just at the start, at position T4, as O’Kang had a position advantage on the exit, he didn’t leave any space for his teammate Alonso, squeezing him off the track, beyond the white line.

Then Alonso’s car looked as if it lost control, slightly correcting to the left outside the track, his left front wheel lightly brushing against the right side pod of O’Kang’s car.

Though it seemed just a slight brush, without any debris,

it’s important to remember that the average speed of F1 cars at Interlagos track’s T4 can exceed 154 kilometers per hour.

So what seemed like a small collision directly damaged O’Kang’s side pod, causing a 5% loss in downforce.

Although a 5% loss in downforce doesn’t sound like much, in F1, any tiny fluctuation can greatly impact a car’s aerodynamic efficiency and overall balance. This 5% downforce loss was concentrated on O’Kang’s right side pod, disrupting the car’s aerodynamic balance and making its rear extremely unstable in handling.

Originally designed vortices disappeared or changed direction due to lateral shifts in the chassis.

Overall, in this bout with his teammate, O’Kang suffered a major loss.

Honestly, even when Qin Miao tussled fiercely with Verstappen, Qin Miao wouldn’t have engaged in such behavior of squeezing opponents off track on narrow corners.

While Qin Miao has indeed squeezed opponents off track more than once, he did so when the opponent’s front wheel was not alongside his own. If the opponent’s front wheel was alongside his, Qin Miao would still try to squeeze them off but would leave some space for them to exit the corner.

One can only say that at Interlagos track, O’Kang might really be doing something extremely irritating to other drivers that they can’t counter.

Initially, all spectators thought, after this collision, Alpine’s traditional antics would come to an end.

Second lap, Alonso, at Interlagos track in the seemingly corner but actually full throttle through T11, T12, T13, T14, these consecutive sequence of corners, caught O’Kang’s slipstream and prepared to attempt to overtake O’Kang.

Then Alonso absorbed O’Kang’s slipstream too vigorously and collided with O’Kang.

Breaking off a piece of his car’s left front wing.

At that moment, Alonso started to rant on the team radio, meaning something like: My front wing is gone, all thanks to my dear teammate!

Afterwards, upon investigation by the race stewards, the penalty for Alonso and O’Kang’s incident was a 5-second time penalty for Alonso, 2 points deduction on his Super License, along with a post-race reprimand.

The old comrades were likely also agitated, having been annoyed by O’Kang all season long. Now at season’s end and in this sprint race, given Alpine’s current car performance, achieving good results was unlikely anyway, so why not disgust O’Kang once more before this season ends.

Yet Brother Tou must have miscalculated, perhaps got carried away with slipstreaming, and crashed.

Now in only the second lap of this sprint race, the distance between drivers hasn’t fully opened up, so pitting to change tires repair now would be equivalent to declaring: "I’m not racing this one." without any distinction.

Thus, both damaged Alpine cars chose to stay on the track and persist, though due to the damage, their positions rapidly plummeted.

Soon, they both fell out of the points zone.

In the third lap, Qin Miao started to pressure Verstappen, but Verstappen was cunning.