How Did I Become an F1 Driver? Chapter 337 - 169: Qualifying Begins

After completing a task, Qin Miao received a new testing assignnt.

In these repeated tests, Qin Miao sought configurations that would be comfortable for him to use.

The day’s work ended quickly, and Qin Miao’s results in the first and second practice sessions were rather average, 6th in the first practice, 16th in the second.

However, everyone just takes practice results lightly; neither the spectators nor the technicians from various teams pay much attention to them.

After resting for a day, Qin Miao fully imrsed himself in work again following a routine eting the next day.

At the beginning of the third practice, Qin Miao did another long-distance run, this ti using a setup tentatively chosen for the race stage.

The results showed significant improvent compared to the ti achieved in the Q1 stage yesterday, with further reduced tire wear.

Looking at Qin Miao’s tire wear report, Toto even bluntly said that, if the rules allowed, Qin Miao could complete the whole race on any F1 track using hard tires.

Of course, unfortunately, the FIA rules do not permit such a situation.

It’s worth ntioning that Qin Miao only used four sets of tires across three practice sessions.

One set of hard tires in the first practice, one set of dium tires in the second practice, and two sets of soft tires in the third practice.

In fact, Qin Miao initially wanted to use only one set of soft tires in the third practice.

But Toto stopped him.

"You’re not a hamster; you can’t take these tires ho, and if you really want to hide your lap tis, you’d be better off adjusting the engine settings directly. Just change the system settings and reduce the power output slightly."

In the first half of the third practice, the setup was confird, and the second half was focused on light fuel load qualifying simulations.

Qin Miao achieved a ti of 1 minute 15.911 seconds, which can be considered decent but not great.

The final results of the third practice do not provide much reference for other teams, but they still have so relevance for Qin Miao.

Because Hamilton also limited his engine during the last segnt of the third practice when running qualifying tests, with a restriction level similar to Qin Miao’s, at 7%.

After the run, Qin Miao’s qualifying ti was 0.219 seconds slower than Hamilton’s.

Honestly, this gap is quite significant, though it could be because Qin Miao is not so familiar with the track having more dium-low speed corners.

However, at least Qin Miao realized there is still quite a gap between him and Hamilton.

After the third practice ended, while the team replaced Qin Miao’s gearbox dedicated for qualifying and the race, Qin Miao watched the lap test footage of him and Hamilton in his resting room.

Although Qin Miao is not highly ambitious, he is fairly unperturbed within this paddock; yet his love for racing and driving cannot be feigned.

rcedes has many competitive rivals, and drivers often fight fiercely, but a driver’s true rival is, in fact, only his teammate.

Since the vehicle performance among teams varies, only your teammate’s car runs with the sa performance as yours, making the comparison the most direct and accurate.

Now, Qin Miao was sowhat dissatisfied after being beaten by Hamilton and naturally wanted to find the exact differences between them.

Actually, if Qin Miao could obtain Hamilton’s throttle and braking data, the comparison would be much more intuitive, but such data is transparent only within the team and regarded as a comrcial secret to other drivers.

Qin Miao wasn’t thick-skinned, so he didn’t go to Hamilton or the team to ask; he relied on public onboard footage and his familiarity with the rcedes car to grind through it.

The progress wasn’t ideal, making Qin Miao sowhat ntally exhausted.

However, while still grappling with confusion, the door to Qin Miao’s resting room was suddenly pushed open from outside.

Qin Miao took off his headphones and looked over, seeing Hamilton sticking his head through the door.

"I knocked, but you didn’t hear," Hamilton explained.

Not avoiding Hamilton, Qin Miao paused the comparison footage of the two rcedes cars and opened the door to invite Hamilton in, saying, "Co in and have a seat."

Hamilton naturally saw the footage on Qin Miao’s laptop and curiously asked as he entered, "What are you watching?"

Qin Miao turned the laptop towards Hamilton: "It’s the onboard footage from our qualifying simulation earlier. I wanted to see how that 0.2-second gap between us ca about."

Hamilton was surprised by Qin Miao’s honesty, but facing Qin Miao’s question, Hamilton couldn’t provide an answer as he had gone to attend an event recording right after the third practice and just returned.

Nonetheless, Hamilton had a solution for Qin Miao’s current confusion.

"Wait a mont."

After speaking, Hamilton opened the door to Qin Miao’s resting room, stuck his head out, and told his track engineer, who was contemplating while staring at the monitor in front of him, "Pete, send the data from my qualifying simulation during the final stage of the third practice to Qin Miao’s email."

Pete was a bit surprised to hear Hamilton’s words but didn’t question Hamilton’s decision. He simply found the file on his computer, packed it into a compressed file, and sent it to Qin Miao via rcedes’ internal system.