F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 124 "Ryuu's Dream" - The First Victim

The Monaco Grand Prix came to a quiet close.

Unlike the conventional Shu Long, Zhou Guanyu's performance at the Monaco Grand Prix was quite remarkable, as he reached the podium twice, in both the main race and the sprint race.

This put him in a very good mood, but unfortunately, Shu Long was always busy, so the plan to play the game had to be postponed again and again.

Because a new round of upgrades has just been introduced, the next round of upgrade plans have not yet been implemented. Shulong and Albon have been given a rare break by the team, and they no longer have to spend day and night on the factory simulator.

It's not that the team is being lazy, but since they've already invested a lot of money in the next round of upgrades, they need to see how well the new kits perform in practice before deciding on future upgrade plans.

Little Red Bull is not the same as Big Red Bull. Although the Red Bull Group makes regular payments every year, they are still dependent on others and have to act according to their wishes. Their budget is not yet sufficient to allow them to squander money recklessly.

There's no such thing as a budget cap anymore. Big teams can throw money into their teams without restraint, while small teams have to consider their own revenue.

Nothing has happened that could change the future course of events; everything is as usual.
probably
The good news is that the first sponsorship from Shulong has finally been secured, and starting from the next stop, the Red Bull's body and steering wheel will officially bear the Douyin logo.

This position on the steering wheel is special; it's a high-exposure member-only seat that can be directly captured by the car's camera, and even regular sponsors can't get it.

The reason why Douyin was able to occupy two sponsorship exposure spots is not only because the team gave Shulong and the Chinese market behind him face, but also because Douyin's sponsorship was somewhat of a premium.

After all, the five million dollars was originally intended to sponsor an entire season, but unfortunately the deal was completed a little late, and TikTok had already lost six exposures for nothing.

Fortunately, Uncle Tost was easy to talk to and was even willing to let Douyin's contract continue into the next season.

A sponsorship of five million US dollars is not particularly large, and it can only be considered to be below average in the paddock. However, it is a good sign, meaning that Shulong has begun to demonstrate the commercial value he should have.

There are many other small sponsorships of one or two million, but there are even more large ones.

Even excluding those title sponsorship categories, many big brands have sponsorship deals worth tens of millions of yuan a year, but this is limited to top-tier racing teams.

Mid-tier teams like Toro Rosso typically receive around 30 to 50 million yuan in sponsorship fees, while lower-tier teams receive even less. However, top-tier teams like Red Bull receive over 100 million yuan annually from Oracle's sponsorship program.

However, Red Bull is Red Bull after all. Douyin's sponsorship is considered quite generous among non-title sponsors. In addition, given Shu Long's crucial role in the team, this kind of treatment is to be expected.

Logically speaking, Douyin shouldn't be in such a hurry to get on board, but anyone who follows F1 has heard of the Toro Rosso seat. This time it's these two people, but who knows who will be next?

Shu Long is the kind of person who is very likely to be promoted quickly. If he doesn't get on the team now, he doesn't know which team he will be in next year. It's an awkward situation where signing now would be a loss, but not signing would be an even bigger loss.

To be fair, the difficulty in securing sponsorship from Shulong was partly due to this reason.

Despite both being sponsored, Haas's situation was less smooth in a corner of the paddock where no one cared.

Haas team principal Steiner has been having a headache lately, as he's discovered that the team's title sponsor this year isn't as simple as it seems.

Haas had originally received tens of millions of dollars in sponsorship fees, but after the initial payment of several million dollars, he still hasn't received the remaining balance after six games.

This brought the Haas team's development to a standstill. Fortunately, neither driver has suffered serious damage to their vehicle so far; otherwise, their already struggling families might have been unable to cope.

However, the issue of the final payment is not yet resolved. The beverage company, Rich Energy, has recently been formally sued by Whyte Bikes for allegedly serious trademark infringement.

Haas has now been ordered to remove the Rich Energy logo from its race cars as soon as possible, but if that happens, wouldn't the naming rights be meaningless?

It's just a matter of changing the paint job, which doesn't take much effort. But what if they lose all their subsequent sponsorship fees because of this?
Although we haven't received it yet, at least there's some hope. If the sponsor loses the lawsuit, then it's really all over.

However, these things have nothing to do with Shulong.

Although the Little Red Bull team was on holiday, the Big Red Bull team had no intention of letting him off the hook, or rather, Marco had no intention of letting him off the hook.

The day after the Monaco Grand Prix ended, Shu Long was called up by Marco to participate in the Pirelli 2020 season tire development test on May 28.

The test took place at the Paul Ricard Circuit in France, the track where the race will be held after the Shulong race, and the test was conducted on rain tires.

The reason for choosing this location for testing is that the Paul Ricard Circuit has its own sprinkler system, which can simulate a rainy environment by installing sprinklers on both sides of the track.

At the same time, the Paul Ricard Circuit can also plan 167 different track layouts, which is simply perfect.

Shu Long will be driving a Red Bull car. On the first day, he will share the morning and afternoon testing time with Gasly. On the second day, Verstappen will be the sole test driver. In addition, only Ferrari's Vettel and Leclerc will be in charge of this test.

In short, it's not quite clear what Marco meant. Anyway, Gasly's smile was a bit stiff the whole time, and Shu Long himself was also very uncomfortable.

Fortunately, the test was quite interesting, and immersing myself in it helped to ease some of the awkwardness.

Shu Long has driven in rain races in F3 and F2, but he has never experienced driving on a wet track in an F1 car.

Last year's Brazilian Grand Prix could be considered half of that. At that time, there were only some light showers on certain sections of the track during qualifying, which were so light that the cars would dry them off within two laps and didn't even have a significant impact on lap times.

Shu Long had timed the window of opportunity well, and by the time he got on the track, the ground was almost dry.

This is a rare opportunity for him to get used to what it's like to drive at high intensity on completely wet ground.

All of these are rain-driving games. Don't be fooled by the fact that F3, F2 and F1 are only a number apart. Even the slightest difference in power or weight can lead to drastically different performances of the race cars on wet surfaces.

Not to mention that there's not even the slightest difference between F1 racing and the two formula racing categories mentioned earlier; they're products of completely different dimensions.

However, Shulong adapted very quickly.
Because Pirelli's testing team kept requiring him to run on different track layouts, he didn't set many meaningful lap times. However, his smooth, controlled maneuvers, with the ability to glide and grip without losing control, impressed Marco. So, after Shu Long's test run that morning, Marco simply left the blinking Gasly there, took Shu Long, and boarded a plane to Vienna, the capital of Austria.

Nikki Lauda's funeral will be held here.

Although he wouldn't admit it, Lauda's sudden death had a profound impact on Marco, and now he wanted to come and bid farewell to his old friend no matter what.

At least in this matter, Shu Long was still very grateful to Marco for giving him such an opportunity.

After the funeral, Shu Long first followed Marco back to the Red Bull youth training headquarters in Austria, where he met a new youth trainee who was said to have been recently signed by the old man.

His name is Hiroki Kakuta, and you can tell from the format that it's a small notebook.

However, unlike Shu Long, who had already changed the Western way of pronouncing names, when Kakuta was introduced by Marco, he still pronounced Kakuta's name according to the Western way of first name then surname, and it was pronounced as Yu Yi Kakuta.

Currently, he's racing F3, but his performance is only so-so, ranking outside the top ten in the overall standings. This is a far cry from the Shulong team that dominated the championship all the way back then.

The difference in how Marco addresses Kakuta and Tsukuryu reveals the varying degrees of importance he places on them.

Shu Long, who had just finished running the KZ2 race and won the championship, was not mistakenly called "Long Shu" when Marco approached him after the race. The old man really put in a lot of effort to sign him.

As for why Dr. Marco was able to take back Kakuta, who had performed only moderately well...
Aside from the fact that when Marco went to inspect the goods on-site, Kakuta's aggressive and brilliant overtaking maneuver did indeed impress the old man a little, but behind the other man stood Honda.

Honda is currently the engine supplier for four Red Bull cars, and they are willing to provide substantial sponsorship to pave the way for Kakuta's racing career. Even if the expectations are slightly lower, it would be enough to sway the stubborn Marco.

Shu Long is unaware of the influence behind this identity, and he is currently having a fairly pleasant conversation with Kakuta.

In fact, as long as the other party has normal values, Shu Long doesn't have any particular prejudice against Japanese people. In addition, Kakuta himself is a social terrorist, and being from Japan, he also has a love for anime and manga. The two of them actually have a lot in common.

What surprised Kakuta even more was that Tsuru could actually have some complex conversations with him in Japanese.

Although the grammar was a little strange, there was a faint sense of chuunibyou (adolescent delusions of grandeur) about it that even made this Japanese person feel embarrassed.

I asked around and found out that Shu Long's current Japanese level is basically learned from anime. No wonder!
He wasn't very tall either. Shu Long guessed that the other person was probably about the same height as Gan Mengning. He had fair skin, a square face, and at first glance, he looked a bit like a child.

Gan Mengning is a proper Japanese major, but unfortunately, Shu Long hasn't heard her show off her skills yet, because she's a little shy.

Shu Long understood this perfectly, because he himself would occasionally hum a few lines in private, but he would never be the type to sing in front of others.

No matter how close the person is to him, it won't work; sometimes he even feels embarrassed to sing it himself.

He stayed here without leaving, and it was too much trouble to keep going back and forth, so Shulong simply stayed in his old dormitory here for a few days.

It was only afterward that I learned that the reason they had this meeting was because Kakuda himself had proposed it to Marco.

Shu Long's life so far is just like a male protagonist straight out of a Japanese shonen anime. In terms of personality, he might be more like a laid-back second male lead in a slice-of-life anime.

In short, it seems that Shulong has already gained its first little fan without anyone realizing it. If things continue like this, it might even give rise to a "Shulong Dream".

However, insubordination is something deeply ingrained in Japanese culture. If the idol is Tsuru, it means that Tsuru is also a target that Kakuta dreams of challenging.

Kakuta has a decent temper off the track; he's a cheerful kid. But on the track, he's a hot-tempered guy who hasn't learned much English.

The main reason can be attributed to this: no one is willing to submit!
In some respects, his personality does indeed fit Red Bull's selection criteria.
Kakuta's performance in F3 was so-so, but confident people always feel that it's not their fault, and that the car is definitely the main reason.

Shu Long's excellent performance in F3 was due to the special shunting team that Marco arranged for him.
In Kakuta's view, he had already pushed the car's performance to its limit, so what else could be the reason that his results were still not good but the car itself?
Okay, the car did play a part, but Marco also showed Kakuta the test lap times that Shulong had recorded at the Salzburg circuit next door.

This time, there's no way to deny it, right? In fact, the race car that Shu Long used to set the lap time was the same one that Kakuta was driving!
But Kakuta himself didn't believe it. In fact, even if it were Tsukuru, he wouldn't have believed it either. After all, that old geezer had casually made up a fake lap time that Max had achieved.

However, since a competition has been mentioned...
Kakuta is actually only about half a month younger than Shulong, and they are roughly the same age. However, Kakuta is quite petite, which has led Shulong to treat him like a little brother these past few days.

But since he wanted to prove himself on the track, it's no wonder that some of the anti-Japanese genes inherited from Grandpa Shu were activated in Shu Long's bloodline.

The same F3 car, on a 4.2km track, had a difference of nearly one second per lap.

Because Shu Long had to wait for the engineer to readjust his seat, he not only missed out on the benefits of the evolving track conditions, but his tires were also several laps older than when Kakuta used them.

It wasn't that Marco was stingy and wouldn't replace it with a new one; it was just that Shulong felt it wasn't really necessary.

That was great, because the weather in Austria was much warmer than when Shu Long ran in winter, and he even improved his F3 test record by almost half a second.

Young Kakuta nearly had his Dao heart shattered. He was already about 0.3 points away from Shulong's original record, but who could have imagined that the real person would be even more terrifying?!

This is after he gained at least 20 kilograms of weight.

Fortunately, Shu Long was willing to share some of his experience, leaving his driving data for Kakuta to study slowly. Two days later, he set off for the Villeneuve circuit to prepare for the Canadian Grand Prix.

The wave goodbye before leaving wasn't a farewell, but rather a sign that you still have a lot of practice to do, little brother.

　Thank you so much to the generous donation from the user "幻|镜花水月" and to the user "SSepherd"!
　　I'm adding more and more, how am I supposed to repay that? I'm almost out of money even for the monthly ticket thank-you list...

　　
　
(End of this chapter)