How Did I Become an F1 Driver?-Chapter 505 - 223: The Terrifying and Powerful Red Bull (Part 2)

Chapter 505: Chapter 223: The Terrifying and Powerful Red Bull (Part 2)

After this race ended, the first of the triple back-to-back races also concluded, and all the F1 staff hurriedly packed up their team equipment.

The convenience of the Paul Ricard circuit is that there’s an airport right next to the track.

So, once everything is packed up, they can directly head to the airport on the right to transport the materials to the next stop, which is Austria.

The next two F1 Grand Prix races will be held at the Red Bull Ring in Austria.

To be honest, for Mercedes, these two races won’t be easy, after all, Austria is Red Bull’s home ground.

Red Bull can definitely test their cars in Austria frequently, and their cars are surely the most well-tuned for the Red Bull Ring circuit.

Moreover, as the home ground, all the spectators on-site will be supporting Verstappen and Perez.

When a large swath of orange smoke bombs rises in the stands, you might feel like you’re fighting against the whole world.

As the competitor of the Red Bull team, everyone in the Mercedes team might find it hard to bear in the Red Bull Ring for the next few days.

Due to Mercedes’ poor performance in the French Grand Prix, Qin Miao and Hamilton didn’t get much rest after returning to Britain and started the analysis of the French Grand Prix at Brackley.

They took out the meeting notes, repeatedly confirmed and analyzed, compared with Red Bull and their own cars, and simultaneously initiated new upgrade parts, striving to install them on the cars before the British Grand Prix.

Time always flies by in back-to-back race environments, and by Wednesday, Qin Miao once again arrived in Austria.

This is Qin Miao’s second time in Austria; the first time was when he was in F2 and raced an F2 race here.

It’s worth mentioning that Zhou Guanyu will also be in Austria during this half-month.

Although F2 doesn’t have a race in Austria this year, as an Alpine youth training driver, Zhou Guanyu got the opportunity to drive an F1 car in a practice race during the second Grand Prix in Austria this month.

Actually, he’s not the only young driver getting practice race opportunities at this time; aside from Alpine, other teams also choose to have their youth training drivers participate in practice races to fulfill the mandatory requirements set by FIA for each team.

Since the schedule involves running two Red Bull Ring races consecutively, by the first race, everyone has more or less mastered the tuning and characteristics of this circuit. As long as there are no drastic weather changes, the tuning setup from the first race can basically be used for the second race.

So Zhou Guanyu can gather with Qin Miao once again. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

However, Qin Miao has been really busy lately, and only managed to walk the circuit once more with Zhou Guanyu on Thursday.

Both of them had actually walked this circuit in F2, but back then they viewed the circuit from an F2 perspective.

Now both of them are driving F1 cars, so their perspective on the circuit will also be different.

After walking the circuit, Qin Miao plunged into busyness once again.

Qin Miao’s performance in the three practice sessions on Friday and Saturday was relatively average.

In qualifying, it was clear Red Bull’s home advantage showed, with both Red Bulls absurdly fast on this track, and Qin Miao’s performance was rather ordinary, only managing to secure a fourth-place start.

It’s unclear if the Mercedes car had performance issues in Austria, but Qin Miao felt less comfortable driving the Mercedes W12 on the Red Bull Ring than he did in his F2 car.

After the race, when he asked Hamilton about it, Hamilton also said the car was tough to handle here.

During the race, there wasn’t much else to add; although both Qin Miao and Hamilton had average qualifying speeds, the long-distance race played to the strengths of the Mercedes cars and the two drivers.

So from the start, they quickly got behind Verstappen, but Verstappen was just too fast at home and they found no opportunities to overtake throughout the race. Verstappen led from start to finish.

There was only a brief period after pit stops when he fell behind, but as the drivers ahead pitted one after another, he returned to the lead.

Ultimately, as the race ended, Verstappen won the championship again, with the two Mercedes drivers finishing second and third, just like in the previous race.

Despite this, the Mercedes team still leads Red Bull significantly in team points, but the points of the two Mercedes drivers are visibly trailing behind Verstappen.

The points and rankings after the first Red Bull Ring race were as follows:

P1: Verstappen +25

P2: Hamilton +19 (fastest lap)

P3: Qin Miao +15

P4: Perez +12

P5: Norris +10

P6: Sainz +8

P7: Leclerc +6

P8: Stroll +4

P9: Alonso +2

P10: Tsunoda +1

We won’t elaborate much on the busy process after the race; in short, after this race, the two drivers discussed the issues with their cars in the team’s internal meeting, but frankly, Qin Miao didn’t know where he went wrong in this race.

He just felt that the Mercedes car couldn’t run fast on the Red Bull Ring, while Verstappen was absurdly fast.

After conveying these identified issues to the team, the work of Qin Miao and Hamilton ended, leaving these concerns to the Mercedes team’s design and logistics departments to handle.

Since the second Grand Prix is also held in Austria, Qin Miao didn’t return to Britain after the race but stayed on in Austria.

After all, this is Toto’s hometown, so after the race, Qin Miao was taken by Toto to meet his family.

In fact, Qin Miao got along quite well with Toto’s son, and little Toto even said he was a fan.

Qin Miao was a bit curious at the time and asked who his previous idol was.

The other, without any pretense, honestly answered it was Hamilton.

Then Qin Miao asked why he didn’t like Hamilton anymore but liked him instead. The little guy adorably said it’s because he thinks Qin looks better than Hamilton.

Qin Miao immediately followed his hometown custom and gave the kid a five thousand euro red envelope.

What a sweet-talking kid!

Afterward, Qin Miao mainly spent time with Toto.

Though most of the time, it was Toto who initiated the conversations, with Qin Miao responding from the side.

Qin Miao felt that Toto sought him out to chat not just because his family happened to be in Austria and wanted Qin Miao to visit but also to comfort him, as the French Grand Prix loss could be quite impactful for a young driver normally.

After having dinner at Toto’s house, Qin Miao returned to his hotel in Austria.

The second week, the second Austrian Grand Prix began.

Because the groundwork laid by the first race showed no major issues, the live audience for this race reached 132,000, with both sides of the stands fully packed.

The on-site audience was waving flags in Austrian national colors, with the large stands viewed from afar appearing in the red, white, and red tricolor, one big stand like a constantly waving Austrian flag.

Notably, Tsunoda and Russell were in relatively forward positions for this race, while Hamilton and Qin Miao had poor qualifying spots, fourth and fifth.

Sometimes Qin Miao truly feels like Mercedes is being targeted on Red Bull’s home ground, despite having the best setup for the car in both races, the speed just doesn’t come up.

Noteworthy is that during the second practice session of this race, Zhou Guanyu finally got to drive the F1 car he longed for.

He was driving the car of his idol, Alonso.

After the practice session ended, during the car inspection, Qin Miao specifically went over to Zhou Guanyu to ask how it felt.

At that moment, Zhou Guanyu was overjoyed; although not quite as over-the-top excited as Qin Miao himself was when he won a big prize, at first glance Qin Miao did feel Zhou entered a sort of Wise Man mode.

Once he regained his composure, he was back to normal, with his desire to enter F1 even more urgent now that he had the chance to drive an F1 car on track. As a result, Zhou Guanyu started practicing his racing skills even more diligently after this race.