How Did I Become an F1 Driver?-Chapter 759 - 311: Furious Overtake on Verstappen (Part 2)

Lap 16, after exiting T16, Qin Miao finally reduced the time gap with Verstappen to 0.4 seconds.

After a lap of recharging, Qin Miao finally had 40% electrical energy this lap to attack.

This time, Verstappen's method to defend against Qin Miao was the same as before.

Just as Qin Miao exited the corner and got behind Verstappen's slipstream, Verstappen began to weave.

However, this time Qin Miao fully learned from the previous attack, and when Verstappen weaved, he was not affected, keeping on the racing line and using both ERS and DRS modes to accelerate his car.

And you know what, after not following Verstappen's rhythm, Qin Miao's speed saw an immediate increase, and his closing rate on Verstappen was clearly faster than during the last attack.

Seeing that Qin Miao wasn't weaving with him, Verstappen simply didn't waste the traction of his car on weaving and directly took the inside line of the track.

This time, when Qin Miao tried to pull ahead on Verstappen's outside line, Verstappen continued to pressure Qin Miao's line, but not as aggressively as last time.

It seems Horner might have reminded Verstappen over the team TR just now.

Next, approaching the position where the pole position starts, Qin Miao finally lined up side by side with Verstappen on the outside line, and continued to overtake him.

When Qin Miao reached the pit exit, he was already half a car length ahead of Verstappen beside him.

At braking point, Qin Miao's right rear wheel was roughly at the position of Verstappen's left front wheel.

This time, Verstappen braked particularly late.

Qin Miao had been paying attention to Verstappen's actions; noticing his deceleration timing and location were different from his own, Qin Miao realized something.

He immediately released the brake he had already pressed.

Qin Miao even stepped on the accelerator again.

Then amidst the live commentary and the audience's astonishment, neither Qin Miao nor Verstappen took the usual entry line to the corner, both rushing off the track.

Verstappen seemed intent on pushing Qin Miao into the sand outside T1.

However, Verstappen didn't really do it, only disguising this defense as a driving error, missing the braking point, rather than actually wanting to crash with Qin Miao.

Thus, he only ended up squeezing both himself and Qin Miao off the normal racing line.

Thanks to Qin Miao stepping on the gas after releasing the brake, when both re-entered the track from outside, Qin Miao maintained the advantage he'd gained in the DRS zone.

Next was a left turn at T2, and now the advantage shifted to Qin Miao.

Exiting the corner, Qin Miao forced Verstappen's line out, directly squeezing him out.

Verstappen pushing Qin Miao off the track at T1 was unjustified, he could only use the error to cover his true intent, but Qin Miao was different this time; being in front, he had right of way when exiting the corner.

From there, all the way to T3 and T4, Qin Miao stabilized his pace, not giving Verstappen a chance to regain position.

Reaching T7, Qin Miao already built a 0.5-second time gap with Verstappen.

Here, Qin Miao successfully completed the overtaking move, and he let out a deep breath.

But recalling Verstappen's defense the two times, which could never be considered clean, Qin Miao couldn't help venting through the team TR: "Verstappen is such an idiot, in all my life I've never seen someone drive as dirty as him, sonofbitch."

In the broadcast footage, Qin Miao's words were replaced by a long string of beeps.

The three commentators at Five-Star Sports were happy for Qin Miao finally overtaking Verstappen when the director played Qin Miao's team TR.

Even though they couldn't decipher what Qin Miao specifically said to the team due to the complete censorship, guessing Qin Miao's mood post-overtake wasn't difficult at all.

The three commentators shared a knowing smile, even thinking Qin Miao didn't curse enough.

They also felt Verstappen's defense was a bit overboard for Qin Miao.

The three commentators happily discussed Qin Miao, and after overtaking Verstappen, Zhou Haoran suddenly mentioned an interesting statistic: "It's worth noting that this overtake on Verstappen should be the first time in Qin Miao's career he's overtaken Verstappen on track."

"Really?" Bing showed surprise upon hearing this statistic.

"Yes, before we've seen Qin Miao mostly defending against Verstappen; even when overtaking, it's due to Verstappen's incident or other reasons; this is the first upright overtake."

...

Meanwhile, in Mercedes' P room, cheers erupted seeing Qin Miao overtake Verstappen.

The camera happened to cut to Toto.

At the moment, Toto, both hands clenched in fists in front of his chest, cheered, and team's other employees continuously applauded Qin Miao's overtaking move.

However, despite overtaking Verstappen, Qin Miao was not happy.

Because Hamilton was already 12 seconds ahead.

With only 15 laps into the race…

Although part of it was due to the constant battling between Qin Miao and Verstappen, Hamilton's speed in this race seemed abnormally fast, didn't it?

Lap 18, Verstappen, who'd been opened up by 2 seconds by Qin Miao, chose to pit.

Verstappen intended a two-stop strategy, but now stuck behind Qin Miao without catching up or overtaking.

Verstappen wanted to overturn Qin Miao, so he had no choice but to seek change proactively.

Under normal circumstances, Qin Miao was planning a single-stop strategy for this race.

But with Verstappen pitting, Frankie in the team TR asked Qin Miao: "Verstappen has pitted, do we want to follow his rhythm for this race?"

The decision window for Qin Miao was limited, and unfortunately, when Frankie questioned Qin Miao, he was just at the end of a straight, facing many continuous corners in the second and third timing sectors ahead.

At this point, Qin Miao didn't have the mental bandwidth to consider the best pit stop timing.

But with Verstappen pitting behind him, it was a concern he could not ignore.

So after pondering briefly, Qin Miao said: "I don't know, you guys decide what I should do!"

Receiving Qin Miao's response, Frankie quickly contacted Mercedes' strategy department.

Then on lap eighteen, the leading Hamilton pitted, switching to hard tires, with a pit stop time of 2.3 seconds.

After Hamilton's pit stop, Qin Miao also pitted, similarly switching to hard tires with a pit stop time of 2.4 seconds, an entirely acceptable tire-changing speed for Qin Miao.

A perfect double pit stop, neither driver losing any unacceptable amount of time due to the pit stop segment.

Mercedes's simple plan was to finish one-two as their primary goal.

With Hamilton 13 seconds faster than Verstappen and nearly ten seconds faster than Qin Miao.

He didn't need to take any risks; he would match whatever strategy Qin Miao and Verstappen employed.

Play both open and hidden strategies.

And Qin Miao had a similar thought, whatever pace he maintained quicker than Verstappen, plus his heavenly defense ability, following Verstappen's rhythm would never worry him about being overturned by Verstappen using other means.

When Qin Miao finished the tire change and emerged, the most awaited by the live audience was whether Verstappen could undercut Qin Miao with this lap.

However, Red Bull slightly underestimated the speed of C2 tires for this race and overestimated the speed of C1 tires.

After leaving the pit lane, Qin Miao remained ahead of Verstappen, with a time gap of 1.7 seconds between them.