How Did I Become an F1 Driver?-Chapter 609 - 265: Verstappen Learns from Qin Miao

On the race track, everyone stared in shock at what was happening in the arena.

Nobody expected that the two drivers would collide at this spot.

"Qin Miao! Qin Miao and Verstappen have collided on the track!" Upon seeing this scene, Fei immediately felt a sense of anxiety.

"The track is full of debris! Qin Miao's right front tire seems to have an issue as well, is it a puncture?" Bing also watched nervously at the broadcast in his studio: "Qin Miao's car has rushed into the gravel trap, is it okay? Can he get out?"

"This collision shouldn't have happened, why did Verstappen just crash in?" Zhou Haoran immediately began to show his bias.

...

Because Verstappen braked late, when entering T12, Verstappen's car was in front and Qin Miao's car was behind.

So in this collision, Verstappen's left rear wheel pierced the side pod of Qin Miao's car, scraping off part of the structure of Qin Miao's car's undertray, and also leaving a big hole in Qin Miao's car's side pod.

These damages would certainly cause a loss of speed for Qin Miao, but the loss would not be very significant, Qin Miao's car still remained competitive.

At the same time, when colliding with Verstappen, carbon fiber debris from Verstappen's car scraped Qin Miao's right front wheel, causing it to puncture on the spot.

However, compared to the damage from the collision with Verstappen, Qin Miao actually suffered the least damage.

This collision caused damage to Verstappen that was similar to what he experienced at the Hengelo missile base incident, with Verstappen's endplate being knocked off directly.

Last time, Verstappen's right front endplate was knocked off; this time, it was the left front endplate, and the entire structure vanished, leaving only a few carbon fiber shards hanging on the car.

The good news was that both cars were not fast through the turn, so neither lost control.

Although Qin Miao's car was too close to the inside of T12 and got hit by Verstappen, his car got pushed into the gravel trap on the left side of T12.

When the tire-punctured Qin Miao rushed in, many of Qin Miao's fans were anxious, worried that his car might get stuck in the gravel and be unable to get out.

But slow speed doesn't mean no speed, as Qin Miao used the inertial force of his car and his incredible control to drive out of the gravel.

Verstappen and Qin Miao separated after the impact and quickly widened the gap between their cars.

Eventually, this collision resulted in Qin Miao suffering a puncture on his right front tire, with undertray damage and a hand-sized hole on the right side pod, but neither driver lost control on the track.

Fortunately for Qin Miao, despite the collision blowing out his right front tire, the suspension was undamaged, and he didn't get stuck in the gravel.

Moreover, this collision scattered a lot of carbon fiber debris on the track, some of which fell from Qin Miao's car, but most came off Verstappen's car.

To prevent other drivers from running over the carbon fiber debris at this turn and having tire punctures, the race officials quickly converted the yellow flag in the second sector to a safety car.

This made it convenient for Qin Miao to enter the pit stop for a tire change.

And because Gasly, who was behind them, was more than a minute behind Qin Miao and Verstappen at this point, Qin Miao had more than 40 seconds after pitting for the team's personnel to conduct emergency repairs on the burrs on Qin Miao's car's undertray and the hole on the car.

Because the collision occurred just one corner away from the pit lane entrance, along with the help of the safety car, the puncture caused only a minor setback for Qin Miao.

However, Hamilton was less fortunate; when the collision between Qin Miao and Verstappen happened, he had just exited T14 and started accelerating on the main straight. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

By the time the race officials deployed the yellow flag and potentially switched it to a safety car, the track engineers couldn't notify Hamilton in time to pit.

Because Hamilton happened to be passing the pit lane entrance.

Even if Hamilton crossed the white line for a forced pit stop now, it would be too late.

After the collision, Qin Miao naturally fell behind Verstappen because he had to get out of the gravel.

With the safety car advisory, Qin Miao slowly brought his car back to the pits; due to the T13 and T14 at Zandvoort being two angled long turns, Qin Miao returned with a flurry of sparks and lightning.

The outer wheel rim was in zero-distance contact with the track surface, spraying sparks all the way.

After passing T14, Qin Miao drove the battered car into the pit lane.

Before this, Verstappen had also made a pit stop.

At this point, only 10 laps were left in the race. Although Verstappen had no new soft tires available, he still had a set of soft tires that had only done one qualifying flying lap.

Though these weren't new, they could still last for 10 laps in the race phase.

If not now, when to change tires?

And Qin Miao was also preparing to switch to a set of soft tires used during qualifying, but his tire change took considerably longer than Verstappen's.