Car Racing without Money-Chapter 146 - 99: Top-Tier Professional Psychological Game (5K)

The Renault European Cup qualifying time is half an hour, just like the previous tour races.

This time, however, all the participants are seasoned drivers who are in no rush to leave the paddock, nor is there any queue in the pit lane.

Instead, they’re waiting for drivers from other teams to first take two laps on the track before starting their own flying laps for the qualifying session.

This involves strategic battles in Formula racing, commonly referred to in F1 as "outlap timing".

Many might not understand why the qualifying session is just thirty minutes long, making it seemingly imperative to start running on the track as soon as possible.

On one hand, running more laps can help warm up one’s feel.

On the other hand, if the performance is poor, there’s plenty of time to try again.

If it’s too late to leave the pit, and the feeling comes out or the lap time is unsatisfactory, there might not be enough time to push for another lap.

In reality, the "outlap timing" in Formula racing is far from simple.

Formula racing requires tire warming, and achieving optimal working temperature wastes one to two laps of warm-up time.

After F1 entered the hybrid era, there’s more of a concept called the "cooling lap", where the car has to charge its batteries for a lap before achieving full power in the next lap.

This principle is much like hybrid electric vehicles used in later generations, where if the battery is out of charge, the vehicle slows down, and needs the engine to charge the battery to 80% or more for full power output.

Calculating this whole process, a driver needs two to three laps to set up for a full-power flying lap, making it impossible to go all out at will.

Perhaps someone will ask, if a few laps are needed to set up, doesn’t it prove that starting out early is better? This way, maybe a set-up of two to three rounds can yield two to three more flying laps.

Theoretically, that’s correct, but realistically it is not...

Qualifying is a full-power challenge where the car and track are pushed to their limits, exerting massive pressure on the tires.

Often, a new set of tires can only withstand one full-speed flying lap; to run again requires a pit stop for a tire change, which wastes at least tens of seconds.

Additionally, refueling is not allowed in qualifying, meaning you must pre-plan how many laps to run, or else using too much fuel will cause post-race weighing to fail, and the qualifying results will be forfeited.

Wanting to try more laps means carrying more fuel, which makes the car much heavier and unable to achieve the fastest lap time.

Wanting to go light on fuel and bet on the post-race weighing edge means the driver might only have one flying lap opportunity—succeed or fail!

Finally, there’s an extremely important point: during racing, rubber particles from hot melt tires continuously fall onto the track, which have adhesion and grip far superior to asphalt.

Competitive vehicle acceleration tests around the world use rubber tracks rather than ordinary asphalt tracks to gain the best grip.

This means that as time passes, more rubber particles accumulate on the track’s driving line, increasing grip.

Cars that leave the pits later have the chance to take advantage of grip, potentially running faster laps than those that went out earlier!

This is why, watching F1 races, you sometimes feel some teams are incredibly stupid, unwilling to let drivers out early during qualifying, stubbornly waiting until time’s almost up for flying laps.

The result of mishandling or unexpected circumstances is that the driver’s flying lap isn’t completed when time runs out, and they directly have no score, ranking at the bottom!

This is because some small teams know their car’s performance is lacking and can’t achieve good results under normal circumstances. They simply take a big gamble, hoping to perform exceedingly well with the track’s strongest grip near the end.

If they win the bet, it’s impressive; even driving a tractor can yield good results.

If they lose the bet, then they’re fools; an F1 team can’t even get the outlap timing right!

Renault cars belong to standard regulation cars, with no performance variance, so there’s naturally no need to be gamblers.

However, the track condition difference still exists, and theoretically, leaving the pits later is advantageous.

"Odetto, going out?"

Seeing that five minutes of qualifying time had passed, and seven or eight teams had already chosen to leave the pits, Chen Xiangbei couldn’t help but ask.

To be honest, he could understand F1 teams being meticulous about outlap timing.

After all, it’s where the world’s top twenty drivers compete, and the lap time difference can be imperceptible, but the results could be thousands of miles apart.

The battle of tactics and psychology must be played to the extreme to achieve victory over the strong and create incredible miracles.

But at the level of Renault cars, Chen Xiangbei didn’t think he would be eliminated; his baseline was to enter the top ten, making it seem less necessary.

"Let’s wait a bit more."

Odetto crossed his hands over his chest, his gaze fixed on the wall-mounted monitor screen, responding in a calm tone.

"More cars are hitting the track; traffic will get congested if we delay further."

Chen Xiangbei wasn’t worried about the minor grip differences; he was more concerned with the number of cars on the track.

Seven or eight teams have released more than ten cars, meaning Chen Xiangbei would risk encountering obstructing opponents every few hundred meters on the track.

It’s manageable if the other driver is in a flying lap—perhaps he could draft behind them for extra speed. But if the opponent is in a warm-up lap and occupying the driving line, dodging and avoiding them would be a headache for Xiangbei, slowing his lap time significantly.