As forr mbers of the Super Aguri Team, they also longed to return to the F1 paddock and once again tune the top-tier racing car on the planet.
Now, Chen Xiangbei is leading them to fulfill their dreams!
"Everything is ready, prepare to start."
After the car passed all self-checks, Odetto gave Chen Xiangbei the final starting command.
"Roger that."
Chen Xiangbei responded, then pressed the brake with his left foot, stepped on the throttle with his right foot, and gently released the steering wheel clutch paddle with his hand.
The team mbers watched Chen Xiangbei’s maneuvers with slightly nervous anticipation.
After all, even the re act of starting an F1 car is in a realm many ordinary professional drivers cannot master, requiring a high level of coordination between the throttle, clutch, and gear.
Any slight error could lead to either a slow start or tire burn and slip.
Releasing the clutch paddle entirely and gently tapping the throttle, even with Chen Xiangbei’s conservative actions, the rear wheels still showed slight signs of slipping.
On one hand, this is due to the exaggerated power-to-weight ratio of F1 cars.
On the other hand, it’s because the P room floor is self-leveling, offering less grip than the asphalt of the track.
This slight slippage is not important; on the contrary, Odetto nodded silently after seeing it.
Because this ant Chen Xiangbei noticed the difference in ground material; if he had completely applied the throttle as on the track, it wouldn’t have been just a simple slip, and the car might have spun out of control.
Precision is key, and at the very least, the Chinese kid was keeping a calm head!
As the RA108 car drove onto the pit lane, only then did Chen Xiangbei floor the throttle, instantly experiencing a massive pushback force that pinned him to the seat.
In just over a second, the speed displayed on the steering wheel’s LCD screen had already surpassed a hundred, and it was still accelerating like crazy.
This is the surging power of the extre power-to-weight ratio of F1 cars; without needing to maneuver through curves, just the straight line acceleration at the start could propel it past competitors, making any contemporary supercar look minor in comparison.
Even a thousand-horsepower electric motor from the future, affected by a massive weight difference, would still be vulnerable!
Accelerate, upshift, accelerate more, upshift again...
Chen Xiangbei had completely put Odetto’s advice aside, completely consud by speed and thrill.
No more conservative driving; under the rapid secretion of dopamine, Chen Xiangbei would rather risk everything than slow down.
His lifelong dream of driving an F1 car had finally co true at this mont!
The roaring engine at over ten thousand RPMs resounded like a jet plane whizzing past.
At this mont, it wasn’t just the Super Dream Team mbers watching Chen Xiangbei’s every move through the track’s corner caras, but even the engineers from the "prestigious" teams McLaren and Renault were curiously observing from the control panel.
Chen Xiangbei’s double championship win in the Renault European Cup and the Australian Grand Prix F3 victory had indeed stirred waves in lower-level formulas and the Asian region, yet their impact on F1’s prestigious teams was negligible.
Every year there are countless F3 event champions, and without a year-long lead, they wouldn’t attract much attention.
This ti, the curiosity was mainly due to Chen Xiangbei’s identity as a Chinese driver.
It’s important to know that in the more than fifty-year history of Formula One, only one and a half Chinese drivers have driven F1 cars.
One is Dong Hebin, currently testing for Renault, and the other half is Malaysian driver Xiong Long.
Since he is a mixed-blood of local Chinese and British, he can only count as half.
Chen Xiangbei, in fact, stepped out of the Chinese ethnic category, belonging entirely to a Chinese national driver.
Such a history-making rookie test was bound to attract curiosity.
On the track, Chen Xiangbei, of course, did not know there were so many eyes on him, and he continued his wild acceleration!
Compared to the formula cars he had driven before, the F1 seamless sequential gearbox’s shifting speed and power response could only be described as unparalleled, completely reaching an "electronic throttle" experience.
The shift ti is only an astonishing 0.02 seconds!
It’s noteworthy that in the later civilian car levels, the fastest shifting speed of the CVT continuously variable transmission actually requires 0.1 seconds, and the PDK gearbox in racing can achieve up to 0.04 seconds.
The shifting ti of the seamless gearbox is twice as quick as conventional racing-grade gearboxes!
This extre shifting speed leaves almost no sense of power interruption, just like a linear electric motor. Unless encountering continuous downshifts, only then might you hear slight changes in the engine’s roar.
At this mont, Chen Xiangbei floored it on the long straight, the gears already uplifted to the highest seventh gear, and the speed directly broke through 300km/h!
"Xiangbei-kun, isn’t his speed a little too fast?"
Sawano Hiroyuki couldn’t help but mutter as he saw the speed on the sensor.
Chen Xiangbei hadn’t even done a warm-up lap, yet he was driving at almost race speed, even though the temperatures inside the Catalonia Circuit are relatively high, and the downforce from the F1 car’s aerodynamic kit is quite significant.
One would hardly guarantee foolproof safety.
"This kid has no concept of being conservative now!"
Odetto remarked expressionlessly.
He could only say that the seeds he sowed had now reached the ti to taste the "fruit."
"A rookie at F3 level driving at such speed, isn’t anyone stopping him?"
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