Although after coming out of the pit lane both Qin Miao and Hamilton ended up behind Alonso, facing an Alonso who'd already run 20 laps on the dium tire, it really wasn't that hard for Qin Miao and Hamilton to deal with him.
So on lap 25, Qin Miao and Hamilton once again overtook Alonso and returned to their original positions.
After that, Qin Miao and Hamilton basically disappeared from the broadcast; on Qin Miao's side, this fresh set of hard tires could easily go to the end of the race, with plenty of margin to spare.
And it was more or less the sa for Hamilton.
However, Qin Miao's cruising speed was clearly faster than Hamilton's, so by the ti the race reached lap 33, the gap between them had already been stretched to 5 seconds.
But the gap between Qin Miao and the Sainz ahead was also 5 seconds, while the gap between Sainz and Verstappen in front of him had already reached a terrifying 8 seconds.
It could only be said that without Leclerc, Ferrari's Sainz really couldn't carry the load.
If Leclerc were there, he could at least put a bit of pressure on Verstappen, but with only Sainz, Verstappen was just cruising alone at the front in solitude.
anwhile, Sainz's teammate Leclerc had already entered the DRS zone behind Alonso and started attacking Alonso.
However, Leclerc hadn't pitted at this point, so his position was only temporary.
And Leclerc had a very hard ti getting past Alonso; he followed behind Alonso for 3 laps without finding a really good opportunity.
In the end, Leclerc had no choice but to pit for tires and dropped back.
On lap 49, yellow flags appeared on track again, and they quickly turned into a Safety Car.
When the cara cut over, you could see Tsunoda's car stopped on the grass outside of Turn 2, with the nose directly buried into the barrier off the track.
And coincidentally, lap 48 was the pit window for a lot of teams.
So quite a few drivers had already pitted before the Safety Car ca out.
This just happened to benefit Qin Miao and Hamilton, who were planning to run to the end of the race.
And at this point, the gap between the two of them had already opened up to more than 10 seconds, so with that gap, their pit stops and tire changes wouldn't interfere with each other.
So Qin Miao dove into the pits at the first opportunity and bolted on a brand-new set of soft tires.
Hamilton didn't have the freakish tire-saving ability that Qin Miao did, and he also wasn't in the habit of nursing his tires, so when he entered the pit lane he switched to a set of hard tires that had already done seven laps.
After all, he no longer had any extra tire allocation; this set was the fastest overall among all the tires he had left.
For Hamilton, the only good news was that once he put this set on, he wouldn't have to worry about tire life for the rest of the race and could just push flat-out.
After Qin Miao and Hamilton both finished their stops, the live director also cut to the on-board replay of Tsunoda's crash.
Then the comntators on Five-Star Sports were a bit surprised and a bit delighted to discover that Tsunoda's crash actually ca from exiting the pit lane too fast, not being able to brake in ti, understeering and flying off.
For a mont, the three comntators really wanted to just burst out laughing, but considering that because of Qin Miao there were too many viewers watching the race on Five-Star Sports,
the three of them forcibly held back the urge to laugh out loud.
Everything that followed was good news for Qin Miao.
The Safety Car directly shrank the ti gap between him and Verstappen and Sainz.
Even though the two in front also pitted for fresh tires under the Safety Car, just like Hamilton, they no longer had any brand-new softs or diums.
They were both on hards.
You had to know that on this track, the soft tire was 0.6 seconds per lap faster than the hard.
Which ant that right now Qin Miao's lap tis were more than 0.2 seconds quicker than Verstappen's, and he was even faster compared to Sainz—at least 0.4 seconds per lap.
The Safety Car ca out on lap 49 and stayed until lap 54; with 16 laps remaining in the race, Qin Miao's tires would last just right, and he no longer needed to hold anything back.
The restart itself was fairly smooth; although Verstappen backed up the pack, with the rules in place, unless a driver's reaction ti is really terrible, it's basically impossible to lose positions at this stage.
Once they entered Turn 12, Verstappen started to accelerate, and Sainz and Qin Miao both decisively went with him.
But at this point Qin Miao wasn't in a hurry to make a move, because there was no need.
His car didn't have an advantage on the straights compared with the two ahead.
Rather than wasting the limited life of his softs in corner fights, it was better to just stay tucked up behind Sainz now, not putting too much pressure on him, making sure he didn't get dropped too far by Verstappen.
Then once DRS was enabled, he could rely on DRS plus the extra grip from the softs to take Sainz down in one go.
Only then would he have a chance to go after Verstappen ahead.
Different from the top three, who stayed tightly bunched after the restart, Hamilton was imdiately dropped by about a car length by Qin Miao as soon as they went racing again.
There was nothing he could do about it; the soft tire being quicker than the hard was almost a given.
And watching Qin Miao gradually pull away, Hamilton had never wanted an extra set of softs in his tire allocation as badly as he did at that mont.
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