How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

The time gap between the first place Verstappen and the second place Hamilton is 1.131 seconds.

You can clearly see on the broadcast screen that there is a gap of at least three car lengths between Verstappen and Hamilton, while the distance between Hamilton and Perez is at most one car.

When the race reached the third lap and DRS was enabled, the time gap between Verstappen and Hamilton had already grown to 1.8 seconds.

It’s worth noting that the Bahrain Sakhir circuit is still quite suitable for Mercedes’ W14 to leverage its advantage in straight-line speed and acceleration.

But before this season started, no one expected that Verstappen could open up such a large time gap in just the first three laps of the first race.

Even though Red Bull Racing was indeed the constructors’ champion last season, and it seemed as if the wind tunnel and CFD reductions after winning the championship didn’t even affect them; instead, Red Bull’s performance became even stronger.

"What exactly did Red Bull do during the winter break? How are they suddenly this fast?" The commentators at Five-Star Sports expressed their deep confusion and bewilderment over Red Bull’s sudden increase in speed.

Meanwhile, at the Mercedes team P room.

After being stunned for two laps: "WTF? This makes no sense! Why is Red Bull so fast?" Toto, who had always stood with his arms crossed, now opened his hands in helplessness and amazement.

On the track, Hamilton felt quite helpless at this moment too. Damn, he was already driving very fast! Really fast! Why couldn’t he catch up with Verstappen?

And as time went on, Verstappen kept running further and further ahead.

According to team calculations, Verstappen’s average lap speed was 0.3 seconds faster than both Qin Miao and Hamilton.

This time difference might be considered normal if compared to Earth and Inner Core groups’ cars.

However, no one expected such a large time gap between the two Mars rovers before the race began.

Ah, maybe Red Bull did.

As time progresses, Verstappen will continue to run farther and farther ahead.

Watching the Red Bull car gradually disappear until its taillights were almost out of sight, Hamilton suddenly had a bad feeling: Damn, could it be that Verstappen would finish more than 10 seconds ahead of me?

Meanwhile, as the DRS opened, Qin Miao, who had been closely trailing Perez, couldn’t help but let a somewhat cruel smile spread across his lips.

"Finally, I’ve waited for this opportunity!"

In the DRS zone between T3 and T4, Qin Miao entered the DRS zone behind Perez and opened the DRS.

As soon as the DRS was activated, the W14 seemed to shed all its burdens, with the tail speed increasing by 20 kilometers per hour.

The reason why the DRS efficiency was much slower than in qualifying was because Qin Miao’s car was still in a fully fueled state, and with the car being so heavy, the acceleration was naturally slower.

But this did not affect Qin Miao’s rapid approach to the Perez ahead of him.

Perez, seeing Qin Miao, who had just barely been shaken off to a 0.7-second gap, catch up within 0.2 seconds in just one DRS zone,

felt like all his efforts over the past three laps were a joke.

Honestly, Perez felt more helpless inside.

Perez has been with Red Bull for almost three years, and he has often competed against Qin Miao over these years.

Initially, Perez even felt some disdain towards Qin Miao, puzzled as to why Mercedes would promote a rookie driver directly from F2 to the main team, without following Mercedes’ tradition of letting new drivers train with Williams for two years before promotion.

However, after witnessing Qin Miao’s speed on the track, Perez understood why Mercedes did this.

The youngest world champion; if Perez were the team leader of Mercedes, he would also retain Qin Miao at any cost.