F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 121 seems to have leveled up, but it also seems like it hasn't.

Shu Long had no idea what happened in between, and he usually blocked all social media during competition week.

The few forms of entertainment I have are probably reading novels and doing my daily routine.

His focus seems to have paid off, as the results of the three practice races suggest that Toro Rosso is quite competitive in this race.

Although most of the upgrade plans for this station were developed by Alben working overtime for several weeks.

Is upgrading useful?
That's definitely useful. Compared to the winter testing phase, the current Toro Rosso race car has undoubtedly seen a significant improvement in both balance and tire adaptability.

Of course, the fact that the Circuit de Catalunya is much warmer now than during winter testing is also a factor, but even so, their adaptability to the three stiffest tire compounds, C1, C2 and C3, is still excellent.

Although data analysis suggests that the red-red-yellow two-stop strategy is still likely the fastest race strategy, the data currently shown by the white tires has already officially included them in the alternative strategies for the main race.

Of course, this only applies to Alben.

In the tire compound selection before this race, the team and Shulong's crew did not choose any extra white tires, but instead chose three sets of yellow tires and seven sets of red tires.

This set of white tires was used for more than twenty laps in the second practice session, and it was basically impossible to use it in the race after that, so it was returned to Pirelli after the second practice session.

On the contrary, Albon reduced his quota of one set of yellow tires in exchange for an extra set of white tires, which means that Albon has the possibility of running a stop on white tires.

This shouldn't be a situation that Toro Rosso should be considering right now, because they have a lot of direct competitors to be wary of at this race.

Mercedes remained invincible as always, and Ferrari's engine also received another upgrade, resulting in a very fast race between them and Haas!

Alfa Romeo has not yet changed to the new upgraded engine kit for this race, and their car performance is visibly poor. Even Kimi can only barely maintain a ranking near the points zone.

The specific reasons are unknown, but they may be related to engine quotas and budgets for the entire season. In any case, their team manager, Vassell, humorously stated in an interview:

"The engine upgrade should be tested by the second team first to see how it goes."

Don't get me wrong, the second team here doesn't refer to Haas, it refers to Ferrari.

It sounds a bit counterintuitive, but if you look at the history of Alfa Romeo and Ferrari, it actually makes sense.
An interesting little old man.

Red Bull struggled more during practice sessions. They introduced a lot of upgrades for this race, redoing most of the chassis and suspension system, and spent almost the entire practice session trying to find the balance of the new car.

Even Verstappen dropped out of the top ten in the fastest lap, but their overall long-distance performance was second only to Mercedes, and even Gasly's long-distance performance ranked in the top five.

This made Shu Long wary, and even though he achieved the fastest lap in the entire competition during the third practice session, placing him in P5, he couldn't be happy at all.

as predicted.

In the afternoon qualifying session, the previously sluggish Red Bull team took off from the ground, with Verstappen securing P4!

Hmm? It doesn't sound fast either, does it?
Now here's the key point: Gasly finished P6 in qualifying, while Shulong finished P7 by a full 0.3 points.

It might not sound like he's far behind, but Shu Long, who has already squeezed the little red bull dry, knows that this 0.3 gap might be something he might have to risk failing the post-race fuel test to barely close.

Looking back carefully, including last year's Brazilian Grand Prix, this is probably only the second time in six races that Shulong has failed to beat Gasly in qualifying.

Even in the last tournament, the gap between him and Gasly wasn't nearly this big!

This already speaks volumes.

Regardless of how much the ceiling of Red Bull has been raised, at least in terms of balance, this upgrade of Red Bull is definitely a super enhancement!
At least Gasly can now properly demonstrate his potential in racing, instead of timidly trying to keep the car from going out of control.

Positioned at P8 and P9 are Haas's Magnussen and Grosjean, respectively. Their times are very close, with a single lap difference of no more than 0.01, and they are less than 0.2 away from Shulong.

Albon is dangerously close to P10, but it's worth noting that he's only 0.25 laps behind Shulong now.

In this respect, both Red Bull and Toro seem to be somewhat similar, focusing more on balance in their upgrades, but their ceiling doesn't seem to have improved much. As a result, Gasly and Albon, who were originally consistently 0.5 or 0.6 behind their teammates, are now only about 0.2 behind.

Should I be happy about this?

Shu Long himself wasn't quite sure, but it seemed like there was something to be happy about? After all, the car he was driving was indeed quite comfortable.

However, after being in the front row alongside the three powerhouse teams of Ferrari, Bremen, and Bulldog in the last two races, Shu Long suddenly dropped back to the top of the pack. This sudden change was hard for him to accept.

Haas were a bit lost in the first three races, and now they may have just returned to where they belong. What makes Shu Long even more upset is the speed at which Mercedes, Ferrari, and Nissan are upgrading without giving smaller teams any breathing room.

This has little to do with the drivers. Shu Long and Albon are definitely the two drivers who work the most overtime at the factory. Gasly is slightly less so, since there is also a Ironblood Autobot in the team who helps him with a lot of work.

However, according to Shu Long, Mercedes' two players enjoyed a comfortable vacation at home for more than a week. Vettel and Leclerc may have only symbolically returned to the factory for an afternoon or two to participate in the team's upgrades.

That's so unfair!

Shu Long also wanted to upgrade his racing car while lying at home.
Let's not dwell on such unlucky things, like cattle, horses, and people shedding tears.

Perhaps the only good news today is that Zhou Guanyu finished third in the F2 race, which is his first podium finish in his F2 rookie season.

Even better news is that Mick only managed to finish fifteenth.

"Wow, what a triumphant moment!"

"Definitely!"

It's like the wheel of fortune has turned; now it's finally Shu Long's turn to suffer Zhou Guanyu's "ordinary" fate.

"I just want to say that I'm glad I chose to leave Ferrari's youth academy and switch to another team today."

"Is Ferrari really that bad? I think they've been quite nice to you."

"It's good, but sometimes I feel like they're treating me like a mascot. In front of the real prince they want to support, even a mascot has to take a backseat."

"That's true, the seniority system at Ferrari is indeed a bit of a hassle."

"Believe it or not, with Mick's recent poor performances in several games, his Prema teammate, Gaillard, will soon be out of steam, and then you'll see Mick improve by leaps and bounds!"

"Ah ha ha"

Zhou Guanyu said he was very qualified to say this, as the same scenario played out last year when they were all still in F3.

Among the Prema riders, Mick was the worst performer, with Zhou Guanyu and another rider almost taking turns dominating the leaderboard for the entire first half of the season. As a result, Mick actually brought milk during the summer break.

Without the support of Stroll, and with their finances stretched thin, Prema strategically abandoned all the other drivers on the team, concentrating all their resources on custom-tuning a championship car for Mick, ultimately helping him make a comeback and win that year's F3 championship.

Shu Long will not comment further on this matter. Compared to Zhou Guanyu, he was much luckier. Not only did he have Marco and Red Bull protecting him all the way, but he also received the last leniency that old Stroll left for Prema.

Now that he has finally proven himself by starting anew, the heavy pressure that has been weighing on Zhou Guanyu's heart for so long has dissipated considerably.

"By the way, how long has it been since you logged in? Shall we find a chance to play a game together before Monaco?"

"It's been quite a while, hasn't it? But we might not be very free during this period. After this game, we still need to help Pirelli with their mid-season testing."

"Oh right! I forgot, even the F2 will be switching to 18-inch wheels soon. You go ahead and get busy, we can meet up again sometime?"

"What do you mean, 'date'? Don't say such weird things, you jerk! Oh, right, there's one more thing, how about we find a different game to play?"

"Which one should I switch to? I haven't played many games. If I'm going to switch, it should be a first-person shooter. I'm not very good at other games."

Shu Long held his head in silence. When he was a child, the thing he looked forward to most every day was going back to the track to play go-karts, and the second thing he looked forward to was being able to go home and play on the computer for a while after practice.

Unexpectedly, even playing computer games is now becoming a source of distress for him.

"I don't know either. I'll ask my girlfriend when I get back. She plays a lot of games, and they're all shooting games!"

Zhou Guanyu was referring to CSGO, but unfortunately Shu Long wasn't a big fan of the game. Anyway, now that it's a free game, there's no need to pay to download it, and Shu Long only occasionally plays a few rounds with Zhou Guanyu and a few other friends he knows.

There are two main reasons: one is boredom, and the other is lack of interest.

Shu Long is a sucker for good looks; he likes to create female characters in every game he plays.

Even in single-player games, the fact that someone prefers to play Tomb Raider but can't even muster the desire to buy the equally classic Uncharted shows how extreme he is.

Including the Assassin's Creed series, although he has bought and collected every single one, his favorite so far is still Syndicate.

There's nothing special about it; it's just that you can play as the female assassin Evie.

As for Odyssey and Valhalla, where you can also choose a female assassin, I don't have much time to experience them in detail right now. They've been gathering dust in my warehouse ever since I bought them.

What really discourages people from playing CS:GO is that the characters are too big, a bunch of big men, and generally not good-looking.

As for those ornaments, I'm even less interested. What's the use of something beautiful if it's on a grown man's hands?

Each one is ridiculously expensive and doesn't even have any attributes. He doesn't understand why Zhou Guanyu always speaks with such envy. Maybe there's a saying, "Love that can't be had"?

Zhou Guanyu is one of the most restrained types of rich kids when it comes to spending money, which may also be related to his family's huge investment in racing. In short, his CSGO inventory is not as rich as his net worth suggests.

There are definitely some good items, but for someone in this family, spending a thousand or so yuan occasionally isn't really considered money.

As for why it's boring.
Moving around is too cumbersome, and you have to stop abruptly when you fire, but that's not a big deal; you'll get used to it in a few days.

But when a game allows you to instantly kill an opponent with a single shot, whether it's an AK, pistol, or sniper rifle, as long as they dare to peek out, or even with a less powerful gun you can reliably headshot them with two bullets, that's a problem.

It might be fun at first, but after a while, I feel that it's not as interesting as using an emulator.

So, probably a long time ago, Shulong had already lost interest in these real-time ballistic shooting games.

The same applies to the Call of Duty he's been playing with Norris lately.

Call of Duty features bullet trajectory and bullet speed, but the maps are generally compact and the pace is fast, with a lot of time spent in close combat. It's a game where it's either you or me killing each other, making it quite similar to real-time ballistic games.

Moreover, the weapon attachment system is too complicated. People like Norris who like it will certainly think it's great, but Shulong, being a lazy dog, is too lazy to bother with studying the game.

This guy is still using primitive iron sights, yet he can still get kills with a single shot. The old man and Lando were once amazed by his skill.

Fortunately, COD does an amazing job with the feel and accuracy of the guns, otherwise Shu Long probably would have gotten tired of the game by now.

As for why they didn't loosen the water a little...
Nonsense! If you let someone else play and they get killed, that's even more frustrating! Are you playing games to relieve stress or to increase it?!

When Shu Long returned to his residence that evening, the first thing he did was not to worry about the next day's match. Instead, he opened Steam and browsed through the store and library, hoping to find any interesting new games.

As a result, the search strayed from the topic, and I quickly broke away from those brightly colored, pink-themed interfaces.

Ah!
He opened his phone to look for Gan Mengning, but then remembered the time difference between them; it should be past 3 a.m. in China right now.

With the competition moving to the European region, riders don't necessarily have to book hotels. Motohome, with accommodations comparable to five-star hotels, is also a good option.

In particular, Red Bull Group has rebuilt a super-luxurious new motohome in the European region this year, which can be shared by both the large and small Red Bull teams, highlighting its comfort.

The key advantage is its proximity to the paddock and better privacy; unlike staying at a hotel, you won't be mobbed by enthusiastic fans.
Shu Long is an extremely lazy person who just wants to sleep in the next morning and then easily get to work on his balance bike when it's time to go. So this place is the perfect choice for him.

Gasly doesn't live here; his girlfriend came to visit him on this stop.
Everything was normal the next day.

We held a tactical meeting, were taken for a spin in a pig-hauling truck, did a few warm-up laps to check the car's condition, stopped to participate in the flag-raising ceremony, went to the toilet for a short rest, and then got back into the car to prepare for the race.

Starting from P7, it was the same familiar scenario as the last race, except this time Shu Long only managed to pass Gasly just before turn one.

This time, however, he not only failed to launch further challenges against Verstappen and Leclerc in front of him, but he could only barely hold off Gasly behind him.

After a regular stop every 22 laps, Gasly's team opted for yellow tires, while Shulong went against the grain and switched to red tires once again.

He pushed hard for another twenty laps, widening the gap between himself and Gasly to 8 seconds, and then pitted for his second stop on lap 42.

This is a strategic shift, aimed at securing clean air and gaining a significant advantage as early as possible, rather than wasting tires under Gasly's relentless pressure.

However, things didn't go as planned. The new chassis and the light oil Red Bull's lap times on the red tires far exceeded Shu Long's expectations. By lap 50, it was almost 0.8 seconds ahead of the Toro Rosso.

Finally, on the penultimate lap, Gasly, with the help of DRS, was impossible to defend against and easily took back his P6 from Shu Long.

Albon, on the other hand, was doing well, using the red-white stop tactic to easily overtake two Haas and reach P8.

He not only demonstrated master-level ability to maintain a healthy pregnancy, but also achieved the closest finishing time to Shu Long to date.

(End of this chapter)