Chapter 1541 - 564: Qin Miao Gradually Gets Used to Racing in the Rain

Chapter 1541: Chapter 564: Qin Miao Gradually Gets Used to Racing in the Rain

But even at such an extreme speed, Qin Miao only managed to clock a lap identical to Verstappen’s first Q3 lap time in qualifying.

The difference was, Verstappen had already completed his final flying lap and brought his time down to 1:04.391, firmly in P1.

In the end, Pan also secured pole for this race with that time.

However, second place did not go to a Mercedes driver.

Second was Leclerc, with a 1:04.439.

Hamilton was only third, with a 1:04.500.

Old Man’s time was just 0.003 seconds faster than Qin Miao’s.

To be honest, when Qin Miao heard this as he was doing his in-lap after quali, he was completely dumbfounded.

Qin Miao was willing to accept Hamilton being faster than him; after all, his strength and Hamilton’s really are on the exact same level.

In qualifying, if the wind on track is just a bit stronger, or if he runs over some tiny stone, or gets slightly blocked by a slow car and can’t use the optimal line on corner exit, he might not be able to beat Hamilton.

And it’s exactly the same the other way round for Old Man.

So losing to Hamilton didn’t feel unexpected at all for Qin Miao.

But TMD, what the hell gives Le the Fourth the right to be second?

I refuse to believe Ferrari’s car has improved that much!!!

In reality, for this race Ferrari hadn’t even brought any proper upgrades for their car.

For Ferrari, this was just another very normal Grand Prix weekend, no different from usual.

All you can say is, Leclerc nailed his performance, and compared to the muscle car Mercedes have after their upgrades, Ferrari’s SF23 is clearly better suited to the Red Bull Ring.

The final overall qualifying order was as follows:

1: Verstappen 1:04.391

2: Leclerc

3: Hamilton

4: Qin Miao

5: Sainz

6: Norris

7: Stroll

8: Alonso

9: Hockenheim

10: Gasly

It’s worth mentioning that with only one practice session, Verstappen finished just 0.048 seconds clear of Leclerc.

You can tell a single practice session also hit Red Bull pretty hard.

But even so, a lot of fans still chose to ignore the objective fact that Ferrari’s car performance just isn’t on Red Bull’s level.

Seeing that kind of time gap, they couldn’t help starting to look forward to tomorrow’s sprint shootout.

They naively thought: [Maybe Leclerc really could drag Verstappen down from that spot.]

[Wofa world champion]

...

Putting that aside, this qualifying session was already Verstappen’s fourth consecutive pole of the season.

And he took it at Red Bull’s home race.

After quali, the high-spirited Verstappen stood in stark contrast to his teammate, who has failed to reach Q3 for four races in a row.

People are pretty sure Perez will be putting on a Lynk & Co team shirt before long.

Of course, it’s not even guaranteed Lynk & Co would want him...

In the post-qualifying interviews, quite a few drivers who underperformed in quali had one complaint or another.

On one hand, the practice time they got really was too short; on the other hand, the Red Bull Ring is a short track, so there was constant traffic, which meant that once quali started, drivers were often dealing with things like tyre temperatures being too low, or not being able to find the right gap to head out, and so on.

That naturally included Zhou Guanyu.

But either way, once qualifying was done, that was that.

Qin Miao had managed to secure a starting position he was just about satisfied with.

Starting from the second row is, overall, still better than starting from the third row.

"Pole at the Red Bull Ring starts on the left, and Turn 1 at the Red Bull Ring is a right-hander, so Qin Miao has the inside line advantage into T1."

"Plus, the Red Bull Ring is wide enough. As long as Hamilton doesn’t force him hard towards the inside at the start, with Qin Miao’s consistently strong starts, he might actually be able to break his curse of never gaining positions off the line in this race."

This was Zhou Haoran’s objective analysis for the audience in the Five-Star Sports studio after qualifying.

[We’re doomed!]

[Damn it, does Zhou Haoran have some grudge against Qin Miao or what]

[I feel like the only reason Qin Miao carries this kind of reputation is because the Five-Star Sports crew keep "blessing" him]

[Come Sunday when the race starts, Qin Miao’s tyres are going to be spewing milk like crazy]

[When exactly did Qin Miao offend these three sugar daddies at Five-Star Sports?]

[No way, I remember Qin Miao getting along pretty well with them]

...

Naturally, Qin Miao had no idea the Five-Star cursed buff had once again been cast on him from afar.

After Friday’s running, once he’d finished the post-race interviews, Qin Miao headed back to the team’s motorhome to review his race data from that day.

At this point, the setup on Qin Miao’s car could no longer be changed, but he could still optimise his driving style during the race based on the characteristics the car was showing on track.

That could more or less bring him about a 0.2-second improvement in single-lap pace.

Time passed, and it was Sunday, day two.

The day of the sprint shootout and the sprint race.

The sprint shootout rules are broadly similar to normal qualifying, except that compared to quali, the three sessions where you set single-lap times are shorter.

That made the Red Bull Ring, which is already pretty crowded during qualifying, even more congested.

We’ll skip over the detailed process of the sprint shootout here.

In the end, Qin Miao set a 1:05.000 in Q3 and took P3 overall in the sprint shootout.