How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

Chapter 1181: Chapter 446: The Defensive Master and the Collapsing Perez (Part 2)

However, this period was actually quite brief, as the main straight of the Marina Bay Circuit isn’t long enough, and soon the drivers reached T1 of the starting straight.

Hamilton, Leclerc, and Qin Miao entered T1, leaving Perez with nothing but swearing echoing in his mind, as he too had to brake into the corner.

Meanwhile, Qin Miao couldn’t find Verstappen...

Verstappen indeed had some bad luck this Grand Prix weekend.

Being sabotaged by his own team during qualifying, and during the start of the race, due to setup issues, Verstappen’s car fell under the anti-stall control, making it impossible to accelerate during the starting phase.

As a result, Verstappen dropped six positions at the start, falling from ninth to fifteenth.

The issue Verstappen faced is almost identical to the one Zhou Guanyu encountered at the start of this season.

Speaking of Zhou Guanyu, the typically unlucky Zhou also faced the same problem as Verstappen in this race, with the Alfa Romeo car’s anti-stall device activating once again at the beginning of the race.

Zhou Guanyu found himself starting again from the familiar back of the pack, rendering his qualifying efforts futile.

If Verstappen’s issues were caused by an error from his team’s setup, leading to problems during the starting phase, then Zhou Guanyu’s issues were entirely due to the car’s design.

After all, since the misstep in the season opener, Zhou Guanyu has meticulously checked his car setup before each race and is willing to start a bit slower, but doesn’t want a repeat of the anti-stall activation dropping him to the back of the grid.

Despite taking all these precautions, this issue still cropped up in this race, which can only be attributed to Ferrari’s secondary team often failing in areas where problems shouldn’t occur.

The race proceeded smoothly after this, with most of Qin Miao’s attention focused on Perez behind him.

Qin Miao was unsure what the weather conditions would turn out to be on the Marina Bay Circuit, but he knew that under the circumstances, he had to hold on to his current position and not let Perez overtake him; chasing down Leclerc or his teammate Hamilton wasn’t part of his plan.

Since the start of the first lap, Perez had been pressuring Qin Miao from behind.

But Qin Miao didn’t feel too stressed by Perez’s pressure; defending against Perez’s attacks was not too difficult for Qin Miao. The only issue was that while defending Perez, Qin Miao’s lap speed reduced to some extent due to needing to anticipate Perez’s attacks.

Moreover, with rain on the track and water accumulation, by the third lap, the time gap between Qin Miao and Leclerc ahead was up to 2 seconds.

After this, the director no longer focused the cameras on Qin Miao and Perez.

Familiarity with Qin Miao’s defensive capabilities has grown over nearly two years.

No one believed that without unforeseen incidents, Perez could overtake Qin Miao on track.

The director’s attention was more on Verstappen at the back of the field.

Because at that time, Verstappen was slicing through the backmarkers like a hot knife through butter.

But when Verstappen caught up to Magelsen, Magelsen gave Verstappen quite a headache.

After all, Magelsen’s defense was quite renowned on the track.

In the end, Magelsen didn’t get away unscathed; his car’s front left endplate was knocked askew, and two laps later, the FIA flagged him for repairs, forcing him back to the pit lane to replace the front nose.

Verstappen being Verstappen, and with the powerful performance of the Red Bull car, meant that after overtaking Magelsen, Verstappen continued to slice through the field, quickly moving up to tenth place.

Meanwhile, Qin Miao entered a cruising mode, because with rain on the track, the DRS wasn’t activated, and the narrow circuit combined with wet conditions made Qin Miao realize that even if he left a deliberate gap, Perez might not be able to seize it.

So by the time they reached the fifth lap, Qin Miao began visibly reducing the time gap between himself and Leclerc.

Because the pressure from behind had eased.

However, Qin Miao had a feeling that the reduced pressure from Perez might be because the opponent had slightly relaxed the pressure.

The opponent might have considered the increasing time gap between himself and Leclerc and wanted to increase his speed to catch up with Leclerc, giving Perez a chance to achieve a higher position in this race.

Another perspective might be instructions from the Red Bull team.

Apart from Verstappen’s world champion status, which is a personal accolade and doesn’t yield substantial benefits for the team, from Red Bull’s perspective, the difference in prize money between the team’s championship and second place can be tens of millions of dollars.

So Red Bull doesn’t want Perez to focus so much on attacking Qin Miao that he loses too much ground to Hamilton.

The points gap between Red Bull and Mercedes isn’t too large.

If Qin Miao locked Perez in fourth place and Hamilton finished first in this race, Red Bull would lose its lead in the team standings.

The race went into a lull, with rain on the track and some parts still experiencing drizzle. Most teams estimated that the intermediate tires remained the fastest under the current conditions. Without DRS and the narrow nature of the Marina Bay Circuit, overtaking was even less likely.

This situation persisted until the seventh lap.

On lap seven, Zhou Guanyu, who had fallen to the back, overtook Albon and caught up to Russell, preparing to attack.

At T5, as Zhou Guanyu tried to overtake Russell, Russell on the inside line didn’t leave enough room, squeezing Zhou Guanyu toward the wall, causing him to break his car’s right front suspension on Russell’s left rear wheel.

This collision was entirely Russell’s fault.

The name, Director Lado, still seems to command daunting influence in the F1 paddock.

Zhou Guanyu’s suspension was broken, making it impossible for him to continue racing. On the seventh lap, Zhou Guanyu sadly retired from the race.

Of course, Russell did not escape either; the crash resulted in a left rear tire puncture for Russell. After Williams returned to the pit lane, their engineers found that Russell’s rear left suspension was damaged from the crash, leading to Russell’s decision to retire.

Five laps later, the FIA penalized Russell as the major culprit for the incident.

Thus, in the upcoming Japanese Grand Prix, Russell will face a five-place grid penalty in the race and a two-point deduction on his Super License.

For Russell, who frequently finishes last in qualifying, this penalty was hardly impactful.

Moreover, the Suzuka Circuit for the Japanese Grand Prix doesn’t suit the muscle car characteristics of this season’s Williams, so starting five places down won’t change Russell’s starting position much.