How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

Chapter 1197: Chapter 453: Sudden Realization

Although this starting position is not the best in Zhou Guanyu’s career, Zhou Guanyu’s speed in this race is clearly better than his teammate Bottas.

But if you want to say he’s happy... Qin Miao, despite the noticeable improvements in Mercedes’s car performance, ended up only in fifth place.

The most important thing is, Qin Miao, who has been suppressing his teammate for almost a season, didn’t outperform his teammate Hamilton in today’s qualifying race.

...

"P5, Qin Miao, now adjust the engine power output mode to Z and bring the car back," Frankie’s voice came through Qin Miao’s headset.

Qin Miao heard his position and saw the time gap between himself and Hamilton displayed on the steering wheel monitor, his mind a bit jumbled.

How did I not beat the Old Man?

That’s not right! My speed is obviously faster than Hamilton’s, there’s no reason to lose!

With a puzzled emotion, Qin Miao returned to the team’s P room.

Since Qin Miao didn’t achieve a top three finish today, the post-race interview had nothing to do with him.

But today’s post-race interview was quite interesting, with the two Ferrari drivers flanking Verstappen.

After parking the car in the inspection area and getting off, Qin Miao didn’t greet Hamilton, nor did he congratulate Zhou Guanyu for finally making it into Q3 and getting a decent result.

After weighing himself, Qin Miao directly returned to the team’s P room.

"Qin Miao, don’t be discouraged, everyone has times when they’re not in the best condition. Maintain your mindset, with your talent, you can definitely solve this problem, and it might not even be your issue. While it may not be appropriate to say this, since there’s no one else around now, it’s very likely that the W13B characteristics aren’t as suitable for Suzuka Circuit as Red Bull and Ferrari,"

"After all, as you saw, Hamilton’s speed also isn’t on par with Ferrari and Red Bull." When Qin Miao returned somewhat downcast to the team P room after completing post-race interview duties, Toto was already waiting at the team P room door.

As the boss, Toto is quite skilled at observing employee states, and seeing the qualifying results today he guessed Qin Miao’s mentality would be affected, so he came early to wait for Qin Miao.

Qin Miao nodded: "Thank you, Boss, but I’m okay."

"Great, you’ve always had the best mindset among all the young drivers I’ve seen, don’t carry too much burden. Go home, take a shower, get some sleep, and tomorrow I’ll be looking forward to your performance."

After chatting with Toto for a couple more sentences, Qin Miao did not wait for the post-race team review meeting, directly approaching Hamilton’s track engineer to get the telemetry data of Hamilton’s car during the lineup stage.

Then he compared Hamilton’s telemetry data with his own.

Putting aside the differences in driving habits between the two, Qin Miao indeed found several areas in the data where he could improve.

Compared to other teams’ drivers’ data, Hamilton’s data is most useful for Qin Miao because Hamilton drives the same type of car as him, and only with the performance of identical cars can the abilities and differences between the drivers truly be seen.

You know, thanks to his own research and the post-race team meeting’s review of today’s qualifying, Qin Miao absolutely discovered several corners where Hamilton widened the time gap with him.

After summarizing and organizing, Qin Miao found a baffling issue.

Hamilton did not widen the time gap significantly in any specific corner or timing sector; his final lap in qualifying Q3 was 0.1 second faster than his own, primarily because he was 0.01–0.02 seconds quicker in several corners and sectors, cumulatively making the time gap appear larger.

In fact, in the third timing sector, his speed was even faster than Hamilton’s...

In such a situation, either Hamilton’s car horsepower is seven or eight units higher than his, or his understanding of the circuit is not as deep as Hamilton’s.

Upon arriving at this conclusion, Qin Miao was suddenly startled.

He has a system, so why isn’t he as familiar with the circuit as Hamilton?

In that instant, Qin Miao suddenly realized.

He had become complacent.

Winning the world championship in his first year in F1 brought him premature success that many F1 drivers cannot achieve their entire careers.

The initial lack of car performance in the second year and the crisis of losing his defending title kept him determined without any complacency, but once the team’s car performance improved and he regained his lead in the drivers’ standings over Verstappen, accumulating enough of a points lead, he subconsciously became complacent...

Although he continued with physical training and simulator training, the overall training volume was much lower compared to the beginning of the season and last season.

Realizing this, Qin Miao suddenly stopped in his tracks.

Seeing Qin Miao suddenly stop, Barber, walking beside him, also stopped and asked Qin Miao with some confusion: "What’s wrong?"

Then before Barber could react, Qin Miao slapped himself on the face.

Barber: ...?!

"Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on? Why all of a sudden..." Barber hurried to press down Qin Miao’s hand.