Chapter 1398 - 526: Back-to-Back Championships

Chapter 1398: Chapter 526: Back-to-Back Championships

With such terrifying speed, Qin Miao was already side by side with Hamilton at the start grid position in the DRS mid-section and completely overtook Hamilton 300 meters before the braking point.

Pure brute force.

After overtaking Hamilton, the time gap between Qin Miao and the front-running Perez was only 1.2 seconds.

Qin Miao also began to gradually narrow the time gap with Perez, and of course, he didn’t forget to throw a skill on top of Perez’s head.

Originally, Qin Miao thought that the race had just begun, and even if Perez was under pressure, it wouldn’t be too great.

But when the pressure attribute bar over Perez’s head popped up, a question mark appeared in Qin Miao’s mind.

[Pressure Value: 50%]

No, the race has just started, and it’s less than 6 laps in, so why is Perez’s pressure already this high?

But you really can’t blame Perez.

Putting yourself in Perez’s perspective, you’d understand why Perez has such high pressure in this race.

After the Bahrain Grand Prix opener race, the finish time gap between Verstappen and Perez could stretch to 12 seconds.

Seeing such a large time gap, Perez realized he couldn’t compete with his teammate Verstappen for the race win.

But just when you’ve completely given up, you suddenly find a race where your teammate falls to the back due to a car mechanical failure, naturally, you think of taking advantage of your teammate’s absence to win this race.

But just when you are the most hopeful to win the race, Qin Miao is pressing hard from behind, continuously applying pressure on you.

Intending to snatch your race win.

Perez, who just signed a one-year contract with Red Bull, is definitely fighting for his contract now, so the pressure naturally becomes very high.

Faced with such great pressure, it’s believed no one can remain indifferent.

Perez is no exception.

But Master Pei is still Master Pei; in defending Qin Miao in this lap, there were no driving errors due to Qin Miao’s skill pressure.

Ultimately, Qin Miao overtook in lap 7 after closing up to Perez’s DRS zone without rushing, reducing the time gap to less than 0.3 seconds with two DRS sections before overtaking Perez on the starting straight’s DRS zone like he did with Hamilton.

In fact, given the time gap between Qin Miao and Perez, Qin Miao could have overtaken Perez in the third timing sector’s DRS zone.

But considering the terrifying DRS efficiency of the Red Bull car, Qin Miao controlled his impulses and waited for the starting straight’s DRS zone to make his move.

After overtaking Perez, Qin Miao left Perez out of his DRS zone using a sector’s distance.

Next, Qin Miao began to cruise; this race was no longer significantly related to him.

In the ninth lap, having caught up to tenth place, Verstappen was blocked by Zhou Guanyu for four laps.

In the end, Verstappen overtook on the starting straight.

Although Alfa Romeo and Zhou Guanyu aren’t directly competing with Red Bull,

Alfa Romeo, in any case, is considered Ferrari’s second team, and Zhou Guanyu is a friend of Qin Miao’s, so blocking Verstappen for four laps was entirely reasonable both publicly and personally.

Next, the broadcast director focused on two different points on the track.

The first was the offense and defense between Hamilton and Perez.

As the race reached lap 12, Perez’s tires started showing signs of grip decline; although the grip of the medium tires was still stronger than the hard tires, Perez’s speed was no longer as fast as Hamilton’s.

The gap originally opened by Perez was gradually closed by Hamilton, and the two found themselves in a stalemate on the track; Perez began defending against Hamilton, while temporarily Hamilton could only apply pressure on Perez without a way to overtake him.

Meanwhile, another part of the broadcast attention was on Verstappen at the back.

After all, watching a top-tier driver slicing through the field from behind is something the audience loves to see.

As for Qin Miao?

Though nobody could deny Qin Miao’s strength at this point, as he was leading the race, a solitary run was not what the audience wanted to watch.

With no interference, Qin Miao began the familiar lonely cruise from last season.

Qin Miao’s lap speed fell with each passing lap, which for those looking at data charts was very apparent.

Only seasoned spectators could notice from the charts that, despite Qin Miao’s lap speed constantly dropping, seasoned fans could see at a glance that Qin Miao’s lap times were decreasing very evenly.

Lap 14, the pit window for the first stop opened.

Hamilton and Perez didn’t pit.

They kept persisting on the track.

Eventually, in lap 17, Hamilton finally overtook the tire-depleted Perez on the track.

The way of overtaking Perez was similar to Qin Miao’s, relying on the W14’s straight-line speed and DRS.

But Red Bull was straightforward; after Perez was overtaken by Hamilton, he was immediately called into the pits to change tires.

It’s clear now that Red Bull has given up on having Verstappen chase down Qin Miao; given Qin Miao’s tire management ability and Verstappen’s current position, who hadn’t pitted yet and just got up to fourth, effectively in eighth place, Verstappen had essentially lost any chance of competing for the race win today against Qin Miao.