Although this wasn’t an ideal overtaking spot, Qin Miao still managed to block Gasly tightly with a late braking maneuver before entering T15.
Gasly also knew that he had little chance of resisting Qin Miao, so he didn’t defend and just stuck to his racing line.
"Qin Miao, I was worried his starting move was too aggressive and might cause car damage, but now it seems his operation is bold yet ticulous, just like in Monaco. After the start, before even completing a lap, he has moved up two positions."
Bing eagerly applauded, "Beautiful! This overtake was absolutely beautiful!"
"Great overtake Qin Miao, now you’re in fourth, with Verstappen ahead of you," Frankie’s voice ca through Qin Miao’s TR, "If possible, you can try to overtake him too."
Out of T16, entering the long straight, Qin Miao said nothing but quietly switched from the fuel-saving mode, used just after passing Gasly, to the rich fuel mode and targeted his skills at Pan.
[Max Verstappen: Pressure: 0%]
Quickly, the first lap was completed, and Qin Miao crossed the first lap’s checkpoint.
At the sa ti, after the first lap, Russell opted to pit and switch to hard tires.
Choosing to switch to hard tires at this point, Williams’s strategy seed to be to finish the entire race on a single set of hard tires.
On the Baku circuit, which doesn’t consu tires much, one set of hard tires really could last the entire race.
anwhile, Perez used slipstream and a late brake on the inside at the end of the long straight to overtake Sainz and moved up to sixth.
As the second lap neared its end, Hamilton directly showed his knife to Leclerc, who was leading. By T16, Hamilton was just 0.7 seconds behind Leclerc.
On other tracks, this 0.7-second gap would only an entering the front car’s DRS zone, and even with DRS, it wouldn’t be enough to overtake.
But this was Baku, where 0.7 seconds was enough for Hamilton to make a move on the over two-kiloter straight, even without DRS.
Not to ntion, in the previous two laps, Leclerc tried to shake off the rcedes behind him and used up all the power from his battery.
Obviously, using up all the battery power was not ideal.
Hamilton even made a move on Leclerc’s inside before the DRS detection point.
At this mont, Qin Miao was 1.6 seconds behind Verstappen, and Verstappen’s pressure level only increased by 1% per lap.
Qin Miao knew that if he wanted to win the champion’s reward, he couldn’t conserve his tires too much.
So from the third lap, Qin Miao went all out, and of course, to ensure upcoming opportunities to overtake, Qin Miao kept his ERS charge above 40%.
On the fourth lap, Perez overtook Gasly, who was 3 seconds behind Qin Miao, moving up to fifth, being 3.7 seconds behind Qin Miao.
This lap also opened DRS, but unfortunately, Qin Miao was not in Verstappen’s DRS zone, and even without tire conservation, he only closed the gap by 0.3 seconds over two laps.
By the seventh lap, Qin Miao barely caught up to within a second of Verstappen’s DRS zone after going all out.
However, there’s always a daunting thing for drivers on the F1 circuit called the DRS train.
This described the situation Qin Miao faced: Hamilton was leading, Leclerc could slipstream and use DRS from Hamilton, Verstappen could slipstream and use DRS from Leclerc, and Qin Miao could slipstream and use DRS from Verstappen.
Because of this advantage, what Qin Miao had, Verstappen also had, making it extrely difficult for Qin Miao to overtake Verstappen on the straight, even with DRS.
Now Qin Miao was stuck in this DRS train.
The only good news was that with DRS, Qin Miao didn’t have to exhaust all his efforts, allowing him to slightly conserve his tires, and adjust his fuel strategy back to normal.
However, at the end of the eighth lap, Leclerc focused most of his attention on defending against Verstappen, losing the rhythm with Hamilton out of T16, which ant he lost DRS for the upcoming long straight and ultimately lost his second position.
At that mont, Leclerc only symbolically blocked inside a little, but the Red Bull with DRS was just too fast, and from the broadcast’s perspective, it almost looked as if Leclerc was deliberately letting Verstappen pass.
After Verstappen overtook Leclerc, Qin Miao was now behind Leclerc.
Qin Miao felt it was a pity that during their position swap, there were no intense defensive maneuvers, so he didn’t benefit from their fight.
The gap between him and Leclerc was even larger than the gap between him and Verstappen, and Qin Miao was even briefly driven out of the DRS zone to 1.3 seconds behind.
But Qin Miao wasn’t in a hurry because Frankie had told him over the TR, "According to calculations, our lap ti is 0.3 seconds faster per lap than Leclerc’s. We expect you to catch up and overtake him in three laps."
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