Car Racing without Money

Chapter 809: Chapter 330: Monaco Pole Position Miracle

They’ve gone crazy, the entire crowd has gone crazy.

The shock from today’s qualifying is no less than when Chen Xiangbei took the first-ever pole for a Chinese driver at the China Station.

The reason is simple: both moments carry era-defining, history-making significance.

One is a breakthrough for drivers from China and even all of Asia.

The other is a badge marking him as one of the world’s top drivers!

If you’ve never taken pole at Monaco, you’re not qualified to say you have top-level speed.

If you’ve never won at Monaco, then even if you’ve become world champion, there’s still a missing, most dazzling diamond on your crown.

"Pole! Pole! Pole!"

Countless spectators sprang to their feet, wildly waving their arms at Chen Xiangbei, shouting the word "pole" in either Chinese or English.

Most of them weren’t even fans of Chen Xiangbei; in fact, just a few days ago, they’d been going hard mocking this Chinese principal for overestimating himself, still dreaming of beating Raikkonen, thinking he could snatch pole from Rosberg or Alonso?

And even right up until the end of this qualifying session, if Chen Xiangbei hadn’t put in some decent lap time, this crowd would’ve instantly turned and started hurling things like "Chinaman," "rookie," "trash" at him.

But in this moment, they were genuinely stunned by Chen Xiangbei’s pole position; probably no one had ever seriously imagined that a rookie driver from China could take pole at Monaco.

And he even set a new track record!

"Too fast, that was really a Star Circle that shook the world!"

"Talent plus hard work, Driver Bei has proved himself again."

"I feel like Driver Bei’s tires were zero distance from the barriers, the ads in the camera shot looked like they got scraped by as he went past!"

"This lap reminded me of Senna, the man who took six wins at Monaco!"

"The new king of Monaco—Chen Xiangbei!"

After the unified roar of cheers came waves of praise that wouldn’t stop; if anyone looked closely at the broadcast footage, they’d see that Chen Xiangbei was pushing it to a level most people wouldn’t even dare try in a video game.

You could put it this way: the slightest mistake and it’s basically life reset!

"He’s not Senna, Xiangbei’s line has never appeared before."

Trulli listened to the crowd roaring outside and muttered to himself.

Now he finally understood why Chen Xiangbei had dropped that line—"a new racing line"—before qualifying.

The Chinese Kid really had run a line that had never been seen before, and it definitely wasn’t the method he himself had taught him last night.

Weird, too damn weird!

If Chen Xiangbei already knew about this set of lines, why didn’t he use it before?

If he didn’t know in advance and came up with it on the fly, how did he dare use his only flying lap in Q3 as an experiment?

And the damn experiment actually worked!

"Alonso, Xiangbei’s flying lap has beaten your previous fastest time."

When Chen Xiangbei’s monstrous lap time popped up, Ferrari team boss Domenicali immediately passed the news to Alonso.

"What?"

Alonso, who had been sure the win was in the bag, showed an expression of disbelief.

He himself had gone 0.2 seconds faster than Schumacher’s track record; with speed this close to unbeatable, Chen Xiangbei could still top it?

"What’s Xiangbei’s lap?" freewёbnoνel.com

"1:12.557, just a bit quicker than you."

Faced with this result, Alonso fell silent.

He knew exactly how tough Monaco is, and street circuits shave the gap between cars down to a minimum, just like in the wet.

The reason the "King of War"’s results earned respect in the paddock is because you have to rely on pure, hard-core driving skill to win.

Street circuits are the same: if you can bang in a pole lap here, there’s no objective excuse—your raw ability is brutal, your speed is just that fast!

The problem is: could a Chinese rookie, running the Monaco Circuit for the first time, really be freakishly gifted to such an insane degree?

Alonso didn’t believe it.

Even if he did, he still didn’t want to admit defeat.

A 0.032 gap, for an F1 Driver, can be gone in the time it takes to blink; Alonso believed he could go even quicker.

"I want to push for one more lap."

"There’s no time, Alonso."

Domenicali glanced at the bright red countdown; there were twenty seconds left until Q3 hit zero.

Besides, even if there really was time, it wasn’t certain he could beat Chen Xiangbei.

The gap wasn’t just the 0.032 seconds on the screen; in reality, it was extremely difficult for Alonso to simply repeat that previous 1:12.589 lap.

Track records aren’t something you just keep smashing as long as you keep driving; a lot of it comes down to timing, conditions, and people. Not to mention the mechanical factors involved; take the simplest, most brutal analogy of a short sprint—if an athlete has once broken 10 seconds, does that mean he can run sub-10 every single time?

Many sprinters, over their entire careers, may only have one shot at breaking 10 seconds.

Alonso might not know it at this moment, but he’d experience the same regret again in the future—only that time, the opponent would be Verstappen.

Chen Xiangbei’s "new racing line" was precisely modeled on Verstappen’s car control!

That was at the 2023 season’s Monaco Station, when Red Bull Racing’s bizarre car characteristics had already started to show; only Verstappen’s absolute control was masking the car’s flaws, until they erupted fully at Monaco Station.

In Q1 and Q2, Verstappen’s pace just wasn’t enough; even in his first flying lap in Q3, he was still more than 0.2 seconds off the fastest lap.