How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

Chapter 1143: Chapter 433: At Ferrari, You Can Be Lifeless—But Never Lack Life

Seeing this, quite a few fans familiar with Qin Miao’s capabilities perked up. They knew that with Qin Miao’s ability to conserve tires, as long as the lap time gap between Qin Miao and the driver ahead didn’t exceed 0.7 seconds, Qin Miao was very likely to rely on his tire conservation ability to win the race.

Of course, Red Bull was aware of this fact as well, so upon noticing Qin Miao’s pace in this race was quite fast and very likely to threaten Verstappen’s position, they immediately began analyzing what strategy to use to ensure Verstappen kept his current position.

This must be an absolute headache for the Red Bull team’s strategy group.

Lap 13, drivers in the rear all began to open up their pit windows.

At this time, Qin Miao was already 1.4 seconds behind Verstappen, and Leclerc was 1.5 seconds behind Qin Miao.

All three had speed in this race, but in a short period, none of them had any particularly good method against the drivers ahead.

However, it is believed that as the pit windows open, this situation will surely be broken.

Lap 15, Ferrari also opened up its one-stop pit window.

Ferrari’s strategy at this time was understandable: pit to change Sainz to medium tires, and then change to soft tires in the final stage of the race; this would definitely achieve a decent result later in the race.

Quite a few Leclerc fans breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing that the first person to pit at Ferrari was finally not Leclerc. At least if Ferrari pulled off any more reverse pit stop operations, the unlucky one wouldn’t be Leclerc.

Then, as expected, Ferrari had an unexpected incident.

Sainz’s pit stop took a total of 12.7 seconds.

The reason for such a long stop was that the team simply wasn’t prepared before Sainz pitted.

Sainz’s stop was because Ferrari saw that Red Bull next door was preparing to call Perez in, and at this point, Sainz was ahead of Perez. To prevent Sainz from being undercut by Perez, Ferrari copied Red Bull’s strategy.

In the eyes of Ferrari’s strategy group, Sainz was leading Perez by three full seconds, so even if there was a mistake during the tire change, as long as the tire change time didn’t exceed five seconds, Sainz wouldn’t need to worry about being overtaken by Perez on the track.

However, the pit stop notice was a bit too hasty, resulting in Sainz stopping at the tire change position without the Ferrari crew even having brought out the tires they were supposed to replace for Sainz from the team garage.

But Ferrari is, after all, a professional F1 team, and has plans in this area.

So, after Sainz stopped at his position, the team’s technicians had already brought out three brand new tires from the team garage, and after the tire removal technician removed the tires, they successfully and smoothly installed the new tires.

This tire-changing speed was even faster than Ferrari’s previous instances where the tires had been prepared in advance.

But some observant fans should have already noticed some unusual details, such as the fact that Ferrari’s technician only brought out three tires from Ferrari’s team garage. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

One left rear tire was still missing.

Sainz’s car didn’t have the left rear tire installed, and naturally, the team couldn’t lower him, so Sainz was stuck there.

As a result, Perez, who had been behind Sainz the whole time, had already completed his tire change and exited the pit area, while Ferrari’s tire changers stood there, confused and at a loss.

Notably, Perez’s tire change only took two seconds.

When Perez exited his pit position, he even ran over the backup air gun of Sainz’s left rear tire technician.

The F1 racing air gun is very expensive. Despite F1 cars being lightweights, not even a ton, this is, after all, a high-pressure tool, so even if run over by an F1 car without any outward deformation, this air gun would need to go back to the factory for major repairs.

Actually, under normal circumstances, Perez’s tire change would certainly receive a wave of praise because his tire change time was only two seconds. Unexpectedly, this might be the fastest tire change in the Dutch Grand Prix and achieved even with the new season’s increased tire diameter.

But Ferrari’s mistake was somewhat explosive, everyone focused their attention on Ferrari’s mistake, and no one paid heed to Red Bull’s almost perfect tire change, nor paid attention to the fact that the time taken by Ferrari to change one of Sainz’s tires was enough for Red Bull to change six tires for Perez.

Finally, Ferrari’s left rear tire technician hurriedly rushed out of the team’s garage, carrying Sainz’s tire, and installed it on Sainz’s race car.

There were no more surprises, Sainz was successfully lowered by Ferrari and drove out of the pit area.

But Ferrari still left a big stain on all of the on-site Tiefu Temple personnel.

Fortunately, this was not the Italian Grand Prix in two weeks, Ferrari’s home race.

If Ferrari dared to do such a thing at their home race, Binotto would certainly have to step down immediately.

However, credit where it’s due, Binotto is indeed skilled in race engine research and development, but when it comes to team management and personnel appointments, Binotto truly makes people chuckle.