Chapter 1357 - 510: Features of W14_2

Chapter 1357: Chapter 510: Features of W14_2

But in any case, any improvement is always a good thing.

Coupled with various rewards from the 23rd season, Qin Miao’s current net worth has already exceeded 200 million US Dollars.

Cash flow has also surpassed 50 million US Dollars.

Although not the richest F1 driver in history, in Asia, Qin Miao is indeed the most impressive driver.

Other improvements and rewards won’t be elaborated here.

Once your life falls into a regular routine, time seems to pass particularly quickly, and Qin Miao is feeling that now.

As he continued training, by the time it reached Wednesday afternoon, when Barber called to remind Qin Miao to attend the 2023 season’s first pre-race news conference tomorrow, Qin Miao still thought it was Tuesday.

However, hearing that the race is about to begin is also an exciting thing for Qin Miao.

On one hand, he has the chance to experience just how powerful the complete W14 is, and on the other hand, after holding back for so long, Qin Miao can finally return to the track to compete with other drivers.

These two things filled Qin Miao with anticipation for the race track.

However, Qin Miao is not anticipating a duel with Verstappen or Leclerc; he thinks his main opponent this season will most likely be his teammate Hamilton.

Soon, it was Thursday.

Arriving at the paddock, Qin Miao was still wearing the black Mercedes team uniform, and although he wanted to wear shorts, considering sun protection, he eventually wore denim jeans with sneakers.

If you cover Qin Miao’s face, upon seeing his outfit against the backdrop of an F1 circuit, anyone would think he is just an ordinary Mercedes fan.

This is also a reason why the Mercedes team has mixed feelings about Qin Miao.

They love him because whenever Qin Miao goes to the paddock, he doesn’t wear his own clothes; even when he leaves the hotel, he is always in the Mercedes team uniform, which greatly benefits the team’s publicity and the exposure of sponsors.

But they hate that unless a commercial event is very interesting or the organizer invites someone Qin Miao is interested in, he simply won’t participate in any commercial activities, leaving Mercedes unable to monetize the traffic Qin Miao brings.

In short, a driver like this has both pros and cons, but overall, the pros still outweigh the cons.

At least Qin Miao’s performance is quite good.

In the first pre-race news conference of 2023, questions mainly focused on the teams’ cars, the performance of the cars, or various preparations the drivers have made at the start of the season.

For this press conference, perhaps knowing these individuals have a good relationship, the organizers placed Qin Miao, Leclerc, Norris, Zhou Guanyu, and Gasly together.

If you must say, these five people are not from the same team, which is logical.

Moreover, these five do indeed have a good relationship.

Besides Qin Miao, Leclerc, Zhou Guanyu, and Norris, Gasly also frequently plays games online with them, although offline meetings are rare.

Once a few people gather, there’s no need for the host to guide them with questions; they just start chatting away.

Although the topics they chatted about were unrelated to the paddock,

the audience loved watching them chat regardless.

They bantered and joked around, like Qin Miao seeing Leclerc walking around his house at night in just underwear.

Or Qin Miao having his house’s lights on at three in the morning, only to find him gaming when opening the livestream.

That’s how they went on bantering, in a lively atmosphere, concluding Thursday’s pre-race interview.

The group walked away, arms around each other’s shoulders.

After finishing the pre-race interview and returning to the team’s P room, Qin Miao’s car was ready, and his 66-number W14 had reached a complete state.

Compared to winter testing, the shape of the car’s floor and side pods, even the front wing, had significantly changed, and there were countless other less obvious changes.

Many changes were hidden beneath the black paint of the Mercedes car.

Unless you max out the exposure when taking photos, it’s hard to notice the aerodynamic kits hidden away.

This is a traditional skill among teams, almost all teams use this trick.

Because all the cars have black paint jobs.

The first upgrade Qin Miao noticed on his car was the floor.

Although Qin Miao is just a driver and not particularly knowledgeable about the aerodynamics and principles, after nearly four years as a driver, he somewhat understands the main sources of downforce in the current ground-effect era.

This year, the vortex generators at the edge of the W14’s floor, though still bizarre and jagged, are at least half the size of those on last season’s W13 and W13B.

Seeing this, Qin Miao naturally had doubts if such small vortex generators would negatively affect the sealing of airflow at the edge of the car’s floor and whether his car would experience porpoising on the track?

Thus, Qin Miao discussed his concerns with Elliott.

Elliott directly explained, "Reducing the vortex generators does indeed decrease the efficiency of airflow through them, and you are right, doing so indeed lowers the strength of vortices produced by them, weakening the floor’s seal."

After confirming Qin Miao’s thoughts, Elliott began to explain their reasons for doing this, "But you need to know that large vortex generators can cause drag on the car, and the larger the vortices, the greater the drag, so we made reductions at this position."

"However, the floor’s sealing is essential for car speed, so we decided to utilize airflow from other locations." As he spoke, he pointed to several raised carbon fiber strips at the Venturi channel entrance and said, "The fins at this position can efficiently guide airflow from the front wing and two front wheels through the car’s side pods, and the side pods guide the airflow to exit on both sides, coupled with the vortices already produced by the vortex generators, overall car drag is reduced, but the floor’s sealing efficacy remains unchanged. In our tests, this design reduced the car’s overall drag by at least 1.1 percent and increased the top speed by at least 5 kilometers per hour."

Qin Miao rubbed his chin, "Then what about corners? Especially medium to low-speed ones."

"At medium to low-speed corners, doesn’t this car design lack sufficient speed to provide such strong aerodynamic kit sealing?"

Upon hearing Qin Miao’s question, Elliott was taken aback and, with a slightly embarrassed expression, explained, "There are issues in this aspect. You might have felt it during simulator tests, the car understeers a bit in medium to low-speed corners, but that’s because of the car’s overall design."

In the current W14 platform, if we want to improve the car’s speed in medium to low-speed corners, the time and money we need to invest would be at least double compared to enhancing the car’s high-speed cornering and straight-line acceleration capabilities and top speed."

After hearing Elliott’s explanation, Qin Miao nodded knowingly, realizing that this is no longer the era without a budget cap.

In the past, wealthy Mercedes would heavily invest in engine development and spare no expense in aerodynamic design.

Basically, as long as your PPT had content that actually benefited the car at that time, you could start implementing it.

But not anymore; there is a budget cap now.

Even if your PPT has valuable content, you have to honestly strengthen it according to the car’s overall characteristics.

If nothing unexpected happens, this season’s W14 is still a muscle car.

On a circuit like Monaco, it might suffer quite a bit in qualifying.

Then, the most crucial advantage in Monaco, qualifying...

It seems that this season, the title of Monaco King won’t be mine anymore.