How Did I Become an F1 Driver?-Chapter 792 - 320: Dawn of Victory

Lap 46, Hamilton caught up to within 3 seconds behind Qin Miao.

Lap 47, Hamilton was 2.6 seconds behind Qin Miao, but at this point, Hamilton was affected by the turbulence from the back of Qin Miao's car, and his pursuit speed clearly slowed.

Lap 48, 2.3 seconds.

Lap 49, 1.8 seconds.

At this point, Hamilton was already aggressive, but there were only two laps remaining in the race.

Hamilton was confident he could enter the DRS zone behind Qin Miao before the race ended. However, he knew that he only had one chance to attack Qin Miao, and the likelihood of succeeding with this one opportunity wasn't great.

However, if he didn't try, he would have to finish second in this race. Then, for next week's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to win the championship finally, he not only needed Qin Miao not to finish in third but also had to snatch a victory from Verstappen.

If that were the case, everything would be out of control for Hamilton, and winning the final driver's championship wouldn't depend on a driver's skill but rather on who had better luck apart from Qin Miao. This was not a result he wanted to see. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

So, risking everything, at this moment, Hamilton didn't want to lose, and he was even less willing to lose to Qin Miao, a rookie in his first year in F1.

Hamilton would rather lose to Verstappen than to Qin Miao because at least if he lost to Verstappen, he could imply externally that it was due to Red Bull's better car performance than Mercedes.'

But if he lost to Qin Miao, then everyone would think it wasn't a problem with Mercedes, but with Hamilton himself.

Qin Miao and Hamilton crossed the finish line of lap 50 one after the other. As they entered the final lap, Hamilton was already 0.8 seconds behind Qin Miao. By the time they reached the braking point at T1, Hamilton closed the time gap to 0.5 seconds.

Yet this gap was still insufficient for Hamilton to launch an attack at this spot against Qin Miao.

In the upcoming first and second sectors from T13 to T17, Qin Miao, who was leading, had the advantage, and there were no overtaking opportunities in these corners.

By the time they reached the DRS detection point after T17, the time gap between Qin Miao and Hamilton had increased to 1.4 seconds.

So, after passing this DRS detection point, Hamilton didn't get the DRS from Qin Miao's car.

But the upcoming section was a straight, so even though Hamilton didn't have DRS, he still had Qin Miao's slipstream.

Therefore, after finishing the DRS zone from T19 to T22, Hamilton reduced the time gap between them from 1.4 seconds to 1.1 seconds.

The next three corners offered no overtaking possibilities, so Qin Miao kept racing normally.

Following the section from T24 to T27 was another DRS zone.

At this point, Hamilton still didn't have DRS.

But utilizing this straight, Hamilton closed in to be 0.7 seconds behind Qin Miao.

After passing the DRS detection point that previously caused arguments on the track between Hamilton and Verstappen, Hamilton finally got the DRS from Qin Miao's car for the first time in this race.

Out of the corner, Qin Miao was slightly faster than Hamilton, and before the DRS activation point, the time gap between Qin Miao and Hamilton was 0.7 seconds.

However, entering into the DRS zone, Hamilton started to close the time gap with Qin Miao at a visibly fast pace.

At this moment, both Qin Miao and Hamilton saw the checkered flag waving at the edge of the track and the Mercedes team members leaning out from the guardrail cheering for the two Mercedes drivers.

But only seeing this out of the corner of their eyes, the two drivers didn't let it distract them; they both wished they could press the throttle pedal straight into their cars' fuel tanks.

Both drivers were now making their final sprints.

At this time, some might be puzzled.

Qin Miao was clearly not much slower than Hamilton, so how did Hamilton manage to pressure Qin Miao, who had a significant lead, to this extent within five laps?

This could not be overlooked, as Qin Miao had unexpectedly launched an attack when Hamilton and Verstappen were entangled.

Back then, Qin Miao almost drained the battery of his car all at once.

But that wasn't Qin Miao's first time using that mode in this race. In fact, Qin Miao used it twice.

The first was to get close to Hamilton, and the other was when Verstappen was switching positions with Hamilton, Qin Miao used this mode to overtake both on the inside line.

After doing so, Qin Miao found with some frustration that his car's engine seemed to be having issues.

Qin Miao naturally reported this to the team's engineers promptly.

Qin Miao was so anxious at that time that he was sweating profusely.

After some simple checks and data analysis, the team found that it was a problem with Qin Miao's car's battery.

Qin Miao's car battery could still discharge at this point, but the MGU-K and MGU-H couldn't continue recharging the battery.

This effectively rendered Qin Miao's car battery useless.

Under normal circumstances, he should have retired from the race immediately.

But having secured this position with difficulty, Qin Miao was unwilling to retire, and neither Frankie nor the team wanted him to retire hastily.