Chapter 1243 - 467: Resolution (2)
"Qin Miao, what are your thoughts after this season ends?"
Qin Miao: ???
Seeing Qin Miao’s confusion, Toto explained, "I mean, what are your plans? You must want to travel around during the vacation, right?"
Qin Miao was actually holding back a breath at this time, but when the team boss personally sits in front of you to chat, especially since he has helped you when you were a bit lost, it’s naturally impossible for Qin Miao to remain indifferent. So after thinking for a moment, Qin Miao said, "During the winter break, after work is done, I’ll probably go back home to accompany my family. Mainly because I’ve been too busy on the track lately, and Qimeng is pregnant. I haven’t had time to be home with her, so after this season ends, those are probably my plans."
This time it was Toto’s turn to be at a loss. Geez, such a big deal as being pregnant, why haven’t you told anyone?
Though it’s true that this isn’t something particularly important, for other teams in the paddock it’s just some entertainment.
"Qin Miao, that’s your fault. Since we work together on the team, we’re family. Why didn’t you tell us about such an important thing?" Toto looked at Qin Miao and said, "How about I let Suzy bring some gifts to see Qimeng recently? I’ve been a bit busy lately."
"There’s no need. Qimeng is currently in China. It would be quite troublesome for Suzy to make a trip, and she’s quite busy herself. I appreciate the thought." Qin Miao hurriedly declined. Recently, though Qin Miao hadn’t seen his wife, the girl had been complaining to him about being bored every day on the phone.
Because of the pregnancy, Qimeng’s parents directly interrupted their travel plans, and Qin Miao’s mom also put aside all her work.
The three elders started circling around Qimeng.
Forget about playing on the computer or watching TV on the phone; even reading books had a very strict time limit.
Qimeng had complained more than once to Qin Miao on the phone that after getting pregnant, she felt like she was in prison.
Qimeng is probably very irritable right now.
Qin Miao, already so tired, naturally doesn’t want Qimeng to have to make small talk with a foreigner she’s not quite familiar with because of his matters.
Seeing Qin Miao refuse, Toto didn’t push further.
So the conversation shifted to another topic, but the main purpose of Toto’s visit to Qin Miao was also achieved.
Which was to chat with Qin Miao, divert Qin Miao’s attention, and at least let that inner fire inside Qin Miao dissipate a bit.
Following that, although the conversation content between Qin Miao and Toto avoided Toto, the main topic for both remained on the education of future generations.
Mainly it was Toto passing on his experience in educating children to Qin Miao.
Although Toto needed to manage the team and travel the world with the team’s staff for many years, he did have some vacation time, but overall it wasn’t too much.
But since Toto has three kids, even if he hasn’t eaten pork, he’s seen pigs run, right?
So he shared with Qin Miao some solid tips on raising kids, and also recommended a few pretty good schools near the UK.
But in Qin Miao’s own mind, he prefers to send his children back to China for schooling.
On one hand, abroad is notoriously xenophobic, and it’s challenging for an Asian kid not to be bullied in a foreign school.
On the other hand, the growing environment is important. Qin Miao doesn’t want his child to talk like Zhou Guanyu, who habitually uses inverted sentences.
But Qin Miao still listened to Toto’s suggestions.
The two chatted like this for nearly half an hour, and during this time Frankie and his team also checked Qin Miao’s car.
The test results didn’t need much elaboration; Qin Miao’s car did encounter ERS failures, not mechanical ones, but program failures of the car’s ERS.
In simple terms,
During the race, Qin Miao’s car’s ERS control system got stuck.
It could be understood as the mini-computer freezing during the race.
Soon after, the post-race meeting was called.
After chatting with Toto for half an hour about children, that emotion of Qin Miao’s dissipated quite a bit, but his purpose hadn’t changed; he still wanted the team to give him a specific answer on this matter.
Soon, having completed various commercial activities, Hamilton also returned to the Mercedes team’s paddock.
He wasn’t even late by much this time, just 10 minutes.
The post-race meeting, which happens after every grand prix weekend, began.
At first, it’s naturally routine to summarize and consolidate the problems encountered during this grand prix weekend and propose improvement plans, followed by voting to decide on which plan to adopt.
Then it’s the situation of funds spent during this grand prix weekend, and the utilization of racing resources.
Finally, it’s the drivers and other team staff reflecting on the issues everyone faced on the track during the weekend in the meeting.
In this session, Qin Miao was the first to stand up and express that he encountered the ERS malfunction on the track.
This was unrelated to the technician team; program issues were for the design team to handle. The ERS glitch Qin Miao encountered was a malfunction of the steering wheel’s embedded system.
So after receiving Qin Miao’s feedback, Elliott adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and stood up, saying, "Based on our post-race inspection, Qin Miao’s car indeed encountered an ERS issue. However, according to our recent inspections, it’s judged that Qin Miao’s system failure this time is most likely due to the vehicle overheating, resulting in the steering wheel CPU hitting a thermal wall and downclocking, reducing computational speed and thus causing the program to crash.
We recently tried rebooting Qin Miao’s steering wheel system, and the ERS functionality was restored."
"Another possibility is that there could be some undiscovered bugs in the steering wheel program. After the meeting, Qin Miao’s steering wheel will be directly air-shipped back to the Brackley headquarters for disassembly and study, while all data will be exported for an assessment. If it truly is a program issue, the programming and development department at headquarters will fix this loophole."
"Given the principle that with a first there must be a second, in the upcoming upgrade plans for car development, we’ll add cooling fins for the steering wheel CPU to enhance cooling efficiency, optimize the ERS startup logic, and concurrently swap in the next-generation high-performance steering wheel CPU, which should fundamentally prevent the reoccurrence of these issues."
"However, these upgrade plans cannot be rolled out immediately, and this season, our upgrade budget is already bottomed out, so most improvement plans will have to wait until next season to be implemented. Currently, for the next Mexican Grand Prix, the only addition can be cooling fins on the CPU’s surface to ensure it won’t hit a thermal wall during operations in high-temperature environments, though this might add 10-30 grams to the car."
After Elliott finished speaking, he looked towards Qin Miao.
For this report, Qin Miao was the main subject.
And Qin Miao was quite satisfied with Elliott’s response because, indeed, the track temperature was a bit high today. He did feel somewhat hot in the car, with an apparent temperature around 55°.
So after hearing Elliott’s solution, Qin Miao agreed with the inspection result and consented to the subsequent procedures.
This was basically the meeting process for the Mercedes team. Raise an issue, and if there isn’t a solution in the short term, then it would be recorded by the responsible staff for future resolution attempts.
If there is a solution and it’s being actioned, then that solution is shared with everyone, along with a clear timetable for resolution.
Next, naturally, is to bring up other issues and present corresponding solutions.
And thus, this matter comes to a close.
However, after the meeting concluded and Qin Miao completed all his work, he received news, though uncertain if it counted as good or not.