How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

With the lessons learned from Red Bull and Aston Martin, all domestic fans staying up late to watch today’s race sincerely hope there won’t be any mishap with Qin Miao’s tire change.

But there’s a law in this world called Murphy’s Law.

The gist is that the more you hope that something doesn’t happen, the more likely it is to happen.

To the domestic fans’ expectations, the Mercedes team still had an accident during Qin Miao’s tire change.

After Qin Miao stopped the car, although the tire changer for Qin Miao’s left rear wheel removed the tire immediately and installed the new one without issue, the air gun operator didn’t tighten the bolt the first time, only managing to do so the second time.

What should have been done in 2.5 seconds turned into an ugly 5.1-second pit stop.

So now, the original time gap of just 2.5 seconds between Qin Miao and Hamilton has directly turned into a 5-second gap, with the team forcefully increasing the competition difficulty for Qin Miao.

"How could this happen!"

"Mercedes! A tire change mistake! Such a low-level mistake at such a critical time?"

"Fortunately, Qin Miao’s loss is not too significant. At least compared to Red Bull and Aston Martin’s mistakes, Mercedes’s error is still within an acceptable range."

"At least Qin Miao still has enough time to charge the car’s battery. If he can catch up to Hamilton later in the race, he can use the charged battery to attack Hamilton."

After such an unexpected incident, the commentators at Five-Star Sports were surprised for a moment, then habitually began to appease the fans.

But upon witnessing this scene, domestic fans instantly flew into a rage and began to lash out regardless.

[If you can do it, do it. If not, resign early]

[Can’t even handle something like this, what kind of air gun operator are you?]

[Is Hamilton going to try for a pole race win, and you’re in such a hurry for it? Is Hamilton the father of your Mercedes team?]

[Can’t you figure out which is more important, Hamilton’s pole race win or Qin Miao’s world championship?]

[What a lie! What a hype!]

[Is this it? A seven-time champion now relies on external factors to win pole races?]

[This Mercedes team is so gloomy, once the contract expires, just go to Geely.]

...

Most people suspect conspiracy theories, thinking Qin Miao’s tire change mistake was internal manipulation by the Mercedes team.

Overall, when a particular driver within a team gains too much support in a specific area, such a small mistake harmful to this driver but beneficial to another will be magnified and overinterpreted.

Fortunately, at this point in time, everyone on the track doesn’t know about the storm of online opinions back home, probably thanks to a high wall blocking it.

And on the track, Qin Miao didn’t give any other opinions or remarks about the team’s mistake. Mainly because at this moment, Qin Miao’s strategic objectives had already been achieved.

With 6 laps remaining, Verstappen has a staggering 6-second lead over him.

Even if Verstappen gets a new set of soft tires now, he can’t catch up 1 second per lap to Qin Miao and then overtake him before the finish line, right?

So no matter what, Qin Miao can widen the gap over Verstappen on the driver standings.

As for the pole race win today?

There could be a fight for it, but if he really can’t secure it, Qin Miao doesn’t have any tricks.

After leaving the pit, Qin Miao naturally began to chase Hamilton ahead with all his might.

After all, Qin Miao switched to new soft tires with six laps to go. His car is light at the moment, the tire margin is sufficient, and Qin Miao is pushing hard every lap.

So in the first lap just out of the pit, Qin Miao closed the gap on Hamilton by 0.9 seconds per lap.

The gap between them reduced from 5 seconds to 4.1 seconds after one lap.

But this terrifying chase speed, like in the qualifying phase with soft tires, only persisted for a lap on the track; in the second lap, the 51st lap, Qin Miao’s lap speed catching up to Hamilton decreased from 0.9 seconds per lap to 0.7 seconds.

Lap 52, 0.5 seconds; Lap 53, 0.5 seconds.

Lap 54, 0.6 seconds.

He chased 0.1 seconds more this lap because Qin Miao’s ERS battery was full, and leaving it fully charged without discharging a bit is harmful for car batteries, so for optimal balance of storage capacity and efficiency, Qin Miao needs to keep the ERS battery charge between 80% and 90% during the race.

By now, the gap between Qin Miao and Hamilton has shrunk to just 1.8 seconds.

At this stage, with two laps left to the race’s end.

Under such circumstances, even if Qin Miao catches up to Hamilton, he probably only has one opportunity to launch an attack before the race ends.

Lap 55, the gap between Qin Miao and Hamilton was reduced to 1.2 seconds.

While going through the big manufacturing, Qin Miao could already gain a very slight slipstream behind Hamilton.

And by this time, Qin Miao’s tires were starting to overheat. Since for recovering the gap caused by the team’s 5.1-second tire change, Qin Miao never conserved his tires after leaving the pit, and naturally pushing hard led to decay eventually.