How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

Even if there’s no competitiveness, Alonso really doesn’t want to stay in this crappy Alpine team and put up with this crap anymore.

Whoever the hell wants to stay can stay.

And after Alonso retired from the race, Bottas actually picked up a bargain, because he moved up from what should have been eleventh to tenth, and could bag a point after the race.

On Hamilton’s side, Mercedes’ estimation of the Red Bull’s tyre condition was a bit too optimistic; Verstappen actually did complete the entire race on the medium tyres, and even in the latter stages, the grip of Verstappen’s tyres was no worse than Hamilton’s.

Because of that, Hamilton completely lost any realistic chance of challenging Verstappen for the race win.

In the end, the race wound down relatively calmly in the closing laps.

On the final lap, Qin Miao was still 2.1 seconds behind Perez in third.

For Qin Miao to chase up to that position, he had really already done his best.

But with that 10-place grid penalty, plus all the time lost behind Brother Tou, Qin Miao ultimately missed out on a chance to step onto the podium in this race.

Still, the team was reasonably satisfied with Qin Miao’s result.

After all, this was roughly the result they had projected for Qin Miao before the race started.

Red Bull were of course more than happy to see this.

In today’s race, among the drivers who finished at the front, everyone except Hamilton was happy.

Hamilton mainly because he’d spent an entire race stuck behind Verstappen trying to attack, but never managed to pose a real threat.

Perez, on the other hand, scored a podium at his home race, so of course he and the Mexican fans at the track couldn’t be happier.

As for Verstappen taking the race win, there’s not much more to say.

"Alright, let’s congratulate Verstappen, who has taken another race win after a gap of three rounds, and completed a pole-to-win at the Mexican Grand Prix, breaking the three-year streak where whoever took pole at the Mexican Grand Prix couldn’t convert it into a win!" After the race ended, the Five-Star Sports commentators naturally followed the usual post-race routine, congratulating Verstappen on his result on track.

At the same time, they didn’t forget Qin Miao, who had also performed very well today.

"Qin Miao started twelfth today and finished fourth. This result is acceptable for both Qin Miao and Mercedes; at least it stops Verstappen from further closing the championship points gap to Qin Miao."

"The only real pity is the other Chinese driver, Zhou Guanyu. In today’s race, Zhou Guanyu’s single-lap pace was actually on par with his teammate Bottas," Zhou Haoran said. "In fact, in the first stint, Zhou Guanyu’s single-lap pace on the mediums was 0.1 seconds faster than Bottas, but Alfa Romeo’s pit crew made a mistake and directly sent Zhou Guanyu into Albon’s little DRS train, so Zhou basically disappeared in the latter part of the race."

"Yes, exactly, and we also hope that after this race Alfa Romeo can improve their pit stop procedures, so that next season they don’t keep dragging their drivers back with tyre-change issues."

After the race, Qin Miao actually felt a lot more relaxed, because with this result he didn’t have to go to the post-race interviews or the podium.

Once he got out of the car, quite a few drivers came over to say hi to Qin Miao.

The reason everyone was being so enthusiastic was that throughout the whole 2022 season, the only races where Qin Miao didn’t make the podium were the second round in Saudi Arabia at the start of the year, and today’s Mexican Grand Prix.

It was rare to see Qin Miao not in the top three, so naturally everyone wanted to come over and join the fun.

Of course, there was also the fact that Qin Miao had announced he was going to have a child.

Drivers don’t get to see each other in private that often; everyone’s busy, and there’s rarely a chance to congratulate Qin Miao face-to-face, so they’ve mostly just sent messages on their phones.

Now they weren’t in a hurry to go for weighing, and with this chance to chat with Qin Miao in person, they naturally took the opportunity to congratulate him face-to-face.