How Did I Become an F1 Driver?-Chapter 474 - 212: Overcut (6K, Extra Update 3/19)_4

Lap 16, Qin Miao, who had been pushing with maximum effort, finally felt that his car’s tires were starting to wear down, with a noticeable lack of grip in the corners.

This rate of degradation was somewhat beyond Qin Miao’s expectations, but for the tires to last this many laps before degrading, it was a decent lifespan.

Fortunately, Qin Miao wasn’t racing at a qualifying pace, leaving room for maneuver out of the corners, so despite some understeer at T1, he managed to slightly trail-brake and just lightly grazed the rear-right tire against the barrier, slightly nicking an advertisement board—there was no other collision.

However, Qin Miao was clearly aware that because he hadn’t conserved the tires, his soft tires had hit the cliff point, and their grip was rapidly declining.

So Qin Miao said over the TR: "The tires are nearly done, I want to pit."

Mercedes had been prepared long ago, and with Qin Miao’s words, the team personnel rushed out from their positions, bringing out the set of medium tires Qin Miao was about to switch to.

Meanwhile, across the pit lane from the Mercedes team, at a diagonal, Red Bull’s Horner glanced at the color of the tires Qin Miao was about to switch to and raised his eyebrows.

At this moment, the gap between Qin Miao and Verstappen was 19.4 seconds, while the time to pass through the Baku circuit pit lane is around 16.5 seconds, meaning that the Mercedes tire change crew needed to complete the tire change within 2 seconds for Qin Miao to successfully overcut Verstappen.

Someone might ask, isn’t there still 0.9 seconds of surplus time?

But it’s important to note that when Qin Miao slows down and stops at the tire change spot, then accelerates back out after changing the tires, there is at least one second of surplus time there.

The mentioned 16.5 seconds for passing through the pit lane is without stopping; it’s the time needed to complete a lap through the pit lane and then re-enter the track.

Qin Miao, pushing with maximum effort on the track, didn’t really think about these details that wouldn’t affect his lap times at the moment.

However, everyone in the Mercedes team’s pit room understood the importance of this data.

While waiting for Qin Miao to pit, Reyes issued an imperative order among the tire-changing engineers inside: the tire change must be completed within two seconds.

Qin Miao showcased his strength and driving skills in the last segment, and we can’t drop the ball now.

Aware of the significance of this moment, the rest of the Mercedes staff were also geared up and eagerly awaited Qin Miao’s pit stop.

After another lap, with the tires starting to struggle, Qin Miao entered the pits at the end of lap 16.

Qin Miao approached the pit entry extremely aggressively.

The right-side tires entered the pit lane entry almost scraping the barrier.

If there was a high-speed camera set up there, it would capture how Qin Miao’s tires scraped against the right-side guardrail on entry.

It may sound a bit exaggerated, but during the days before the race, Qin Miao spent considerable time practicing pit entries in Bahrain.

And we all know that pit stops for tire changes usually occur when tire wear is quite high, so during simulator testing, Qin Miao set the tire data to very high wear.

Long hours of practice paid off at this moment.

Just before the white line, he hit the brakes hard, causing the front two wheels to smoke, but Qin Miao managed to keep his car at exactly 80 km/h as his front wheels crossed the line.