Chapter 1526: The Main Race Begins (6K, Bonus 13/14)_4

The top priority right now is to start closing the time gap to Hamilton on track, then look for a chance to overtake him.

But the rate at which that gap was shrinking was very slow. After all, Old Man’s car and Qin Miao’s car had identical performance, and the way Qin Miao was closing the gap to Hamilton wasn’t that his lap pace was faster, but that his tire wear was lower than Old Man’s.

It’s worth mentioning that in the last few races, when Qin Miao was looking at the lap time comparison chart between himself and Old Man, he noticed that his lap times and Hamilton’s were now about the same.

In other words, even if he didn’t have this tire-saving ability, his lap times on track were now on par with Hamilton’s.

Maybe over long runs he was still just a tiny bit worse than Hamilton, but in terms of single-lap pace, he and Hamilton were neck and neck now.

But all of that had nothing to do with the current race.

On lap 9, Qin Miao’s advantage over Hamilton finally started to show.

At this point Qin Miao’s lap time could be 0.3 quicker than Old Man’s.

And it was in this lap’s third sector, the first DRS zone.

Old Man saw Qin Miao behind him dropping into within one second, and after noticing he was getting ready to make a move, he didn’t even bother defending—he just let Qin Miao go before T13.

Actually, with the W14’s car characteristics, it’s very easy to defend another car on track.

Look no further than Albon, whose car characteristics are the same as the W14—he’s been running that FW45 like a damn train on track.

He’s been blocking the pack behind him to the point they’re half in heaven, half in hell.

Wanna overtake?

Even if you’ve fully charged your ERS and the team’s engineers haven’t told you to lift and coast on track,

once you actually make a move, you’ll realize that in the DRS zone, sure, with DRS open your top speed is indeed higher than his FW45, but his acceleration is better than yours!

Before your DRS even has time to fully show its effect, you take a look.

Eh? How are we already at the braking point before I’ve even pulled alongside?

Even if you pop both DRS and ERS, you’ll find at best your acceleration only matches Albon’s FW45. Just when your top speed is about to finally edge past the FW45, it’s already the braking point, and staring at that Williams sitting on the inside line, you can’t summon even the slightest thought of daring to send it.

And once it all sinks in, there’s only one thought in your head: [We’re screwed!]

…

Back to the point: the reason Old Man just let Qin Miao through was mainly because Qin Miao’s car characteristics were the same as Hamilton’s. That top speed that feels terrifying to other drivers is just “normal” top speed to Qin Miao. Once he opened DRS, overtaking Hamilton was actually pretty easy.

Even if Hamilton had actively defended, with how well he knew Qin Miao and given Qin Miao’s tire advantage, Old Man knew that even if he tried to defend, he wouldn’t be able to hold Qin Miao off for long. Getting overtaken by Qin Miao was only a matter of time.

So he might as well just let Qin Miao go, instead of wasting both their time and their tires. It also counted as doing Qin Miao a favor, and on the other hand, Alonso, Perez, and the two Ferrari drivers were all lurking menacingly behind.

Even though the W14 still had a pace advantage over them this season, better safe than sorry.

Besides, Qin Miao was leaving Mercedes next season anyway; there was really no need to go to war with Qin Miao right now.

But after Qin Miao overtook Hamilton, he actually became a bit at a loss.

Because at this point, the gap between Qin Miao and Verstappen had already been stretched by Verstappen to 7.7 seconds.

Qin Miao just couldn’t wrap his head around it—how the hell is that Red Bull so damn fast?

Just how much are they still hiding?

Lap 12, the race finally a turning point.

After Hockenheim, Stroll, and De Vries pitted to complete their one-stop and switched onto the white tires, Russell ran into an incident on track.

On lap 12, as Russell went through T4, he took too much of the sausage curb on the left side of the track, and the car was literally launched into the air by the curb.