F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 131 No——!
Verstappen finished third in yesterday's race and will benefit from the retirement penalty ahead of him in Sunday's race, starting in P2 alongside Leclerc on the front row.

This marks the reunion of this pair of bickering lovers on the racetrack after seven years.

The last time Leclerc and Verstappen started together in the front row was on July 22, 2012, in the KF2 European Karting Championship, which is also very memorable.

Of course, these are minor matters; other more memorable events took place during the pre-competition activities.

The Red Bull Ring in Austria is also the hometown of Niki Lauda. As the organizer, Red Bull not only distributed 60000 red hats in the main grandstand to commemorate Niki Lauda, ​​but also renamed the first turn of the Red Bull Ring to "Niki Lauda Corner".

To achieve this level of skill as a driver is truly an honor.

The team's home track is always special, but with the experience of the Shanghai International Circuit, although there is still pressure, Shu Long is not as apprehensive as he was last time at the Shanghai International Circuit.

The first time in life is always special.

Of course, Red Bull's home ground has a different meaning for Verstappen. Even Shulong has two home grounds, but the Red Bull Ring may be the only home ground for Verstappen throughout the entire season.
Or perhaps Verstappen could be considered to have two? But who knows, he might have three home games by next year!
Not every driver gets the honor of competing on home soil. Verstappen, who is in his fifth year of F1 racing, has never actually experienced a Grand Prix on home soil in his own country.

However, ever since the Dutch Grand Prix was confirmed to be included in next year's calendar, there has been a heated debate online about where Verstappen's home ground should be.

The Dutch say that Max is a Dutch driver, so his home turf should rightfully belong to the Netherlands.

But the Belgians objected, repeatedly emphasizing that Verstappen's mother was Belgian and that Verstappen himself was indeed born in Belgium, so Belgium should be Verstappen's home ground.

Last year, before Stoffel Vandoorne, another McLaren driver from Belgium, left, not many people talked about this.

But given the current situation, it's estimated that Belgium will have to negotiate with the Netherlands over the ownership of Verstappen's home race until the next Belgian F1 driver is selected.

Before boarding the pig-hauling cart, Shu Long and the others huddled together discussing this.

Max just smiled and remained silent. No matter how he answered the question, it would cause controversy, and with cameras and recording devices constantly pointing at them, the wisest choice was to keep quiet.

Actually, there's no need to ask. Just look at the clothes worn by the enthusiastic fans at the scene today, and you'll know which side is Verstappen's home ground.

It wasn't Mercedes' white-themed apparel, nor Ferrari's uniform red team T-shirts, nor Red Bull's leather.

At least 70% of the stands were filled with fans dressed in the national color of the Netherlands, orange.

If you didn't know this, you might think that the Red Bull Ring in Austria isn't Red Bull Racing's home track, but rather McLaren Racing's home track.
Norris clearly thought so, as he leaned against the railing of the sightseeing bus and waved vigorously at the orange sections of the stands, trying to intimidate the crowd.

Sainz, his teammate, just awkwardly covered his face, looking ashamed to be associated with him. The others didn't try to stop Lando; they just watched him act crazy by himself.

Thanks to his starting position on the P5 grid today, Shu Long was in a much better mood than in the past few days. He even had time to arrange a game with Norris after the race during the drivers' parade.

After several high-pressure matches, and now another back-to-back week with no time to breathe, Shu Long wanted to find a reason to relax his tense nerves.

Then I discussed with Max and Leclerc about playing F1 19 together later.

Strictly speaking, this should be considered a work-semi-entertainment activity. The latest generation of F1 games was just released a couple of days ago, and the game developers hope that these drivers can cooperate by doing some promotion.

Nothing special. In April, Shu Long was called in to help film a promotional video for the Chinese market, in which he used a simulator to create a demonstration lap at the Shanghai International Circuit in the game.

Then, we can ask him to provide some footage from when he plays games when he has time; streaming it would be the best option.

It's entertaining and you get paid, why wouldn't you do it!
The original plan was to stream on the Twitch platform, also known as the "mouse platform" in China.

However, Shulong didn't have any live streaming equipment, and he didn't want to buy any or bother to set one up, so he simply decided to piggyback on other people's live streams.

After some back and forth, they decided to do a small team live stream, with Shu Long and Verstappen only appearing on camera, while Lando did the hard work.

If it's just a camera or something, then Shu Long does have one, since he often video chats with Gan Mengning.

But after finishing this, Shu Long realized that he had apparently stood Zhou Guanyu up for over a month when he invited him to play games together.
Unfortunately, I've been working non-stop and haven't been in the mood lately, so I simply haven't had the leisure to play online games.

However, it seems that this week is a period of bad luck for Zhou Guanyu.

In the F2 race, he first encountered a gearbox failure in Saturday's race. He started second on the grid but dropped to fifteenth place at one point during the race. After a few laps, the gearbox seemed to be working again, and he chased after the others and finally managed to get a P6 finish.

The second race today was also a real pity. He was once in the championship contention group, but he was taken down by the safety car at the last minute. The deterioration of his tire condition caused him to slide down to P8.
Getting points is not bad, but going from being a contender for the championship to only getting points in two consecutive games due to various unfortunate events is a psychological blow that not everyone can accept.

A while ago, Gan Mengning selected a few games from those she often played in her live streams, based on Shu Long's needs.

Some of the things mentioned really piqued Shu Long's interest, but unfortunately Zhou Guanyu suffered a series of setbacks at the Austrian leg, and it's unclear whether he's still in the mood to play games now.

However, my schedule is already full for next week, so I probably won't have a chance to try them all out with Zhou Guanyu until summer break.

Hopefully, everyone will still be in the mood to have fun by then.
Shu Long turned off the messages of criticism and encouragement from Zhou Guanyu, handed his phone to the physical trainer Elena for safekeeping, and focused back into the competition mindset.

The team's home track is not something to be taken lightly. Compared to the Shanghai International Circuit, Red Bull's management certainly values ​​this more.

The key to Shulong's race today, besides gaining as much advantage as possible at the start, is how to maximize the first red tire stint to alleviate the pressure on the white tires in the later stages of the race using the one-stop strategy.

The first one isn't difficult.

Apart from Leclerc in P1, Verstappen and Mercedes, who are ahead of Shulong, both start on yellow tires. Even though Shulong's clutch response is only 0.2, he naturally has an advantage in grip at the start.

Moreover, Shu Long's P5 starting grid is located on the left side of the track, and at the start, the person directly in front of him who will compete for position with him is Bottas. Hamilton, who is in the right starting grid, simply doesn't have the extra space to interfere.

Bottas's wheelsets are notoriously flat, so it's fair to say that Shulong has a very good chance today. But the second one won't be so easy.

In practice, everyone runs their own races for long distances, which is different from the extra tire wear caused by constantly dealing with dirty air and close-quarters combat in the main race. The Toro Rosso's good long-distance performance is relative to the cars behind it. Against the two Mercedes, it has no advantage in long distances at all.

As the five red lights came on one by one, Shu Long could only put aside the chaotic thoughts that had been swirling around while the tires were warming up.

There was hardly any room for maneuver for him in this match; he could only take it one step at a time.

However, when the red light went out, Shu Long never expected that his good luck from yesterday would still have lingering effects.

Verstappen, whether due to a misoperation or a malfunction in the car, triggered the anti-stalling mechanism at the start, dropping to tenth place and tying with his teammate Gasly.

Although Verstappen quickly regained his normal rhythm, he lost a total of eight positions, so it can be said that his qualifying session yesterday was a waste of time.

On the other hand, Verstappen's stationary start disrupted Hamilton's starting rhythm, and Bottas's 0.27-second start was hardly enough to keep up with Shulong's explosive start.

Even just before Turn 1 was officially renamed "Niki Lauda Turn", Shu Long took advantage of the inside opening created by Verstappen to squeeze in front of Bottas and climbed to P2 as soon as he started.

"Yes! Yes!"

"Nice job! Let's keep it up!"

Shu Long didn't even need to take credit; the praise from Hamelin had already reached his ears.

The competition had barely begun and they were already in second place. Shu Long never dared to imagine this before. When had he ever fought such a lucrative battle?
Never had such a wonderful start!

But soon, Shu Long faced a very awkward problem—he couldn't keep up with the Ferrari in front of him.
It wasn't just the polluted air that was affecting Shu Long; it wasn't just that he couldn't keep up in the corners. On the straights, he was using the slipstream, driving with DRS, and even had his engine in STRAT 5 power mode, yet he still noticed that the rear of the Leclerc in front of him was slowly moving away from him.

Not a buddy?
Is this the Ferrari engine that even Mercedes is struggling with?
This wasn't the first time Shu Long had experienced the power of Ferrari engines on the track. However, in the past, they had always attacked from behind using the DRS, and aside from feeling helpless, he didn't have much to say about it.

But he's the one eating DRS today! It's a bit much if he can't even catch up, isn't it?

Once the dragon escapes Leclerc's DRS range, Hamilton, who has overtaken his teammates and entered P3 from behind, will be no match for him.

For a moment, Shu Long felt helpless on the track and could only throw the problem back to the team's strategy group, asking them to help him think of a solution.

The team is also in a bind; no one expected that Mercedes would become their direct competitor so soon.

After about a round of time, Hamelin finally gave his hesitant answer to the arrangements they had just discussed.

"So—we suggest you follow Leclerc's pace and use yesterday's preset Mode 5 with STRAT set to 2."

"Are you serious? What about the tires?"

“We’ll need to get into the station earlier, but it would be best to use up as much of Mercedes’ yellow tires as possible before that.”

Who uses such a strategy? Shu Long felt that something was off, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

According to the pre-race plan, Shulong's first set of red tires needed to last at least twenty laps, otherwise the pressure of having to endure more than fifty laps with the second set of white tires would be too great.

Even if you're going to damage your opponent's tires, you should do it while protecting your own tires to the maximum extent possible. Why would you use red tires to compete with someone else's yellow tires in terms of tire wear?

According to Shu Long's prediction, the strategy of going long is to first strategically let Hamilton pass, and then use Hamilton's DRS to defend against Bottas.

Mercedes' engine is fast, but it's not as insane as Ferrari's engine, which will reduce the pressure on Shu Long.

But since the team has said so, they probably have some other considerations, and Shulong can only obediently comply for the time being.

Once the engine power comes up, keeping up with the Ferrari naturally becomes much easier.

However, the STRAR 2 is used in qualifying mode in Monaco and many other tracks. Pushing it so hard over long distances not only strains the tires, but also causes the engine temperature to rise rapidly.

Shu Long guessed correctly; the convoy did indeed have other considerations, but those considerations were not directed at him.

As can be seen from the situation at the scene today, this match is not only important for Shulong, but also extremely important for Red Bull and Verstappen.

Last year, Max won the home championship here with his Max speed, and Red Bull really hopes that Verstappen, who originally started in P2, will win the home championship again today.

then
If I'm not mistaken, after Red Bull saw the starting position of the Shulong P5, they were secretly giving instructions to the team again.

There's nothing we can do about it. Gasly, who didn't even make it into Q3, is definitely not a reliable option. And now Verstappen's start is also problematic. So, we have no choice but to use the backup plan and sacrifice Shulong to slow down the pace of the cars ahead.
However, Ferrari cars are not so easy to follow, and Mercedes cars are not so easy to defend against. The risks of overusing a car must be borne by the driver himself.

By lap 15, even with the slipstream provided by Ferrari, Sulong had already been formally attacked twice by Hamilton.

Using the DRS after Turn 3, Hamilton once again moved his front wheels to the inside of the lane next to the dragon, clearly preparing for a late braking maneuver.

Knowing he was at a disadvantage, Shu Long didn't try to force his way through the old man. Instead, he braked a little earlier and took a detour from the outside, crossing a line to try and take advantage of the line to compete with the old man for the corner.

He gripped the overtaking button and unleashed the full power, but as he gradually increased the throttle, the car suddenly shuddered twice, as if it had urinated in winter, as it shifted into fifth gear.

Even when Shu Long floored the accelerator, he could only watch as race cars roared past him.

Looking dejectedly in the rearview mirror, I saw a plume of thick, bluish smoke billowing from the back of the car, indicating it was in critical condition.

(End of this chapter)