How Did I Become an F1 Driver?-Chapter 698 - 293: Leclerc’s Home

"Cross the line! Qin Miao! He's done it!" Libao's voice in the Five-Star Sports commentary booth was filled with excitement.

Zhou Haoran also clenched his fists and cheered passionately, "That's it! Beautiful! So beautifully overtaken!"

Besides the Five-Star Sports studio, the spectators at the scene also gave rounds of applause and cheers for Qin Miao's move.

Even though because of Hamilton's performance over the years, when Verstappen and Hamilton had a points contest, the audience hoped to see Verstappen, the dragon-slayer youth, bring down the dragon, Hamilton.

Compared to the strong, they hope more for the underdog to win because every ordinary person is part of the underdogs.

It's the most intrinsic human nature.

So when facing Qin Miao, they subconsciously believed Qin Miao belonged to the tier of the strong.

This season, Qin Miao has been racing with a sense of being globally away from home.

Everywhere has his domestic fans, and in each race, Qin Miao can spot his national flag, but the number is just not much.

Perhaps he needs to wait until Shanghai to truly experience the feeling of a home race.

But today is different.

Because Qin Miao started from the back of the grid and worked his way up all the way here.

All the spectators on-site could see Qin Miao's effort, and in this race, the audience acknowledged Qin Miao's hard work.

So seeing Qin Miao gaining another position, they naturally felt happy.

Moreover, they sincerely hoped Qin Miao could climb more positions in this race.

After overtaking Sainz, Qin Miao let out a big sigh.

Despite the pressure while overtaking Sainz, it was relatively manageable, yet the DRS train still made him sweat a bit.

It's fair to say this time Sainz was too smart for his own good; if he defended against Qin Miao with the DRS train, Qin Miao truly wouldn't find a good way to overtake anytime soon.

He slightly adjusted the car's condition and controlled the tire temperature.

During the last few corners, Qin Miao was borderline pushing the tires' limits, leaving aside the tire wear issues; the temperature had already exceeded the standard working range. If he didn't reduce the heat, it wouldn't just be a wear issue but a risk of tire blowout.

After managing the tires' condition, Qin Miao was still 3 seconds away from Ricardo ahead.

Due to Sainz's strong resistance during their duel, a lot of time was wasted between them.

During this time, Ricardo managed to create a 3-second gap.

However, with only forty-five laps done, there are still eleven laps until the end, so Qin Miao has time.

And actually, after overtaking Sainz, Qin Miao already met the minimum finish position that the team set for him before the race.

Now Ricardo wasn't far from Qin Miao, and with Qin Miao's skill, overtaking Ricardo in this race was just a matter of time, making it fair to say that Qin Miao had exceeded the team's assigned task.

Faced with Qin Miao's attack, Ricardo, similar to Sainz, did not choose to surrender and showed a strong willingness to defend.

So all Qin Miao could do at this moment was continue to recharge his car and wait for the right moment to come.

On lap forty-seven, Qin Miao caught up in the DRS zone behind Ricardo.

In the same lap's second timing section's DRS zone, Qin Miao completed his overtake on Ricardo.

Ricardo's defense was rather conventional, taking the inside line and braking late.

Qin Miao prepared to overtake from the outside line, and upon reaching the braking point, he wasn't much faster than Ricardo, both entering the corners side by side.

Honestly, despite Ricardo choosing to brake late, his braking precision was considerably higher than Sainz's.

If it were Sainz, they probably would have gone off track together by now.

Of course, Ricardo is known for his rather extraordinary late braking, so such performance isn't surprising.

However, leveraging the neutral tire's performance advantage, Qin Miao still gained a bit at the corner exit.

Moreover, the T13 following the T12 was another right turn, giving Qin Miao the inside line advantage entering and exiting alongside Ricardo.

Ultimately, before the third timing section of lap forty-seven began, Qin Miao completed his overtake on Ricardo and reclaimed his position before the pit.

Yet after surpassing Ricardo, Qin Miao was a full twenty-two seconds behind Leclerc ahead.

To be honest, looking at this gap gave Qin Miao a bit of a headache; it's indeed tough to chase down.

But the good news is that the only slow car in front of Qin Miao was Yuki Tsunoda's little Red Bull, and once he passed Tsunoda, there wasn't any other slow car between him and Leclerc. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

As long as Qin Miao managed his tire wear properly, in this race, Qin Miao still stood a fair chance of further advancement, pulling down Le the Fourth.

However, Qin Miao could already foresee the final outcome of this race; even if he managed to catch up to Leclerc, the gap of 9 seconds between Leclerc and Perez was also there.

So whether Qin Miao could even overtake Leclerc remained uncertain, let alone chase down Perez ahead of Leclerc...