Now Qin Miao is quite confident about whether he can surpass Verstappen.
Just because Qin Miao's qualifying speed in yesterday's qualifying session was faster than Verstappen's, Qin Miao has enough confidence.
Verstappen naturally saw Qin Miao appearing in his rearview mirror.
But Verstappen didn't feel nervous, he only felt a sense of powerlessness at this time.
A feeling of powerlessness that the racing performance cannot match that of the opponent.
It is not difficult to see from the last few games of this season that Mercedes-Benz cars have recently been upgraded. On a track dominated by medium and high-speed corners, Mercedes-Benz cars are faster in both cornering and straights. Surprisingly.
Now not only has there been an insurmountable distance between Hamilton and himself, but Qin Miao is also catching up behind him.
You must know that at the beginning of the season, Qin Miao could only rely on his supermodel defensive ability to create a little trouble for Verstappen on his way to attack Hamilton. As long as he surpassed Qin Miao, Verstappen would follow. Pan and Hamilton took the stage.
Who would have thought that before even finishing a season, Qin Miao would already have the ability to challenge and threaten Verstappen's position.
So Verstappen felt a strong sense of powerlessness.
Verstappen can only lament that the newcomers are all monsters.
In the DRS area on lap 14, Qin Miao was naturally unable to pose any substantial threat to Verstappen.
After all, the time gap between Qin Miao and Verstappen was quite large, so before driving the DRS all the way to the braking point of T1, Qin Miao had no chance to launch an attack, so he just tapped the inside line of the track and appeared. Putting pressure on Verstappen with him in his rearview mirror.
In the subsequent turns, Qin Miao took advantage of the performance of the Mercedes car to start slowly but very steadily to shorten the distance between him and Verstappen.
In this race, Mercedes' car adapted very well to this track. In these high-speed continuous corners, it was faster than Red Bull, which is good at medium and low-speed corners.
But Verstappen is Verstappen after all. Under such unfavorable conditions, he only allowed Qin Miao to shorten the time gap by 0.2 seconds.
At the end of the 14th lap, after the two came out of T16, the time difference was only 0.5 seconds.
Whether Qin Miao's attack can succeed under this time gap has to be a question mark.
It's just that Qin Miao didn't care whether the attack was successful or not under this time gap. After exiting the corner, he started to unleash the full force of ERS.
After Verstappen came out of the corner, he started to draw dragons left and right.
Qin Miao also followed closely behind Verstappen to draw the dragon, so that he could absorb the wake provided by Verstappen to the maximum extent.
But when Verstappen was drawing a dragon, Qin Miao's car would inevitably hit the turbulence left by Verstappen's car.
Because of this, Qin Miao's approach rate was slower than he thought.
It wasn't until after the finish line of lap 14 and on lap 15 that Qin Miao took the lead on the outside of Verstappen.
Verstappen's defense, especially against Hamilton and Qin Miao, his two opponents competing for the final driver's championship this season, is full of intensity.
So after Qin Miao took the outside line of Verstappen, Verstappen turned directly to the left and began to squeeze Qin Miao's line.
Naturally, it was impossible for Qin Miao to have a head-on confrontation with Vestapa at this time, so he gave a certain amount of track to the left and chose to avoid it.
It's just that Verstappen pushed the envelope a bit. When Qin Miao's left rear wheel hit the white line on the edge of the track, he was still squeezing Qin Miao.
There was no other way, Qin Miao could only continue to give in.
Because at this time, Verstappen's left front wheel was stuck in front of Qin Miao's nose. If an accident occurred at this time and he collided with Verstappen, he would probably suffer the loss.
Even if he doesn't suffer a big loss, he is very likely to end up with a lose-lose outcome. In the end, Hamilton will be happy.
When he saw that Qin Miao's left rear wheel had been rolled up by his own pressure and rolled up the dirt on the lawn outside the track, Verstappen knew not to go too far, so he returned to the normal driving line.
Because of Verstappen's squeeze, Qin Miao's attack naturally ended in failure.
After entering T1 and exiting the corner, Qin Miao naturally began to smell good among the team's TR.
"What is going on in this idiot Verstappen's head? Can he drive? If he can't drive, he can go home and take care of his children!"
"Stay focused." French consoled him: "The race is still long, we are faster than Verstappen, and we still have a chance."
Qin Miao took a deep breath, adjusted his mentality, and then said: "Copy that."
But Qin Miao had just finished answering when Toto's voice came in: "Don't worry Qin Miao, we will report it to the tournament stewards."
"Well, I hope there will be a good result." Qin Miao replied.
"Don't worry, trust us."
…
After returning to the track, Qin Miao fell 1.2 seconds behind Verstappen.
Fortunately, the loss was not serious, and Qin Miao still had the possibility of pursuing him.
On lap 15, Qin Miao appeared 0.7 seconds behind Verstappen at the same place.
However, due to the release in the previous lap, Qin Miao's ERS power was somewhat insufficient this lap.
Therefore, Qin Miao could only use DRS to further shorten the time gap with Verstappen.
On lap 16, the time gap between Qin Miao and Verstappen finally shortened to 0.4 seconds after exiting the corner in T16.
After a lap of replenishment, Qin Miao finally had 40% of the power for Qin Miao to attack.
This time Verstappen defended Qin Miao in the same way as before.
Qin Miao had just come out of the corner and absorbed Verstappen's wake, and Verstappen began to draw a dragon.
It's just that this time Qin Miao fully learned the lesson from the previous attack. He was unmoved by Verstapan's dragon and used the two modes of ERS and DRS on the driving line of the car to give him the advantage. The racing car accelerates.
Not to mention, after not following Verstappen's rhythm, Qin Miao's speed improved immediately, and his approach rate to Verstappen was obviously faster than the last time he attacked.
When Verstappen saw that Qin Miao would not draw the dragon with him, he simply did not waste the traction of his car on the dragon drawing, but got stuck directly on the inside line of the track.
This time when Qin Miao tapped Verstappen on the outside line, Verstappen was still oppressing Qin Miao's line, but not as fiercely as last time.
Presumably Horner also reminded Verstappen in the team TR just now.
Next, when they reached the grid position where the pole position started, Qin Miao finally lined up with Verstappen on the outside, and Qin Miao continued to surpass Verstappen.
By the time Qin Miao came to the exit of the pit area, he had already passed Verstappen on his side by half the car.
When it came to the braking point, Qin Miao's right rear wheel was almost in position with Verstappen's left front wheel.
Verstappen braked extremely late this time.
Qin Miao had been paying attention to Verstappen's movements. After seeing that the time and position of his deceleration were completely different from his own, Qin Miao realized something.
The foot that had already pressed the brake was immediately released again.
Qin Miao even stepped on the accelerator.
Then, amid the on-site commentary and the exclamations of the audience, Qin Miao and Verstappen did not take the normal entry route at all, and they both rushed out of the track.
Verstappen even wanted to push Qin Miao into the gravel outside T1.
But Verstappen didn't really do that. He just disguised this defense as a driving error and missed the braking point. He didn't really want to have a fight with Qin Miao.
So he just squeezed himself and Qin Miao out of the normal driving lane.
And because of the kick of the accelerator that Qin Miao made after releasing the brake, when Qin Miao and Verstappen returned to the normal track from outside the track, Qin Miao still kept what he had gained in the DRS area. Advantage.
The next T2 is a left turn, and now the advantage goes to Qin Miao.
Qin Miao also forcibly squeezed Verstappen's exit line when exiting and after the corner, and also squeezed Verstappen directly out.
Just now in T1, Verstappen squeezed Qin Miao off the track, which was actually unreasonable. He could only use mistakes to cover up his true purpose, but Qin Miao was different this time. Qin Miao was in front, and Qin Miao was out of the corner. Wired rights.
Afterwards, all the way to T3 and T4, Qin Miao stabilized his rhythm and did not give Verstappen a chance to regain his ranking.
By T7, Qin Miao already had a 0.5 second time gap with Verstappen.
At this point, Qin Miao's overtaking was completed, and Qin Miao also let out a sigh of relief.
But thinking that Verstappen's two defenses were definitely not clean, Qin Miao couldn't help but vented in the team TR and cursed: "Verstappen is really a fool. I can't do it when he grows up." I’ve never seen a Sonofbitch drive as dirty as he does.”
And Qin Miao's words were placed in the broadcast screen, and it was a long paragraph of "beep beep beep beep beep beep".
Just when the three commentators on Five Star Sports were happy that Qin Miao had finally surpassed Verstappen, the director showed Qin Miao's team TR.
Although they looked at the completely silenced call content and were confused about what Qin Miao actually said to the team, looking at the completely silenced subtitles, they wanted to guess that Qin Miao surpassed Verstappen. After that, it doesn’t seem to be very difficult to figure out what kind of mood I’m going to be in.
The three commentators all laughed heartily when they heard this, and even felt that Qin Miao's scolding was a little short.
After all, they also felt that Verstappen's two defenses against Qin Miao were a bit too much.
The three commentators happily chatted about Qin Miao again. After surpassing Verstappen this time, Zhou Haoran suddenly said an extremely interesting statistic: "It is worth mentioning that this time he surpassed Verstappen. It should be the first time in Qin Miao's entire career that he has surpassed Verstappen on the track."
"Is that so?" Brother Bing was obviously surprised after hearing this data.
"Yes, in the past we mostly saw Qin Miao defending Verstappen. Even if he surpassed Verstappen, it was because Verstappen had an accident or some other reason. This is the first Go above and beyond in a dignified way.”
…
On the other side, everyone in the P room of the Mercedes team cheered when they saw Qin Miao completing his overtake of Verstappen.
The camera just happened to show Toto.
At this time, Toto clenched his hands in front of his chest and cheered, and other staff in the team were also constantly applauding Qin Miao's overtaking.
It's just that Qin Miao couldn't be happy after surpassing Verstappen.
Because at this time, the time gap between Hamilton and him has reached 12 seconds.
The race has only started for 15 laps...
Although there is indeed a reason why Qin Miao and Verstappen are constantly fighting, Hamilton's speed in this game is indeed abnormally fast, right?
On lap 18, Verstappen, who had already opened up a 2-second time gap by Qin Miao, chose to pit.
Verstappen originally followed a two-stop tactic, but now he was trapped behind Qin Miao, unable to catch up, overtake, or overtake.
Verstappen wanted to overthrow Qin Miao at this time, so naturally he could only actively seek changes.
Normally, Qin Miao planned to finish the race with one stop.
But after Verstappen pitted, Franchi from the team asked Qin Miao in the TR: "Verstappen pitted. Do we have to follow Verstappen's pace in this race?"
There was not much time left for Qin Miao to make a decision at this time, and what was unfriendly was that when Frankie asked Qin Miao a question, Qin Miao happened to run to the end of the straight, and then he had to face the second and third timers. When there are a lot of continuous bends in the section.
At this time, Qin Miao didn't have much brains to think about when to make a pit stop.
But Verstappen behind him pitted, which was another hidden danger that had to be guarded against.
So Qin Miao thought for a while and then said: "I don't know, you decide for me what I should do!"
After getting Qin Miao's answer, Frankie quickly contacted Mercedes' strategy department.
Then on the 18th lap, Hamilton, who was leading in front, pitted and changed to hard tires. The tire change took 2.3 seconds.
And after Hamilton pitted, Qin Miao also pitted, also putting on hard tires, and the tire changing time was 2.4 seconds. For Qin Miao, this was an acceptable tire changing speed.
It was a perfect two-car pit stop, and neither driver suffered any unacceptable losses due to stretching their hips during the pit stop.
Mercedes' current thinking is very simple. The main purpose within the team must be to bring back one or two.
Hamilton is now 13 seconds faster than Verstappen and nearly ten seconds faster than Qin Miao.
He doesn't need to take any risks. He will use whatever close-combat strategy Qin Miao and Verstappen use.
Playing a conspiracy.
Qin Miao has almost the same idea. Anyway, Qin Miao is faster than Verstappen, and his defensive ability is incredible. As long as he follows Verstappen's rhythm, Qin Miao will not worry about being beaten by Verstappen. Turn it over by other means.
After Qin Miao completed the tire change and came out, what the audience was most looking forward to was naturally whether Verstappen could undercut Qin Miao in this lap.
It's just that Red Bull underestimated the speed of C2 tires in this game and overestimated the speed of C1.
After coming out of the pit area, Qin Miao was still in front of Verstappen, with a time gap of 1.7 seconds.
(End of chapter)
