How Did I Become an F1 Driver?-Chapter 625 - 270: More Harm Than Good

Quickly, the warm-up lap for the sprint race began.

Qin Miao was using brand-new soft tires for this race.

With a track temperature of 40°, on top of Monza track’s characteristics, tire wear would be severe for this race.

However, Mercedes had full confidence in the durability of Qin Miao’s soft tires.

And Qin Miao wasn’t the only one to choose soft tires; drivers like Norris, Alonso, and O’Kang also opted for soft tires to start.

Before the race started, almost every team repeatedly reminded their drivers: Position doesn’t matter, just bring the car back safely.

The drivers were aware that, compared to today’s sprint qualifying, the main race tomorrow was obviously more important.

So most drivers had decided to adopt a conservative approach for this race before it even started.

It’s okay not to have a result, but mistakes are unacceptable.

Soon enough, the warm-up lap ended, and all drivers returned to their positions.

The five red lights went out, and the race started.

Right from the start, Hamilton’s start was not great, immediately overtaken by Verstappen behind him.

Qin Miao’s starting speed was even faster than Hamilton’s, and even faster than Verstappen’s.

But because at the start, Hamilton was ahead of Qin Miao.

To avoid Hamilton, who had a poor start in front of him, Qin Miao spent most of the tire grip on steering and dodging.

So, although Qin Miao’s start was slightly faster than Verstappen’s, by the time they reached Monza’s T1 heavy braking zone, he was only slightly ahead of Hamilton, unable to pose any threat to Verstappen ahead of him.

Coming out of the corner, Qin Miao was in second place, with Verstappen in first.

After exiting T2, Qin Miao finally had a chance to glance at his rearview mirror.

To Qin Miao’s surprise, appearing in his rearview mirror was not Hamilton, but a McLaren.

This start mistake caused quite a bit of trouble for Hamilton.

Completely out of rhythm, Hamilton dropped to sixth at the start, right in front of the two Ferraris.

Fortunately, Gasly, who had been performing well in previous races, had a slight collision with Ricardo’s right rear wheel with his right front wing when entering T1.

Causing his front wing to fall off and go off track, Hamilton gained a position; otherwise, the loss from Hamilton’s poor start would have been even greater.

On Gasly’s side, the connection from the nose to the left side of the front wing completely broke.

The entire left front wing scraped the ground madly.

The key is, due to the cockpit height of an F1 car, the driver cannot see the status of their front wing.

So, with the front wing dragging on the ground, Gasly was still accelerating, driving over 500 meters.

Until the car hit 270 km/h, the front wing finally couldn’t withstand the increased friction and tore off completely.

As a result, the entire front wing was sucked into Gasly’s undercarriage, causing the car to lift off.

It happened to be the long right-hand turn at T3, and Gasly’s car, losing traction, took off, crashing into the gravel trap.

Because Gasly was too fast, although he tried to control the car in the gravel,

Due to high speed and low grip in the gravel, the steering wheel adjustments only changed the car’s posture and couldn’t recover from the spin.

To reduce the loss, Gasly quickly corrected the steering wheel posture.

Ultimately, Gasly’s car collided with the left suspension scraping the wall.

Luckily, thanks to Gasly’s adjustments, the impact wasn’t too severe, but the left suspension was doomed.

Thus, Gasly retiring from this collision was inevitable.

A yellow flag immediately appeared on the track, soon transitioning to a safety car.

Besides Gasly’s incident, a collision also occurred between Kubica and Yuki Tsunoda at the tail end of the field.

Yuki Tsunoda performed a classic American block on Kubica.

Luckily, neither car suffered significant damage. Although Kubica got trapped in the gravel, he managed to drive out of it.

Afterward, the safety car stayed out for three laps.

After leading for three laps, the safety car’s top lights turned off, signaling the race to continue.

While this race seemed somewhat trivial to the drivers, Verstappen was determined to chase every point from Qin Miao, so he pushed hard at the start.

Quickly, as the safety car exited, Verstappen slammed on the gas.

Qin Miao naturally followed Verstappen’s pace immediately, proving his competitiveness in starting.

Being young, Qin Miao’s reaction speed was naturally much faster than those older drivers.

Although he was only a car length behind Verstappen after the start, Monza’s track characteristics limited the slipstream effect from the low-angle rear wings of all the team’s cars.

Therefore, even with the slipstream, the drivers’ closeness didn’t significantly improve on the straights.

Furthermore, the DRS efficiency at Monza was low; even with DRS open, the angle of the rear wings was so small that the reduction in drag was limited.

Although Qin Miao didn’t let Verstappen pull away after the start and kept close behind him, he couldn’t overtake before Monza’s T1.

Qin Miao couldn’t even attempt to pass on the outside, merely getting half a car length behind Verstappen by the braking zone.

After all, this race was just a sprint qualifying event for everyone.

So during the race, Qin Miao didn’t attack Verstappen aggressively.

Even though Ricardo was eager to advance, facing the Mercedes car, McLaren could only sigh in defeat.

By lap 5, Qin Miao had pulled away from Ricardo by 2.5 seconds.

Everyone knew what mattered most: bringing the car back safely.

If, like Gasly who had already retired, they failed to finish and crashed out, it would be a huge loss.

This was unacceptable for both drivers and teams.

After Gasly’s crash, even if they repaired the car, it would never be the same regarding component placement and alignment as before.

Because of these differences, the feedback given to the driver during high-speed driving is also different.

In essence, the setup of Gasly’s car was a write-off after the crash.

During the main race tomorrow, even if Gasly maintained his recent excellent form, he wouldn’t be able to show his true capability due to the car’s setup disturbances.

Besides, the small Red Bull team would need to pay for these repairs.

Even under the Red Bull name, the small team couldn’t compare to the main one in budget and operated tightly financially.

Hence, as the race progressed, no one got too aggressive battling others.

Even overtaking was done only when conditions permitted.

Everyone wanted to return their car to the garage safely.

The race could pretty much be considered over from this point; at least, the positions of the leading drivers wouldn’t change drastically without fierce battles.

Eventually, the Monza sprint qualifying race concluded.

Verstappen started second, brought home the victory, and earned three points.

Qin Miao finished second, earning two points.

Ricardo came in third, gaining a point.

Following that:

4: Norris

5: Hamilton

6: Leclerc

7: Sainz

8: Giovinazzi

9: Perez

10: Stroll

PS. Going for a tooth extraction, sorry that’s all for today.