Chapter 1516: Highlights

After the podium ceremony, he went back to the team’s motorhome, took a shower, changed his clothes, and then Qin Miao pushed open the door to his lounge, holding his winner’s trophy in his arms.

Strictly speaking, calling it a trophy isn’t that accurate, because this year the podium award for the Spain Grand Prix drivers is a plate.

A silver round plate about as wide as Qin Miao’s shoulders, with a simplified track map and some brief notes on it.

Seeing Qin Miao come in, Qimeng went up with a smile, gave him a hug, and praised him: “My husband is awesome!”

Qin Miao grinned and casually set his winner’s plate on Muqiu’s stroller, then wrapped an arm around Qimeng and planted a hard kiss on her cheek.

But right now, Qin Miao wasn’t like he used to be, bragging about himself and all that; after all, as an old married couple they didn’t have that much “romantic flair” anymore.

Letting go of his wife, Qin Miao said straight out, “To be honest, I really didn’t think I could win today’s race. Even on that last lap, all I was thinking was whether I could maybe steal a win off Verstappen.”

“Did Verstappen still have car and tyre pace left at that point?” Qimeng was a bit surprised. Thanks to Qin Miao, she knew the rules of F1 and some on-track details, but of course not as deeply as Qin Miao did.

She had just assumed Verstappen’s softs had fallen off late in the race, which gave Qin Miao the chance to beat him on the final lap.

Qin Miao shook his head and said, “No way. Verstappen’s set of softs might be called softs, but in reality they’re a set of C3s—tyres you can use as hards in Monte Carlo at Monaco. Their durability isn’t that bad.”

He rubbed his chin, thought for a moment, then answered, “I think Verstappen got a bit careless towards the end, because after he passed me I kept deliberately backing off, my lap times steadily dropping in a very ‘stable’ way.”

“So, Verstappen basically got played by you, huh?” Qimeng looked full of curiosity.

Qin Miao shot his wife a look and said irritably, “What are you talking about? How is that ‘acting’? That’s called tactics and strategy, okay! I feel like his tyres still had something left. If he’d pushed a bit harder on the last lap, there’s a high chance I wouldn’t have been able to take him.”

Qimeng asked curiously, “So isn’t Verstappen super mad right now?”

Putting himself in Verstappen’s position, Qin Miao chuckled and said, “He’s probably livid.”

“Eh-eh! Mm!” At this point little Muqiu started making some noise too.

When Qin Miao and Qimeng looked over, they saw the little girl curiously patting Qin Miao’s winner’s plate with her hands, leaving a bunch of tiny fingerprints on the originally smooth surface.

After glancing at his daughter, Qin Miao said to Qimeng, “I still have things to do, so I’ll head out first. Once I’m done tonight, let’s fly back to the UK together, yeah? Toto invited me over to his place next Friday; you and Muqiu can come too.”

Qimeng thought for a moment. “We’ll bring enough diapers and stuff, and her next check-up isn’t until the 15th of next month, so timing’s fine. No problem!”

“Then I’m off.”

“Give me a kiss before you go~”

“Tzz-tzz-tzz-tzz-tzz~ mwah!”

Muqiu seemed to understand what Mom and Dad were doing, and turned her head away in mild disgust.

Next, in the team’s garage, Qin Miao took the end-of-race group photo with all the team staff.

He also attended the post-race press conference.

With that, Qin Miao’s 2023 Spain Grand Prix campaign was completely wrapped up.

The final race ranking and points for the drivers were as follows:

P1: Qin Miao +25

P2: Verstappen +19 (fastest lap)

P3: Hamilton +15

P4: Perez +12

P5: Sainz +10

P6: Stroll +8

P7: Alonso +6

P8: O’Kang +4

P9: Zhou Guanyu +2

P10: Gasly +1

There’s not much more to say about the top three’s results today. Apart from Qin Miao’s performance before the chequered flag being truly standout, the others basically had no real highlights in this race—you could just call it steady.

As for Hamilton, his entire race can pretty much be summed up in that one word: steady. From lights out to chequered flag, Hamilton didn’t face any real challenge at all.

It was a bit like the situation Qin Miao encountered on track last season: can’t catch the car in front, and the car behind can’t catch you.

And given Verstappen’s car performance plus the softs he bolted on for the final lap, him taking the fastest lap was only natural.

As for the drivers behind, other than Zhou Guanyu there’s not much to discuss. Aside from Zhou, everyone else’s performance today was just par for the course. Their teams’ strategy crews didn’t come up with any eye-catching attacking plans to help the drivers gain big chunks of position, but they also didn’t make mistakes.

For Zhou Guanyu, bagging two points with ninth place today was largely down to his own effort, and also to some good luck.

Realistically, with the pace of the Alfa Romeo, Zhou Guanyu shouldn’t have been able to score points in this race.

At best, he could only hover around the edge of the points.

But in the closing stages, Zhou Guanyu and Tsunoda had a scrap over the last few laps on track.

At that moment one was ninth and the other tenth.

As mentioned earlier, Alfa Romeo had a particular advantage at the Catalonia circuit, so a car that’s usually plagued by acceleration issues suddenly became unusually strong on this track.