It was unclear whether the long, intense race was leaving Leclerc breathless, or if Leclerc was just furious with the unresolved issues of this Ferrari wreck, or perhaps both.
However, the team radio had not ended, and soon Leclerc’s engineer’s voice erged again in the team radio: "There’s no issue now, the throttle output is zero."
Leclerc: ...
The damn engine stalled! Of course there’s no problem! If the fuel output continued, I’d have to abandon the car! What’s the use of this damn thing!
After hearing this, Leclerc’s breaths grew heavier until he finally let out a heart-wrenching scream over the team radio: "NO!!!!!!"
...
Following that, Leclerc rode Matthew’s scooter back to the team paddock, while the race continued on the track.
During the yellow flag, the penalty decision for Qin Miao was also announced by the race officials.
Qin Miao was penalized five seconds for an unsafe release in the pit lane.
This left Qin Miao sowhat uncomfortable; the only good news was that it was rely a ti penalty, not a forced pit stop penalty.
It was directly added to Qin Miao’s final race result.
And on the track, Verstappen was in first, Hamilton in second, Perez in third, Alonso fourth, and only then was Qin Miao in fifth.
Finally, on lap 20, the race restarted.
With 33 laps remaining, most drivers were using hard tires, so Qin Miao knew that he couldn’t fight for the championship in this race; now it’s about seeing if he could take down Alonso in front and then aim for Perez or Hamilton to secure a podium finish.
On the track, although Alonso was very serious about defending against the Qin Miao who had co behind him.
But the performance gap between the two drivers’ cars was a bit too large, so in the first lap after the restart, which was lap 21, Qin Miao caught Alonso’s slipstream and completed the overtake before T1.
Alonso actually really wanted to see what this young Qin Miao was made of, but the car’s gap directly nullified the driver’s impact.
After overtaking Alonso, Qin Miao began chasing Perez ahead.
In the first few laps, Qin Miao indeed couldn’t get closer to Perez.
Sotis, Perez even widened the gap by about 0.1 seconds per lap.
So during this ti, Qin Miao was consistently behind Perez at a distance of 2.7 seconds.
Strictly speaking, at this mont, Qin Miao’s lap speed averaged around the sa as Perez’s.
And Perez couldn’t close in on Hamilton ahead of him either; instead, Verstappen was steadily increasing the gap with Hamilton behind him.
Finally, at lap 30, Qin Miao’s speed began to increase noticeably.
From having lap tis almost identical to Perez’s, it shifted to Qin Miao being about 0.1 seconds faster per lap than Perez, and it stayed consistently faster by 0.1 seconds.
By lap 35, Qin Miao had entered the DRS zone behind Perez.
Perez knew that the temperature was high today, and the track temperature was exceedingly high, so he knew that in this race, if he could defend against Qin Miao for 3 laps without being overtaken, the high temperatures would destroy Qin Miao’s tires.
By then, he could happily leave Qin Miao to the fifth Sainz behind him, comfortably securing a podium while happily setting lap tis.
Except, Perez’s thoughts were optimistic but, in reality, Qin Miao had stored a 100% battery charge for this attack.
Plus, the status of Qin Miao’s hard tires was better than Perez’s, who had been preserving tires, so Qin Miao didn’t expend much effort overtaking Perez.
After exiting T6 on lap 36, Qin Miao began to release the car’s battery power at full capacity, coupled with the slipstream and DRS from Perez, Qin Miao reached the inside line at T8 and easily completed the overtake versus Perez.
After overtaking Perez, Qin Miao still needed to cool down his car.
But Qin Miao wasn’t just preparing to cool his car; he was also carrying a 5-second penalty.
Qin Miao knew that his speed was faster than Perez’s now, but what if Perez’s speed returned later?
So to prevent Perez behind from snatching away a podium, Qin Miao made so minor maneuvers.
While Qin Miao’s lap speed was 0.3 seconds faster than Perez’s, he kept his position 0.7 seconds ahead of Perez.
And consistently directed the high-temperature airflow from his car’s tailpipe onto Sainz’s tires and side intake.
Qin Miao’s idea was similar to Perez’s, utilizing the track’s high temperature to wear Perez’s tires down.
After all, on this track, once the tire temperature is up, it’s exceedingly difficult to bring it down.
When Perez’s tires struggled with high temperatures, Qin Miao could easily widen the gap over Perez by 5 seconds.
But given Qin Miao’s 5-second penalty, even though Qin Miao’s lap speed was now faster than Hamilton’s, and the gap with Hamilton was only 3 seconds, Qin Miao wasn’t aiming for Hamilton’s position; all he wanted was to ruin Perez behind him.
On lap 39, Perez was overtaken by Sainz coming from behind.
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