How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

Of course, it’s already the end of the season, and Zhou Guanyu has already proven his ability on the track. A setback in qualifying for a single race won’t affect Zhou Guanyu’s status within the Alfa Romeo team.

Besides, the Mexican Grand Prix is not the Monaco Grand Prix; as long as Zhou Guanyu maintains his speed, scoring points in the race isn’t too difficult.

After a brief rest, it was time for Q3 of the qualifying session.

In the first flying lap, both Qin Miao and Hamilton ventured out quite late.

This is a traditional habit of the Mercedes team.

However, in the first flying lap on the track, neither of the Mercedes drivers performed particularly well.

Qin Miao pushed too hard and encountered a crosswind on the track, causing his car to lose control and swerve off.

Fortunately, there was no further damage, and Qin Miao managed to bring the car back under control off the track and rejoin the circuit.

Knowing he violated track limits, Qin Miao knew his lap time would definitely be canceled.

So Qin Miao gave up on his first flying lap entirely.

Considering he didn’t have a banker lap, Qin Miao thought running the last flying lap would be psychologically stressful.

So during the late stages of this flying lap, Qin Miao treated it as a cooldown lap.

After crossing the line, he did another flying lap.

That flying lap went smoothly, but since Qin Miao wasn’t using brand-new soft tires, his lap time only temporarily placed him in third, and he was quickly pushed down to seventh.

Qin Miao’s teammate Hamilton made a mistake in T2, losing his rhythm for the lap, and exceeded track limits in T3.

But Hamilton’s mistake wasn’t as apparent as Qin Miao’s, so Hamilton didn’t realize his mistake at the time and completed the flying lap, only to find out afterward that his lap time was canceled.

Still, the initial troubles of the qualifying session didn’t affect the mindset or race rhythm of the two Mercedes drivers.

In the last flying lap of Q3, as soon as Hamilton came out, he showed strong performance, setting purple sectors in the first and third timers, leaping to first place, 0.1 seconds faster than Verstappen in second at the time.

Meanwhile, following Verstappen, Qin Miao had a pretty good flying lap coming out of the pit. He also set purple in the first and third timers, but in the T7T8T9 sequence, which mimics Silverstone Circuit’s complex corners, he encountered a slow car that didn’t give way in time. To avoid a collision, Qin Miao eased off the throttle, resulting in a yellow sector in the second timer.

When the final results came out, Qin Miao’s lap was only 0.01 seconds faster than Hamilton’s.

Although there was still obvious room for improvement in his performance, defeating his teammate Hamilton in qualifying, especially when he was in peak form, left Qin Miao with no regrets.

Of course, the newly replaced engine powertrain system also contributed to Qin Miao’s results.

But the two Mercedes drivers couldn’t stay happy for long, as Verstappen immediately set purple sectors across all timers, claiming pole position in the qualifying for the event.

He was 0.14 seconds faster than Qin Miao in second.

Seeing the widening gap, both Qin Miao and Hamilton felt a bit helpless. They wondered who Red Bull learned these bad habits from, hiding their performance until now.

At the end of qualifying, the drivers were ranked as follows:

1: Verstappen

2: Qin Miao

3: Hamilton

4: Perez

5: Sainz

6: Bottas

7: Leclerc

8: Norris

9: Alonso

10: O’Kang

However, Qin Miao was penalized for replacing an excessive number of engine power components, so he will face a 10-place grid penalty for the race tomorrow.

This means Qin Miao will start tomorrow’s race from 12th position, just behind Ricardo.

As a result, the home driver Perez will start from the second row in tomorrow’s race, and Zhou Guanyu enters the top ten again.

Even though Qin Miao will start from the right side of the track in 12th position tomorrow,

he qualified second today, so he won’t miss any of the post-race activities.

But these events have become second nature to Qin Miao, so there’s no need to elaborate here.

In contrast, while Qin Miao remained calm and accustomed, Hamilton, whose performance had been lacking this season until the end, showed keen interest in the post-race interviews and seemed quite happy.

After the qualifying session, Qin Miao returned to the team base, held a brief meeting, and went back to the hotel to rest.

Mexico is not considered very safe for the two Mercedes drivers, so after the race, they skipped fan meet-and-greets and went straight back to the hotel to rest.

Returning to the hotel, Qin Miao habitually picked up his phone to check if anyone had shared interesting stuff in the groups he had joined years ago that would make him nod involuntarily.

After all, with Qimeng back home, as a man in his twenties, Qin Miao sometimes found his pent-up energy quite challenging to handle.

At that moment, Qin Miao noticed a message from Qimeng.

He opened it to find a picture.

Qin Miao immediately recognized it as Qimeng’s belly.

After all, he hadn’t hesitated to nibble and touch it many times.

But unlike before, when it was white and flat with visible abs lines, Qimeng’s belly still showed defined abs, but the area around the lower abdomen had started to bulge.