Chapter 1546 - 565: Dramatic One Surpasses Two

Chapter 1546: Chapter 565: Dramatic One Surpasses Two

Hamilton was directly called into the pits by the Mercedes strategy team to switch onto slicks, which triggered a wave of first stops for the pack hovering around the edge of the points from the back of the grid.

As for why they all pitted to change tyres...

Because they weren’t in the points anyway, so even if the gamble backfired, they had nothing to lose.

After the stewards noticed that the cars at the back were all diving into the pits, they finally did something sensible for once and enabled DRS even though the track wasn’t fully dry yet.

If race control had opened it earlier, Qin Miao might’ve had a bit of a headache.

But race control only opened DRS on lap 17.

And at that point there were only 7 laps left in the race, and Verstappen’s intermediates were already pretty worn.

After all, in wet conditions his raw pace per lap was still faster than Qin Miao’s; even though he knew his chances of actually overtaking Qin Miao were very low, Verstappen kept trying to attack him on track, looking for a way past.

It’s just that every move got shut down by Qin Miao.

Because of that, Verstappen’s set of inters got chewed up badly, and even with DRS open his lap times could no longer match Qin Miao’s.

Let alone the fact that the muscular W14’s characteristics were particularly easy to exploit on this circuit.

So in the first phase of this sprint race, after Qin Miao fished in muddy waters to snatch the lead, he basically ran a little DRS train out front; in the later phase he gradually opened the gap to Verstappen, shaking off all the unstable factors on his road to the sprint win.

In the end, Qin Miao crossed the finish line 5 seconds ahead of Verstappen to take the sprint victory.

After the sprint, the top eight finishers and their points were as follows:

P1: Qin Miao +8

P2: Verstappen +7

P3: Perez +6

P4: Sainz +5

P5: Stroll +4

P6: Alonso +3

P7: Hockenheim +2

P8: Hamilton +1

There wasn’t much to say about Qin Miao; his position was basically gifted to him by the two Red Bull drivers lifting him up there.

As for Verstappen and Perez...

Let’s just say that under Qin Miao’s orchestration, unless one of them voluntarily gave up the spot, there was no way they were swapping positions. The P2 and P3 order was already set in stone the moment their infighting let Qin Miao seize the chance to get past.

Hamilton’s late charge was what really took Qin Miao by surprise.

After the race, when he parked up in the post-race interview zone and got out to rest, Qin Miao asked Hamilton about it and finally found out.

The team had called Hamilton in early to pit, and after switching him onto softs, race control very obligingly opened DRS.

Thanks to that, Hamilton could slice through the back of the field like chopping vegetables, all the way up to eighth.

After all, the W14 still has something to say when it comes to straight-line speed, and if you don’t insist on comparing the W14 to the RB19, the W14 is actually a proper Mars rover of a car.

It’s just that there happens to be an even more "Martian" RB19 in the paddock, which makes the W14 look so ordinary.

So the W14 carving its way through the backmarkers like that wasn’t exactly some shocking miracle.

After this sprint, Red Bull only managed to cut their points deficit to Mercedes by 4 points in the standings.

For Red Bull, that was still a result they could live with.

But it’s worth mentioning that after the race, when Horner was interviewed by Sky Sports, he showed a very tolerant attitude towards the on-track behaviour of his two drivers.

In the interview, Horner clearly stated that Red Bull does not oppose internal competition between their drivers, and said that the mistakes in the sprint were simply because both drivers were a bit too careless at the start. The team would not be handing out any penalties over this.

And just like that, the matter was closed.

As for losing the sprint win because of intra-team fighting...

Horner said: "That’s Qin Miao for you. No one can ignore the sheer ability of a young two-time world champion, nor the impact he brings on track."

There’s no need to dwell too much on the podium ceremony after the race.

It was just a sprint; the FIA didn’t make a huge production out of it.

Once the race was over and he’d finished all his post-race duties, Qin Miao clocked out and went home.