It’s sowhat unfortunate that the strategy didn’t work out too well; Verstappen’s start was only diocre.
After the attack and defense of two races, Verstappen also knew that under normal conditions, it would be difficult for him to overtake Qin Miao. So after realizing he couldn’t surpass Qin Miao at the start, he simply gave up the attack in the subsequent race, instead staying behind Qin Miao’s car, charging his battery while waiting for DRS to activate.
However, accidents never quite arrive unannounced.
On the second lap of the starting straight, Hamilton and Qin Miao ca within a one-second gap after one lap, crossing the finish line one after another and then passing T1.
Following were Verstappen, Leclerc, and the other cars at the back.
When the cara turned to Norris, debris from the cars in the back suddenly flew into the air. As the cara switched over, it showed that part of the front wing of Kimi Raikkonen’s Alfa Roo car had disappeared, while the other part was tangled under the chassis, creating fierce sparks from friction with the track.
The Alfa Roo team staff, seeing this, were already preparing tires and a new front wing, as after such an incident, a pit stop for repairs is definitely required.
But what was unexpected was that the front wing debris caught under Kimi’s chassis didn’t fall off, but stayed there, continuously rubbing against the ground, causing Kimi’s car to have insufficient grip on the front wheels.
Due to the lack of grip on the front wheels, the steering ability naturally approached zero, and Kimi could only drive the Alfa Roo straight into the gravel buffer zone at T1.
Well then, the Alfa Roo pit crew don’t need to prepare anymore, just retire from the race.
Since Kimi’s car was parked in the buffer zone at T1, to prevent a secondary accident, the safety car was deployed by the race committee.
The small gap that Hamilton had just tried so hard to extend was gone just like that.
The good news is there’s no need to worry about fuel; at least two laps will be run under the safety car, and after those two laps, Qin Miao won’t need to deliberately conserve fuel.
The safety car ultimately went around for three laps, and on the fifth lap, its top light went out, signaling the race was about to restart.
Qin Miao had already gradually beco accustod to restarting from the second position, and was experienced in observing necessary factors at this stage of the start.
At T11, Hamilton began to slow down, letting the safety car pull away, and Qin Miao copied Hamilton’s moves, weaving left and right to warm his tires while closely watching Hamilton’s car movents.
On the not-so-long straight between T14 and T15, Qin Miao kept close to Hamilton’s car and ca out of T15. Qin Miao saw Hamilton in front of him maintain a straight path for half a second, then quickly sway left and right twice, before continuing straight for another second.
Without waiting for the car in front to visibly pull away, Qin Miao abruptly floored the throttle, since ahead was the main straight. With sufficient tire temperature, Qin Miao didn’t worry about lack of grip on the rear wheels when flooring the throttle.
But after this obvious jump-start by Qin Miao, the Hamilton in front of him didn’t visibly close up, instead gradually pulled away from Qin Miao.
On the contrary, the Red Bulls behind the two rcedes had a very noticeable hesitation at the start.
The cars behind Verstappen were even slower.
Indeed, Qin Miao and Hamilton, having improved their relationship, devised so cheeky tactics, setting up a little dynamic restart signal before the start of this race on the down-low.
Whoever was in front, during the preparation to restart, would do such a maneuver at a suitable spot. Once the maneuver was completed, the restart would comnce imdiately.
When they initially set this strategy, the two might have been joking, as without deliberate practice, this timing is quite difficult to grasp.
But when actually applied on the racetrack, the tactic yielded surprisingly good results, and neither driver made any obvious mistakes.
Additionally, even so, on the track, it was Hamilton who first pressed the throttle and then Qin Miao followed, so even if Red Bull protested the two drivers’ actions, FIA would discover that Qin Miao’s reaction ti was simply very quick this ti, and there was no possibility of a jump-start by Qin Miao.
So after the restart, arriving at T1, the positions of the top three drivers remained unchanged.
And Qin Miao had pulled away from Verstappen by over 1.1 seconds.
In the period that followed, it was relatively smooth; Hamilton maintained a pace of pulling away by 0.4 seconds per lap from Qin Miao.
The 1.1-second gap to Verstappen took Verstappen a full three and a half laps to close.
But Qin Miao’s defense was airtight, and even though Verstappen caught up behind Qin Miao, he couldn’t find any breakthrough against Qin Miao.
Just as predicted before the race, in the absence of an absolute speed difference between the cars, Qin Miao could completely lock down Verstappen.
Of course, Verstappen was confident too. As long as he could catch up to Qin Miao’s DRS zone, he could use the DRS and the 90% ERS charge to overtake Qin Miao.
By lap 10, Verstappen had caught up to within 0.5 seconds of Qin Miao, while Hamilton ahead had pulled away over 2 seconds from the two behind, so the broadcast director didn’t focus on Hamilton but kept the cara on Qin Miao and Verstappen here.
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