How Did I Become an F1 Driver?-Chapter 669 - 283: Toto’s Scheme 2

Inner emotions were complex.

In fact, for today's situation, Qin Miao himself had to bear some responsibility.

Recently, he helped the team basically exhaust this season's development budget. Now it's not a problem with the R&D department, but the production department can't keep up with the development speed of the R&D department.

Many components have now passed the CFD and wind tunnel testing phases, Qin Miao and Bottas have also run them in the simulator, meeting the team's performance requirements for these new parts, but the production department simply can't produce them due to scheduling issues.

It can be said that in the upcoming races, both Mercedes drivers will have minor upgrades in each race.

And because this year's upgrade budget is exhausted, Toto has started to consider the next season.

And then he set his eyes on Qin Miao.

...

Tuesday.

When Hamilton asked Qin Miao to join him for a fashion event, Qin Miao had no time.

The Old Man was quite surprised at the time.

After all, Qin Miao's rest days were usually Monday and Tuesday.

After learning that Qin Miao was forcibly kept at the team to work overtime by Toto, Hamilton could only sigh: Honest kids easily get taken advantage of.

But young people, after all, losing out is a blessing, especially when Qin Miao suffers a loss, Hamilton himself can benefit from it.

So young people should suffer a bit more!

Of course, Hamilton still comforted and encouraged Qin Miao over the phone, and then happily continued his own music and dance.

On Wednesday, as usual, Qin Miao received the system's task.

Besides the usual ranking tasks, Qin Miao also received a task to set the fastest lap in the main race stage.

The reward was rather straightforward, directly one million US dollars.

It was the right time for Qin Miao to buy a house, so having more money was naturally a good thing.

More budget means Qin Miao and Qimeng could buy a better house.

So, with such a task, Qin Miao had no reason to refuse and hoped for good weather for the upcoming Turkish Grand Prix.

By Wednesday, it also meant the Turkish Grand Prix was about to start, and naturally, Qin Miao began packing up to head to Turkey.

The team had already booked a hotel for Qin Miao in Turkey.

Right next to the Istanbul track, it was only a 10-minute walk to the track.

On Wednesday morning, Qin Miao boarded the plane, in the afternoon the plane landed, and after arriving at the hotel, Qin Miao stayed inside and didn't go out.

Even when Leclerc invited Qin Miao out for dinner, Qin Miao refused.

These days there were too many testing tasks for Qin Miao, although they weren't exhausting, Qin Miao often enjoyed himself while running the simulator.

But there was just too much of it, testing more than ten to twenty things in one day was really too mentally draining.

Now, finally, because of needing to go to the track, there was half a day's rest time, Qin Miao didn't want to do anything but find a quiet place to stay.

Fortunately, no one disturbed him that afternoon, and Qin Miao spent all of Wednesday inside the hotel not going out.

Thursday, another familiar race day.

After having breakfast at the paddock, putting on the team uniform, Qin Miao and his crew started walking the track.

Because he wasn't familiar with this track, Qin Miao and all his crew members were extremely meticulous in observing and inspecting the track as they walked it.

Afterward, Qin Miao attended a sponsor event.

After the sponsor event, he had lunch, rested for half an hour, and then went straight to interviews and some video recordings of small activities.

Finally, signing autographs for the audience and VIPs who had arrived on Thursday in the paddock.

After completing these tasks, Qin Miao's day of work was over.

Back at the hotel, massaging his face that had gone numb from smiling, Qin Miao sighed.

Even though Thursday was as busy as helping out at the team with testing for the new season's car, with little time to rest.

But for some reason, Qin Miao felt that running data on the team's simulator was easier than being surrounded by countless fans in the paddock, participating in various events.

It really proved that saying, comparing oneself to others can be deadly, comparing goods can mean discarding them altogether.

But anyway, the Turkish Grand Prix weekend officially began.

Friday, the day of practice sessions one and two.

As usual, familiarly arriving in the paddock, after finishing all the pre-race preparations, practice session one began.

In practice one, Qin Miao mainly focused on familiarizing himself with the track, unlike Hamilton and Verstappen, who had already raced on this track.

His understanding of this track was based on the team's simulator data and the track walk on Thursday.

Driving on this track for the first time, naturally, Qin Miao needed to be extremely cautious.

Although the track was newly paved with asphalt, when Qin Miao actually drove his car on the track, it felt indeed as Hamilton described, the driving feel of this track wasn't much different from running it in the simulator.

However, in practice one, Qin Miao didn't drive too aggressively, while helping the team collect data, he gradually pushed his understanding of the track to its limits.

Ultimately, Qin Miao only managed eighth place, more than a second slower than Hamilton in first.

But it's just practice one, seeing that it's Qin Miao, everyone was already used to Qin Miao's mediocre performance in practice sessions.

In fact, if one day Qin Miao's practice session results were better than his teammate, that would surprise the audience more.

Practice session two.

With the data and driving experience from practice one, Qin Miao dared to push his car to its limits this time.

But sometimes being too confident isn't a good thing.

While simulating a qualifying lap in practice two, crossing turns T3, T4, and T5, Qin Miao went too far in pushing the limit without mastering a detail.

Plus, T4 being a downhill left blind corner, Qin Miao took too much curb with the right front wheel during cornering.

The left front wheel of the car directly bounced up due to the curb being too high, and the rear tires lost grip immediately due to the car's balance being disrupted.

Qin Miao spun like a top right on the track.

And because of Qin Miao's mistake, the first sector showed a yellow flag immediately.

Of course, this section of the track was relatively spacious, and Qin Miao wasn't driving too fast at the time. After spinning two circles, Qin Miao managed to regain control of his car.

However, the set of soft tires on Qin Miao's car was completely ruined this time.

Somewhat dejectedly driving the car back to the team's pit garage, Reyes was the first to offer comfort.

He still suffered a disadvantage due to not being familiar enough with the track.

Apart from this small hiccup, both Mercedes drivers didn't encounter any other incidents in the subsequent tests.

Very quickly, practice two ended.

Hamilton ended practice two with a time of 1:23.804, once again taking first in practice.

This time, Qin Miao's time gap to his teammate was slightly smaller, 0.5 seconds slower than Hamilton, placing fourth.

The two drivers ahead of Qin Miao were Verstappen and Leclerc. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

After finishing work on Friday, Qin Miao even asked Hamilton for his race test data.

It was the first time Qin Miao had ever asked Hamilton for data post-session, as he was usually familiar with the tracks and confident in completely familiarizing himself over the three practice sessions, believing in his good performance in the race.

But the Istanbul track was different, and Qin Miao had too little preparation, so he shamelessly sought outside help from his teammate.

For Qin Miao's request, Hamilton didn't hesitate and generously shared his data from the two practice sessions with Qin Miao.

Hamilton even told Qin Miao that if he didn't understand anything, he could always come and ask him.

Qin Miao naturally hurriedly thanked him.