How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

Not immediately pulling away from the drivers behind is also a way to protect his tires.

Although unwilling to admit it, Qin Miao knew that with 11 laps left in the race, using a set of old medium tires would not allow him to outrun Verstappen’s soft tires.

To defend against Verstappen, he could only rely on his teammate and the DRS train.

Hamilton, although not as crafty as Qin Miao, felt a sense of security seeing the aggressive Verstappen behind him, knowing Qin Miao was in front.

Verstappen chose the main straight line for his first attack.

With soft tires, Verstappen’s speed was noticeably faster exiting T12 than Hamilton and Qin Miao, thanks to the grip offered by the soft tires.

However, Verstappen did not immediately go all out to overtake Hamilton. Instead, he slipped into the slipstream outside Hamilton and pulled out only after reaching the limit.

The reason for pulling out on the outside was that Hamilton and Qin Miao seemed to be working together, instinctively blocking Verstappen’s inside line when he was about to attack.

To attack both, Verstappen had to go outside.

Of course, this attack by Verstappen was just a probe.

With both Mercedes taking the inside line, his attack didn’t bring any pressure to Qin Miao or Hamilton.

Without DRS, and with the Mercedes W13B being notorious for its terrifying straight-line speed,

without DRS, Verstappen at most drew alongside Hamilton, exceeding by a front wing distance.

At this position, all three cars arrived at the braking point of T1 one after another.

If Qin Miao was not in front pulling the slipstream for Hamilton, Verstappen was confident that he could finish it in one move and directly overtake Hamilton in this attack.

Unfortunately, there’s no "if".

After the probing attack failed, Verstappen knew that Qin Miao would not easily let him pass, and would definitely maximize the DRS train tactics.

Thus, he had to either rely on the tire advantage to keep pressuring Hamilton, waiting for him to make a mistake and forcibly insert into the gap between Qin Miao and Hamilton, or wait for a full battery charge and attempt an attack with DRS.

Verstappen believed with Newey’s design, once he opened the car’s DRS, he could overtake both Mercedes cars on the straight.

Amid the enthusiastic chants of the spectators, Qin Miao and Hamilton defended against Verstappen’s attack.

But two laps later, on lap 62, Verstappen once again revealed his sharp claws against the two Mercedes drivers.

Same attack point, same speed, but entering the DRS zone allowed Hamilton and Verstappen to open their DRS.

Honestly, Qin Miao tried hard. While entering T11, Qin Miao deliberately slowed down a bit to disrupt Verstappen’s rhythm entering the corner.

But after dueling with Qin Miao for so long, Verstappen learned to not reveal claws before reaching the best corner for attacking in today’s race.

Thus, he had sufficient time to react and didn’t think to exploit any seemingly easy openings left by Qin Miao.

The result was that after Qin Miao opened his DRS on the main straight, Verstappen’s speed was 20 km/h faster than Qin Miao and Hamilton.

The two Mercedes drivers could only watch helplessly as the Red Bull car with soft tires overtook them both from the outside.

To this, Qin Miao felt more helpless than anything.

The soft tires were inherently 0.36 seconds faster per lap than the medium tires, and Verstappen’s set was nearly 1.2 seconds faster per lap than Qin Miao’s set, which had run for 30 laps.

Faced with such a large lap speed difference, no matter how extraordinary Qin Miao’s defensive skills were, he had no solution. He couldn’t just turn sharply right and torpedo Verstappen off the track, could he?

PS. The company is busy today, so I still can’t update more frequently. This Chapter is 4500...