Chapter 1227 - 462: Strong Team Alfa Romeo
Then, the national anthem was played, followed by the final pre-race preparations.
The time quickly reached the final preparation stage before the race start, and Qin Miao parked his car in third place.
To be honest, Qin Miao felt that his starting position wasn’t that favorable, and he would be willing to swap it with Hamilton if possible.
Austin’s Circuit of the Americas is a counterclockwise circuit, with the pole position driver starting on the far right side of the track, but T1 is a heavy left-hand braking turn.
This makes the starting phase not so friendly for Qin Miao, who is positioned third.
As T1 of the Circuit of the Americas is the highest point of the entire track, with a vertical height of 30 meters, it is also a high-point left-downhill turn.
Therefore, the effect of the start phase is extremely important. If the start isn’t done well, forget attacking Verstappen and Sainz ahead; Qin Miao might not even be able to defend against Hamilton’s assault behind.
After all, Old Man’s strength has returned to its peak, posing a significant threat to him.
So during the preparation phase, sitting in the car, Qin Miao was contemplating how to fend off Hamilton’s attack.
This week, the official pit stop strategy given is two stops.
These are yellow-white-yellow and yellow-white-white.
This week, Qin Miao does not plan to use soft tires during the race, so he used up all his soft tires during practice and qualifying.
He has two sets of medium tires and one set of hard tires remaining.
The reason for using up all the soft tires is primarily due to the test process during practice, where, even with Qin Miao’s tire management skills, he couldn’t make the soft tires last long on the Circuit of the Americas.
Qin Miao could only manage ten laps at most on this track.
Although these 10 laps might seem plenty, they come at the cost of speed, which is derived using the tire-saving driving style with minimal tire wear.
Other drivers, even when saving tires, can only sustain five laps on a set of soft tires on the track.
If pushing with full effort, they might deplete it in three laps.
Of course, this data varies by ±1 lap depending on the amount of fuel in the car.
In F1, the durability of the five types of tires does not increase progressively with each type.
More importantly, it depends on the air temperature on the race day, and the roughness of the asphalt.
For races with relatively low track temperatures, medium tires might be faster than hard ones while also offering better durability.
However, today at the Circuit of the Americas, this logic is reversed.
In short, for today’s race, Qin Miao’s pit stop strategy is temporarily set to yellow-white one stop, with real-time adjustment based on any surprises on track.
Soon, all drivers completed their warm-up lap before the race began.
They parked their cars at their starting positions.
The chase cars at the back were ready, the green flag waved, and the race was about to start.
Five red lights lit up.
Extinguished!
The race began!
The engines of 19 cars on the track started roaring and growling.
Verstappen had an excellent start from the inside line, completely overtaking Sainz ahead of him before the braking point at T1. Moreover, Verstappen, occupying the inside line of the track at this point, didn’t even need to squeeze Sainz to the outside. Purely relying on his excellent start, he completely surpassed Sainz before the braking point at T1, and executed the best entry and exit lines at T1.