Chapter 381: Chapter 183: Qin the Second, Le the Fourth
And Qin Miao? After using this set of soft tires, he still has two sets of soft tires available in the warehouse.
He’s really good at conserving tires.
If it weren’t against the rules, Hamilton would want to borrow a set of soft tires from Qin Miao to run a qualifying lap.
But to everyone’s surprise, on the last lap, at the T3 position, Qin Miao encountered a strong side wind, and there was a noticeable skid when entering the corner.
Although this loss of grip wouldn’t affect a driver’s final position in the race, in qualifying where every millisecond counts, this mistake was fatal.
The impact of Qin Miao’s error was that his first timing sector was yellow, and this mistake also affected his performance in the subsequent two timing sectors. Although the next two sectors were green, their advantage was not enough to make up for the speed lost in the first sector due to his mistake.
In the end, when Qin Miao crossed the line, his speed did not improve his own time.
The screen on Qin Miao’s steering wheel showed the times for his three sectors, so upon seeing that his final flying lap wasn’t as good as the first, Qin Miao said somewhat dejectedly over the TR: "Sorry guys, I made some mistakes in the first sector."
"No need to apologize, your performance was already very good, we are very satisfied, we could even say your results far exceeded our expectations." The person saying this was not Frankie, who Qin Miao was familiar with, but Toto.
After hearing this response, Qin Miao looked at his position.
P2.
Qin Miao sighed, how is it second place again?!
On a recent visit to the forums, he had seen some people jokingly call him Qin the Second, although Qin Miao knew that most people were just joking and that there weren’t too many calling him that.
But if he continued to take second place in qualifying, this nickname would inevitably be brought to the track by some fans, calling him that to his face.
Qin Miao felt a sense of urgency, even harboring a dangerous thought that if it really didn’t work out, he might deliberately go slow in Q3. By any means, the nickname Qin the Second couldn’t stick to him.
After all, Leclerc already had the nickname Le the Fourth, because in the two races in Bahrain and Imola, he finished fourth.
Despite having a bad premonition about the nickname, Qin Miao knew what was most important at the moment, so he quickly gathered his emotions and said: "Received, thank you all for tuning this car, it was a pleasure to drive."
After finishing, Qin Miao switched to the car’s fuel-saving mode and headed to the pit lane.
In fact, Hamilton, like most drivers, was short on tires.
However, on the last flying lap of Q3, Hamilton used another new set of soft tires, so now he no longer had any new soft tires, only one set that was about 95% new left for the race.
This wasn’t because Hamilton was trying to compete with Qin Miao; it was mainly that Red Bull was worried Verstappen might be held up by Qin Miao during the race and lose too much time. So they also put Verstappen on their last new set of soft tires.
However, Qin Miao’s qualifying result was indeed good, even though the last lap wasn’t great, he still secured an ideal result.
To compete with Verstappen, Hamilton also used his last new set of soft tires.
Realizing this, the Mercedes strategy team began contemplating whether Qin Miao’s tire conservation abilities and tire reserves could allow for a two-stop red-yellow-red strategy in tomorrow’s race...
Anyway, with qualifying over, the drivers all drove their cars back to the pits.
Hamilton, Qin Miao, and Verstappen once again occupied the top three positions in qualifying.
Now, both Qin Miao and Hamilton each had a race win, leaving Verstappen as the only podium regular without a race win this season.
After parking his car at the second-place marker, Qin Miao got out and high-fived the team staff for a simple celebration, then prepared to pack up and go for the weigh-in.
Just as Qin Miao was about to leave, Hamilton walked over, and naturally, Qin Miao smiled and high-fived him.
"Good performance," Hamilton complimented Qin Miao.
Qin Miao smiled wryly, "I feel like I might have some kind of unknown attachment to second place, I’ve come second in three qualifying sessions."
Hamilton gave Qin Miao’s shoulder a friendly pat, "It’ll get better, keep pushing, I believe in your talent."
"Thank you." With that, Qin Miao turned to go for the weigh-in and interviews.
Qin Miao and Hamilton’s friendly chat and interactions were naturally captured by the photographers shooting them.
The three commentators from Five-Star Sports saw this scene and, with Zhou Haoran translating, started discussing:
"No matter what, the team atmosphere at Mercedes is genuinely nice right now."
"Wasn’t the atmosphere at Mercedes fine when Bottas was there too?"
"Back then, it was more about the second driver status suppressing Bottas, so he didn’t dare stir trouble, which made the two drivers seem harmonious.
Now with two of Mercedes’ drivers, it feels more like friends; you can clearly feel when they talk that they’re relaxed, not just sticking to business."