How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

On the other side, upon seeing the situation on the track, the commentators from Five-Star Sports couldn’t hold back: "Hahaha, a significant mistake from the Red Bull team! It’s a rare sight to see this happen to the Red Bull team!"

"The most important thing is that Qin Miao is now in the lead, without the worries brought by Verstappen. Even if Qin Miao doesn’t outrun his teammate Hamilton in today’s race and only gets second, he will still earn more championship points than Verstappen on the driver’s overall points board, further expanding the points gap between the two."

Although this highly subjective commentary style was quickly controlled by the directors at Five-Star Sports on the other side, it was evident that the Five-Star Sports commentators were just as happy as the domestic fans.

On the track, after Red Bull’s mistake, Qin Miao naturally returned to first, and there was no one directly behind him.

However, Qin Miao himself knew that today’s race was not worry-free after Verstappen was out.

His teammate Hamilton is the real opponent. Only by defeating Hamilton does he have the possibility of winning the Grand Prix today.

But as the Five-Star Sports commentators said, even without beating his teammate, today’s race is just about winning a Grand Prix, which won’t change his position on the driver’s overall points board.

Next, without any psychological burden, Qin Miao continued to run his pace on the track with hard tires, while Hamilton behind him pursued Qin Miao with new medium tires.

After all, Qin Miao is using the hard tires. Even if he is good at conserving tires, the single-lap speed of Qin Miao’s hard tires is not as fast as Hamilton’s medium tires behind him. So quickly, Hamilton completed an undercut on Qin Miao in the 39th lap.

Now as long as Qin Miao pits to change tires, he will fall behind Hamilton when he comes out of the pit lane.

However, Qin Miao is not in a hurry now. The race is still long, and as long as he runs a sufficient distance on the track, Hamilton’s medium tires will degrade eventually.

At that point, he can use the durability of the hard tires to recapture the time gap.

Even if he can’t catch up, when the race reaches around the 50th lap, he can enter the pit lane and change to a brand new set of soft tires.

Then Qin Miao will let Hamilton experience what speed truly means.

And in this lap, Verstappen behind completed the overtaking of Leclerc.

Due to tire degradation issues, although Ferrari’s medium tire speed was faster than the hard tires in today’s race, the medium tires easily overheated, and after overheating, they began to degrade quickly. So after Leclerc tried defending against Verstappen for a while, he eventually had to give in.

It was clear that Verstappen on the track did not lose his confidence due to the team’s mistake in changing tires, nor was his mood greatly affected. His speed remained fast.

And in the 41st lap, Hamilton overtook Vettel, who hadn’t pitted yet, moving up to second.

Only then did Qin Miao realize that Vettel had unconsciously caught up to third. Qin Miao clearly remembered that Vettel had started today’s race outside the top 10, and being able to catch up here likely meant he had gained the full benefits from the two safety car sessions and found a suitable pit window.

Sometimes, achieving success is just a matter of a final push, but unfortunately, it faltered at the most crucial moment.

Despite perfect performance, strategy, and car condition, Aston Martin messed up in Vettel’s last pit stop.

Aston Martin contributed an even more ridiculous 16.8-second pit stop than Red Bull, which caused Vettel to completely miss his chance to score in the United States Grand Prix before retiring.

After this pit stop, Vettel completely fell out of the points zone.

As for how Vettel will "friendly" communicate with the team’s staff in Martin Team TR after this mistake, it goes without saying.

In the 47th lap, although Qin Miao was still leading on the track, he had a three-second gap with Hamilton.

However, in this lap, Qin Miao’s hard tires finally became faster than his teammate Hamilton’s medium tires, but even then, the advantage wasn’t much—a mere 0.1 seconds per lap.

Qin Miao felt that his hard tires were also starting to degrade.

The period after the restart had used up too much tire reserve due to the entanglement with Hamilton and Verstappen.

Finally, in the 49th lap, after chasing for two laps and narrowing the gap with Hamilton to 2.5 seconds, Qin Miao entered the pit lane.

Now that the race has reached its final stages and considering that Qin Miao still has a set of brand new soft tires, everyone knows which tires Qin Miao will switch to after pitting.

"Qin Miao, pitted." Bing from Five-Star Sports spoke a bit nervously.

Libao was more direct: "This tire change is very important, Mercedes must not have any mistakes in Qin Miao’s tire change."

"Exactly, as long as Mercedes doesn’t mess up Qin Miao’s tire change, there’s a high probability that Qin Miao will win the Grand Prix today."