Chapter 320: Chapter 163: Bahrain Grand Prix 1
"Actually, there’s another angle to look at." At this moment, Zhou Haoran chimed in.
Without waiting for the other two commentators to ask, Zhou Haoran explained, "Don’t forget Qin Miao transferred from Ferrari to Mercedes. We can also look at the expression on Binotto’s face after Qin Miao gets a good result..."
...
[Are you stealing bamboo shoots?]
[Listen to this, is this even human language?]
[So, watching Ferrari’s joke, huh?]
[Ferrari is a circus team]
[What kind of bottom-feeder is this Sainz?]
[I’m also baffled by Ferrari. There’s a genius driver in their youth training who can arm wrestle with Hamilton, yet they don’t use him. They insist on bringing in Sainz as No. 2 driver.]
[Suggested to send Ferrari a batch of clown noses]
...
On the track, Qin Miao was also taken aback after Hamilton gave way. Qin Miao was ready for the psychological battle of being unable to overtake Hamilton in this lap due to his defense.
But Qin Miao didn’t expect Hamilton to actually do as he said before the race. If Qin Miao’s speed was faster, Hamilton would let him pass.
At this moment, it’s hard for Qin Miao to pinpoint his exact feelings, but after overtaking Hamilton, he started pursuing Verstappen ahead.
However, Qin Miao was not in a hurry because no matter what, his tires were faster than Verstappen’s and would not wear out too much. Keeping his rhythm steady was all right.
By the seventh lap, the gap between Qin Miao and Verstappen had decreased from 1.5 seconds to 1.3 seconds.
Right after this lap, Frankie’s voice came through Qin Miao’s TR: "Qin, you’re 0.3 seconds faster per lap than Verstappen. Your tires are in similar condition, so please push."
Qin Miao was stunned upon hearing this. He was timing it himself. Although he had a speed advantage over Verstappen, he was only about 0.1 seconds faster per lap, not 0.3 seconds...
This was because during the race he was too focused and didn’t have extra mental capacity to ponder the hidden meaning in this message.
It was actually the team applying pressure to the Red Bull team through the TR.
Even though there was a data exaggeration, Qin Miao’s speed was indeed faster than Verstappen’s. How much faster didn’t matter at the moment.
Shortly after the team’s words, there was also some communication on Verstappen’s TR, essentially urging him to push.
To maintain at least a three-second safety gap with the car behind.
So by lap 10, the gap between Qin Miao and Verstappen had widened to 1.8 seconds.
At this point on the track, Verstappen was leading, with the two Mercedes cars running in tandem behind.
Meanwhile, Leclerc, who initially was fourth, got overtaken by Norris, and Norris now had a gap of over 7 seconds with Hamilton.
Even though 10 laps had been completed in the race, only six laps had been truly raced.
The gap between the Mercedes cars and the cars behind was a frightening 1.1 seconds per lap.
Notably, Qin Miao using soft tires was indeed faster than his teammate Hamilton, who was using medium tires, but not by much, just about 0.3 seconds per lap.
And this gap was just enough for Hamilton to make up with DRS, so the gap between Qin Miao and Hamilton remained within one second.
Toto watched this scene with amazement.
To be honest, for the first race, he had mentally prepared for Hamilton having to fight alone. The Mercedes team even prepared a contingency plan in case Qin Miao crashed in the first race, and Toto also had a draft ready to console Qin Miao in case of a mistake.
Of course, there were also people who believed Qin Miao wouldn’t perform too poorly, even in his first race.
However, even among this group, most thought Qin Miao would need 1-2 races to adapt, and no one expected him to perform so well.
When the director cut to Toto, everyone could see that although his arms were crossed, the corners of his mouth were slightly raised.
Apparently, despite the fact that the two Mercedes cars were not in the positions Toto initially anticipated, he was satisfied with their current performances.
The three cars at the front didn’t have much camera time since Qin Miao couldn’t catch up with Verstappen in a short time, and without any mistakes, Hamilton had no way of overtaking Qin Miao. The three cars were basically cruising.
Instead, the cars behind were having fun fights, with tire changes and overtakes happening.
By lap 13, after two laps without live coverage, the front group suddenly grabbed the director’s attention again.
Hamilton received a team order to pit and switch to hard tires.
Bear in mind, Hamilton was on medium tires, which were far from their grip limit.
Hamilton’s pit stop tire strategy was meant to pressure Red Bull. After switching to new hard tires, Hamilton’s speed would surely be faster than Verstappen on worn medium tires, possibly even faster than Qin Miao’s.
At Red Bull, upon seeing Mercedes’ strategy shift, the team and the strategy group at the factory got busy.
Judging by Hamilton’s approach, he seemed to want to run the entire race on a set of hard tires but didn’t rule out pitting for soft tires in the final laps since he indeed had a new set of softs in reserve.
Of course, Mercedes had more up their sleeve.
After Hamilton pitted for a tire change, Frankie’s voice came through Qin Miao’s TR: "Qin, we have plenty of tires left. Push as hard as possible."