Chapter 119 - 45: He Hit My Race Car

Chapter 119: Chapter 45: He Hit My Race Car

The first qualifying session started at 4:40 PM, featuring drivers with even car numbers. Wu Shi, being number 32, was naturally assigned to this group.

The competition in this group was comparatively more intense; drivers who had performed excellently in previous races, like O’connor, Verstappen, and Ed, were all present.

"Remember, prioritize securing pole position. On this track, pole position is almost everything," Alan reminded him one last time.

"Understood."

Wu Shi nodded. Street circuits were too narrow, making overtaking extremely difficult. There was only so much racing line to go around; it was either a double DNF, or one driver would have to yield to the other.

In the pit garage, Sid was leaning on his elbows, his fist held to his mouth, blowing on it from time to time.

Alan saw his nervous gesture and comforted him, "No need to be so tense. This kid only ever works miracles!"

"I know, but I’m still nervous."

Sid replied with a smile. He had watched Wu Shi grow up and was fond of the kid.

Just then, a call came in.

"Martina, what’s up?" Sid answered.

"We need to add a social media PR and operations manager, and a business assistant. You handle it."

"Understood."

After hanging up, Sid glanced at the race and immediately took out his laptop to start working.

Instead of posting a job opening right away, he first opened Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and searched for "Wu Shi."

Sure enough, a flood of related reports appeared.

"Wu’s lackluster performance at the Boc City street circuit: A sign he’s not good at street races?" (Photo attached).

"Wu claims he isn’t struggling, but he showed no speed in practice. Will he meet his downfall in the Pyrenees Mountains this time?" (Photo attached).

There were many such pessimistic reports, with no shortage of people agreeing in the comments below.

"Yeah! Wu is just a brute who only knows how to overtake by aggressively forcing his way up the inside! He can’t do anything else!"

"A person from Hua Country driving in F3? How much did the Van Amersfoort Racing Team get paid to take him?"

"Ooh ooh, instead of giving a car to this stupid person from Hua Country, you might as well give it to one of our guys." — from Ah San.

"No! He’s not a person from Hua Country! He’s from our Korea!" — from Korea.

The appearance of these comments was very strange. In the past, while the evaluations of Wu Shi weren’t all positive, most were at least friendly and objective.

Sid realized that someone was smearing and attacking Wu Shi online.

This wasn’t a huge deal in itself, but being cursed at and questioned would eventually affect one’s mentality. If Wu Shi had scrolled past these comments this morning and his mindset was affected, something disastrous could really happen on a dangerous street circuit like this!

The only good news was that Wu Shi had two accounts. His own private account wasn’t public; the public one was an account he registered later for his fans.

Wu Shi himself rarely logged into the public account. The password was with Sid, but even he didn’t usually have time to log in. When he did, it was just to post an announcement, never to read the comments.

He couldn’t help but log into the account. The private messages were flooded, there were too many @-mentions, and a great deal of negative comments.

At this point, he couldn’t help but sigh. ’Looks like we really have to manage this. We have to hire someone.’

Meanwhile, on the track, Wu Shi was on his warm-up lap, largely unaware of the situation online.

To protect his eyes, he rarely browsed social media. The most contact he had with a digital screen was when he was on the racing simulator.

VROOOOM!

The warm-up lap ended.

Alan TR: "Track conditions are average. You can test the waters first."

Wu Shi TR: "Roger that. Remember to help notify the drivers ahead."

On a street circuit, the biggest fear was a driver up ahead being unaware of someone on a flying lap behind them and dawdling on the racing line. By the time the faster driver rounded a corner, they wouldn’t have time to react and would crash right into them.

A crash of that magnitude could be fatal, so Wu Shi naturally took it very seriously.

Turn 1 at Boc City was a gentle curve, so it combined with the straight to form a very long full-throttle section. It took a full five seconds to reach the braking point.

Because the barriers on both sides were so close, hitting over two hundred kilometers per hour already felt incredibly intense.

In any case, he couldn’t understand the mentality of young street racers who did two or three hundred km/h on public roads. It was one thing not to value their own lives, but they endangered others as well.

Before entering the turn, Wu Shi refocused his attention and downshifted rapidly.

His braking point was very late, almost at the end of the corner, and what was more surprising was that his car was nearly scraping the left-hand wall.

Turning right into Turn 2, his right-front wheel practically ran over the kerb.

During practice, Wu Shi had already tested it; the kerb here wasn’t high, and there was still a meter of space to the barrier.

To take the perfect racing line, one theoretically had to run over the kerb and get infinitely close to the barrier.

The trouble was, the empty space between the kerb and the barrier was covered in grass, which couldn’t be driven on without losing control.

If Wu Shi were in charge of designing the track, he’d have the kerb shaved down and the grass paved over with concrete. Only then could you experience real speed and passion, separating the top drivers from the average ones.

After Turn 2 was another very, very long straight, perfect for accelerating freely.

The following Turn 3 was a U-shaped corner, and Turn 4 was a tight V-shaped corner.

The characteristics here were the same as Turn 2; because of the kerbs, it was impossible to hit the perfect apex, and you could only graze past them.

"He took those few corners quite cleanly."

The team principal, watching from the side, couldn’t help but comment. Wu Shi was Wu Shi; even on his first-ever street circuit, he could drive with a fluid, seamless grace.

The difficult part of the track was the second half, from Turn 8 to 15. This section was long and winding, and you often couldn’t see the road ahead until you were at the corner’s entrance. The slightest lapse in concentration meant either turning and hitting a protruding barrier sideways, or missing the braking point and plowing straight into the wall.

Wu Shi didn’t get arrogant. Facing this complex section of the track, he didn’t hug the walls, wanting to avoid getting blocked by another car and being unable to react in time to prevent a crash.

WHOOSH!

The scenery flew backward. As he came around Turn 10, a blue race car appeared ahead. Wu Shi reacted quickly, swerving to avoid it.

This was the danger of a street circuit; the barriers would block the view of what was around the corner.

However, this avoidance maneuver was somewhat predictable, as Alan had told him the other car’s approximate position.

In the following series of combination corners, he was held up again by several cars that were taking the corners quite slowly.

Wu Shi was getting annoyed, so he pushed the limits a bit to make use of the space. But as soon as he got past, someone was already snitching.

Michelle Beretta TR: "Hey! He hit my car."

Race Engineer TR: "We’ve looked at it. The car is not damaged. You two didn’t touch."

Michelle Beretta TR: "How could we not have touched!"

The broadcast played the team radio. The commentator laughed when he heard it, and the director, knowing what to do, immediately pulled up the replay.

"We can see it now, and wow! It certainly looked like they were going to touch, but there was no contact. It seems Michelle Beretta was just a bit too nervous."

"In the last race, we already saw Wu’s astonishing car control. I have to take this opportunity to clarify something I said earlier: when Wu closes in on other drivers, he is always in complete control of the distance."

"Yes, after our post-race analysis, we believe the wheel-to-wheel contact between Wu and Rosenqvist in the last race was something he intentionally controlled. We’ve seen this kind of thing in F1 races as well."

Not much was happening in the qualifying session, so the commentator began to discuss the previous race. There were so many moments worth savoring from it that he clearly couldn’t forget them.