Chapter 1488 - 543: Martin: Ferrari’s Shenanigans? Now It’s My Turn!

Chapter 1488: Chapter 543: Martin: Ferrari’s Shenanigans? Now It’s My Turn!

After getting past Stroll at T10, Perez had clearly tasted some sweetness and was all set to pull the same move at T10 on the next lap to overtake Hockenheim...

And then he crashed...

Perez’s front wing endplate was heavily damaged; the entire left side of the front wing was missing a huge chunk, and his speed was obviously affected.

Although, same as Sainz, it was front wing damage, Perez’s loss of pace was clearly bigger. And since Perez was out of the points at this stage and very unlikely to score, Red Bull simply called him back in.

Because of this move, Perez completely lost any chance of fighting for points in today’s race.

Honestly, if today’s race were held on a track where overtaking is even slightly easier, even somewhere like Hengelo, Perez, in the fastest car in the paddock, wouldn’t be this frustrated. But there’s nothing he can do — this is Monte Carlo, the jewel in F1’s crown.

The race then slipped into a lull.

Even though the teams’ pre-race forecasts said there was only a 20% chance of rain today, around halfway through the race Mercedes’ meteorology department had already spotted on the radar a rain cloud drifting toward the circuit.

And it wasn’t just Mercedes; basically every team with a weather unit knew there’d be some showers over the track, and that they’d arrive before the race ended.

For every driver this was good news — except Hockenheim.

Because rain meant everyone would need to pit for intermediates; everyone would get a "free" pit stop — except Perez and Hockenheim.

So everyone postponed their pit windows.

Even with their tyres clearly losing grip, they chose not to pit for fresh rubber.

After all, compared to other circuits, defending from the car behind in Monte Carlo is ridiculously easy. Even if your tyre grip is clearly gone, as long as you don’t open up the inside at the overtaking spots and you just run your normal race without major mistakes, the car behind basically has no chance to get past you — unless you’re running a GP2 engine.

So they had both the reason and the ability to stay out on track.

But for Qin Miao, this was pure torture.

Everyone knows Qin Miao’s tyre management is the best of the entire field.

So by the halfway mark, his tyre grip was the best of all the drivers.

If at this moment you let Qin Miao and Verstappen both run a quali lap around Monte Carlo, Qin Miao could rely on his better tyre grip to lap faster than Verstappen.

The annoying part was, sitting right in front of Qin Miao was a Hamilton.

And the Old Man’s defensive driving against Qin Miao was completely effortless.

Even though Qin Miao had already used his pressure skill on the Old Man ahead at the very start of the race.

By now, halfway through the race, the Old Man’s pressure meter was only at 62%.

The rate of increase was painfully slow; before the race ended it would probably only climb to about 70%.

Qin Miao figured it was this track, plus Alonso ahead of the Old Man, that gave him enough sense of security.

There was absolutely nothing Qin Miao could do about it.

And this feeling — the guy in front clearly has way worse tyres than you but you still can’t get past him — is genuinely infuriating.

The only remaining path open to Qin Miao at this point was about to be blocked by the incoming rain.

That path was pitting for new tyres. Right now there was a 7?second gap of clean air behind Qin Miao, meaning that if he pitted and came back out, there would be no one within 7 seconds ahead of him; he could use that window to pump in lap times as hard as possible.

The annoying part was, the forecast said it would start raining soon.

On other tracks, when it rains you can still try to hang on with slicks for a bit, but in Monte Carlo that’s completely impossible.

Monte Carlo has way too many low-speed corners, and in those, if you’re on slicks, the tyres simply can’t provide any grip to the car.

Your car will absolutely lose control in Monte Carlo’s low-speed turns.

So with that concern hanging over him, Qin Miao could only stay stuck behind Hamilton.

And he stayed stuck. All the way to lap 53.

Finally, on lap 53, the twist everyone had been waiting for — everyone except Red Bull fans — arrived.

Because it finally started raining in Monaco.

Ever since F1 cars have gotten bigger and bigger, in recent years’ Monaco Grand Prix, the crowd basically stopped expecting on-track battles; the only thing they hoped for was rain during the race.

Because only rain can inject some randomness into an otherwise static race.

And this spectacle did unfold just as the fans wished: lapped traffic, giving way, overtakes, spins, kissing the wall — everything the fans love to see blended together, flaring up one after another, impossible to take in all at once.

As the rain gradually closed in on the circuit, Qin Miao also shrank the gap to Hamilton down to one second.

At that distance, Qin Miao could put much more pressure on Hamilton; if he made a mistake, Qin Miao would have a chance to snatch his podium spot on the spot.

Even though at this point the Old Man’s pressure bar was still climbing very slowly.

In fact, the rain had already started to fall sporadically over the track on lap 52, but back then it didn’t affect the drivers’ handling; it only messed a bit with their vision.