Chapter 1393 - 524: Taking the Team Along_2

Chapter 1393: Chapter 524: Taking the Team Along_2

On the contrary, the more indifferent you are, the lighter you take something, the more likely you are to pull it off easily.

Qin Miao didn’t make any mistakes on this lap, and his lap time improved a lot—compared with his first flying lap he found a terrifying 0.546 seconds.

The final time was 1:28.151.

But even so, Qin Miao still didn’t take pole in qualifying.

When the Q3 countdown hit zero and he heard the result, Qin Miao could hardly believe it.

Because he really had gone all‑out on that lap.

"How are they this fast?" Qin Miao asked, puzzled.

Frankie’s voice was full of helplessness: "We’ll talk about this after the race."

And just as Frankie finished speaking, Hamilton crossed the line with a 1:28.100.

Great, the Old Man was even more brutal—the last flying lap was 0.051 quicker than Qin Miao, and even P2 slipped through Qin Miao’s fingers.

If Verstappen hadn’t retired with a car failure, Qin Miao probably wouldn’t even have made it to the post‑qualifying interviews today.

Dialing the engine power down, Qin Miao sighed and said, "Alright then."

In the end, the qualifying order was:

1: Perez 1:28.077

2: Hamilton

3: Qin Miao

4: Leclerc

5: Alonso

6: Sainz

7: Stroll

8: O’Kang

9: Piastri

10: Zhou Guanyu

No need to say much about Perez. With his teammate out, this was his best shot at a race win.

Of course he was going to push pretty aggressively.

And Master Pei was living up to his "King of Street Circuits" reputation.

He really showed a kind of scary pace that even made Qin Miao and Hamilton do a double‑take.

Hamilton: seven‑time champion—his greatness needs no embellishment.

Qin Miao: double champion—might be a bug in qualifying, but always a dragon in the race!

Leclerc: in the end, Leclerc still returned to his loyal P4!

As for Zhou Guanyu, he did well in today’s qualifying, making it into the top ten.

But that was about it. In the latter part of qualifying, Zhou Guanyu basically gave up fighting for a higher Q3 position, because he knew that even if he went all‑in in that Q3 "Mars‑rover swarm" phase, he still wasn’t likely to get out of P10.

Rather than wasting a set of tyres out on track, he might as well bolt on an old set of softs and do a long‑run test.

See what the softs’ wear looks like in the mid‑to‑late stint.

When he got this bit of news back in the team debrief after his interviews, Qin Miao felt that the current Alfa Romeo did have some redeeming qualities—at least right now Alfa was very pragmatic.

Of course, Qin Miao only found out after the Saudi GP when he met up with Zhou Guanyu that the idea had actually come from Zhou himself. Alfa still wanted Zhou to fight for a qualifying position.

But Zhou Guanyu turned them down.

Qualifying over, Qin Miao wrapped up the round of post‑session interviews.

The interview content was the same old set of questions, so there’s no need to dwell on it.

After the interviews, he headed back to the team’s garage.

Qin Miao hurried to find Frankie—he really wanted an answer.

"Why is the Red Bull that fast?" As soon as he saw Frankie, Qin Miao blurted out the biggest question sitting in his chest.

While Qin Miao and the others were doing media, Frankie had gone through all the satellite images and every bit of public data they could dig up.

When Qin Miao came in, Frankie handed over the file he’d already compiled: "Here, it’s all in there."

Once Qin Miao had taken the file, Frankie said, "Our car’s main strengths this season are acceleration and top speed on the straights."

Qin Miao nodded. That was common knowledge inside the Mercedes camp.

Then Frankie went on: "Based on the satellite imagery we pulled for the Red Bull, we’ve found that the RB19 is indeed weaker than us in straight‑line top speed and acceleration, but their DRS efficiency is insanely high."

Qin Miao looked up at Frankie. "Insanely high? How high?"

"Once the RB19 opens DRS, it can give them at least 35 km/h extra top speed on the straights." Frankie spread his hands. "Higher than our DRS efficiency."

Qin Miao’s expression turned into a full‑on black‑question‑mark face.

"That fast?"

Frankie nodded. "I’m surprised too. You couldn’t really see it in Bahrain, but now that we’re in Saudi and Red Bull have bolted on the low‑drag kit, they’ve bared their fangs completely."

"After all, Red Bull have a monster like Newey; he’s got a god‑given touch in aerodynamics."

Thinking about the fact Red Bull had a genius like Newey in‑house, Qin Miao stopped feeling surprised.

Red Bull’s whole thing is being insanely good at aero design.

The ground‑effect era is basically tailor‑made for them.

As the saying goes, the times make the hero.

Still, Qin Miao lowered his voice and asked, "You guys started studying it yet?"

Even though they were in a closed room, they were still pretty cautious when talking about this.

Frankie said, "Starting this season Toto’s had people shadowing Red Bull the whole time. If anything pops up, it will definitely get reported back immediately."

Just like how most corporate warfare is brutally straightforward, the competition between teams in F1 is sometimes very simple.

You just study their car, pick apart every detail, and the moment you find something non‑compliant, you go to the FIA and report it.

If the complaint doesn’t work, then you take the idea and study it yourself. If you can copy it, you copy.

If you really can’t copy it, you still want to understand why they designed it that way and what it does—keeping it as technical reserve isn’t a bad thing.

And if that still doesn’t work, you team up with other outfits and lodge a joint protest and complaint about their car.

Bottom line: you target them on‑track, and you target them off‑track too.

Qin Miao nodded—he’d roughly skimmed through the file Frankie had handed him.

Once he was sure there wasn’t much he could actually understand, he set the file aside.

Then, suddenly struck by an idea, Qin Miao asked, "By the way, Frankie, how long is your contract with Mercedes each time?"

Frankie froze. Why bring this up out of nowhere?

To be honest, the leap between topics was huge, and for a second Frankie didn’t catch up.

But he didn’t overthink it, assuming it was just two colleagues chatting after the session. So he answered directly, "Even though this kind of thing is supposed to be confidential, my contract is actually year‑by‑year."

Qin Miao nodded, then asked curiously, "And your salary? You, a legendary race engineer—surely you’re on at least a seven‑figure euro annual salary, right?"

Frankie waved a hand. "Legendary race engineer, my ass. I’m just riding your coattails. But my annual salary is pretty close to what you’re thinking—Mercedes pay me 700,000 euros a year."

Qin Miao nodded. That was manageable.

Ferrari wouldn’t deny him the right to bring a few people with him to live in Maranello.

"Okay, then what if you had to change your environment? Like, say, move to Italy?"

If just now Frankie had assumed Qin Miao was just making small talk, by the time he heard this he fully understood what Qin was getting at.

Frankie lowered his voice even more than before: "You? You’ve signed with Ferrari? I was just wondering why you suddenly started asking me this stuff, and now it makes sense. You’re planning to go to Ferrari when your Mercedes contract ends this year?!"

Qin Miao didn’t hide it. He nodded and said bluntly, "Ferrari put a number on the table that I couldn’t refuse."

Frankie nodded immediately. "If you really go to Ferrari, I’ll go with you."

"And you don’t need to worry about my family situation. Did you forget I came out of Prema with you? Prema’s an Italian team. I’ve got no issues living in somewhere like Maranello.

In fact, as an Italian, getting to work for Ferrari is the dream for people like us in the automotive world."

Right, that settled any lingering worries.

But Qin Miao still reminded him, "You absolutely can’t talk about this outside. If this leaks early, it could affect the team’s unity and competitive form."

"I know. Don’t worry."