Improve by 0.4 seconds?
Seeing this lap ti, Odetto muttered to himself. His expression was a bit complex, making it hard to tell whether he was happy or dissatisfied.
However, Mizutani Sho and Feng Yong, among others, couldn’t suppress their excitent and started cheering.
Whether it was Chen Xiangbei’s psychological breakthrough or the fact that the car setup found its balance, a single lap improvent of 0.4 seconds in the realm of Formula Racing is already considered a "qualitative change"!
Especially given the already high lap speeds, it highlighted Chen Xiangbei’s considerable improvent even more.
"Odetto, how much faster was I this lap?"
"Average improvent, 0.4 seconds."
Average improvent?
Hearing Odetto’s response, everyone present looked at him with incredulous eyes.
Even for a forr Ferrari executive, who has worked in the F1 Paddock for decades and seen it all, this kind of improvent for a new Chinese driver is far from "average", right?
To truly match the lap ti that challenges the track record, does it have to be labeled excellent?
"I was blocked by traffic while flying around, otherwise I should have improved by over 0.5 seconds."
Chen Xiangbei explained, noting that the current traffic conditions on the track were different than before, with more than ten cars making it very crowded.
And since the track monitoring system wasn’t open, it relied entirely on the driver and the team to visually observe and alert the cars behind to prepare for timing laps and give way.
This type of alert was significantly slower, and coupled with so people deliberately blocking, Chen Xiangbei had no choice but to change lanes to overtake.
For a car going 200 km/h, every lane change and correction slows down the lap ti.
Under good track conditions, Chen Xiangbei believed he could drive even faster!
"Bei, there aren’t so many ’should haves’ in a race. There will only be more cars in the paddock during qualifying. Do you understand what I an?"
"I understand, I need to choose a better timing to fly."
"GOOD!"
Odetto was very satisfied with Chen Xiangbei’s response. He didn’t like people who were full of excuses and objective reasons.
As the track conditions beca more and more complicated, and also due to Chen Xiangbei’s full PUSH, which greatly wore down the tires, Odetto simply called the car back to end today’s practice.
This is also why Odetto led the crew to Silverstone Circuit early in the morning to practice first. He had experienced too many races here and knew that with the arrival of the practice peak, drivers would find it hard to get the perfect flying lap environnt.
European drivers start karting practice when they are just a few years old. Who knows how many tis they’ve driven on this "fossil-grade" track?
For European drivers, practice is not for familiarizing themselves with the track and improving lap tis, but more for observing if the track layout and corners have changed.
But for Asian drivers who have never raced here, practice ti is a valuable opportunity to get familiar with the track, and the best track conditions must be seized to complete two laps!
Using a Chinese saying, it’s the early bird that catches the worm.
As Chen Xiangbei’s crew prepared to leave the track, on the other hand, Kobayashi Shuji was still not satisfied. After finishing the car setup, he went back on track to fly.
A driver must have a spirit of not giving up, especially in facing their teammate. The competition within a team is often more brutal.
The reason is simple. When there is only one seat, you are not competing with a dozen other opponents but with your teammate!
If Kobayashi Shuji cannot deliver a sufficiently good result, even if Suzuki Aguri has a subjective preference for Japan, he would still have to shift the team’s core position to Chen Xiangbei under the "compulsion" of reality.
After all, only performance is the foundation for a team to have a foothold in the F1 Paddock!
Perhaps stimulated by Chen Xiangbei, Kobayashi Shuji decided to go all out on the track. His lap ti improvent was also significant, falling into the 1 minute 59 range.
Ultimately, he recorded a 1 minute 58.941, just 0.5 seconds slower than Chen Xiangbei.
It must be noted that the traffic conditions on the track were even worse at this ti, with too many slow cars obstructing the full-speed push, and even the risk of collisions.
For Kobayashi Shuji to achieve this lap ti proves his talent indeed is high.
At the sa ti, it serves as a reminder to Chen Xiangbei that his previous life as an F2-level driver would be almost invincible in this era’s lower-tier Asian events.
Just like Kobayashi Kamui, who could be called an Asian prodigy.
But in Europe, where talents abound, many future F1 drivers or FE champions have also had a decade or more of professional racing experience starting from karting.
In terms of career duration, they are not far behind Chen Xiangbei, and might even be slightly ahead!
Even soone historically insignificant like Kobayashi Shuji—you never know when they started karting or whether they might suddenly unleash their potential, so they should not be underestimated.
...
As the Super Dream Team left the track to return to the base, the ART Team mbers in the maintenance area gathered around a laptop screen to watch practice footage recorded by a DV cara.
Initially, race engineer Tod intended to record driver Vergne’s laps for a fra-by-fra analysis in the evening, to find areas of improvent for qualifying.
Upon seeing Chen Xiangbei’s timing lap, he incidentally recorded it as well.
Given the low DV image quality of the ti and the long shooting distance, it was impossible to clearly see Chen Xiangbei’s line details. It could only vaguely be determined from the cornering track that the No. 13 car was very fast!
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