F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 135 The Battle in the Rain at Hockenheim

This year's German Grand Prix is ​​a very special one, even among the more than twenty races in the entire year's calendar.

It goes without saying that it is the home track of Mercedes in Germany. Most importantly, starting next year, the Hockenheim circuit will no longer be used as a venue for F1 races.

Unlike the Spanish Grand Prix, which is only temporarily uncertain about whether to renew its contract, this legendary track with an extremely long history of running races has already clearly answered no due to years of operating at a loss.

As for whether he will be able to make a comeback in the future, and when his next comeback will be, that remains to be seen.
These are all unknowns.

Because the Hockenheim circuit is one of the few famous European circuits that does not host F3 and F2 races, this was the first time that Shulong had actually run on this circuit.

Unfortunately, his first race was the last one in Hockenheim, but fortunately, he at least made it to the final race.

Ultimately, thanks to his exceptional consistency, he outperformed Kimi, whose lap time had slightly declined compared to the previous lap, and successfully earned himself a chance to start from the third row.

According to the weather forecast, it was supposed to rain on the day of qualifying, but apart from the thick cumulus clouds in the sky, not a single drop of rain fell until the end of qualifying.

Conversely, the track maintained a relatively comfortable temperature of 28°C and a track surface temperature of 45°C throughout the course.

Logically speaking, Toro Rosso shouldn't have such a clear advantage here. Just look at Albon's performance, where a P17 was eliminated in Q1, and you can see that. But Shulong seems to be holding his breath, not giving his teammates any face at all.

Although Albon's final result does not fully represent his ability, because on his second flying lap, he was blocked by Norris, whose car's battery system suddenly malfunctioned while he was also doing a flying lap, and he blocked three corners in a row.

But the one-second difference between Alben and Shulong's best qualifying times was enough to be glaring to some.

What is being converged?
Now that he had other options, he was eager to give those high-ranking managers a good dose of encouragement.

However, one point needs to be explained: Shulong's P5 ranking results did indeed have a large element of luck involved.

And the team that gave him this opportunity happened to be Ferrari, the same team that had just made grand promises to him a few days earlier.
In Q1, Vettel had only completed one outing lap when he reported to the team via TR that his car had lost power. It was later discovered that the turbo system had malfunctioned, and he was eliminated from the race in Q1 without even setting a time.

In Q3, the Leclerc pipeline encountered problems again, and no results were achieved.

how to say?

Just as Alonso led the team to reach a verbal agreement with Haas and Ferrari, Ferrari's engine started to malfunction repeatedly. Even if Shu Long didn't consider himself superstitious, he couldn't help but wonder if Alonso's "team selection genius" aura was working.

Of course, it would be unfair to put all the blame on Alonso, since Vettel's engine had been experiencing various problems in qualifying for several previous races, and each problem was different.

Indeed, there is no power in this world that can be obtained without paying a price. With Ferrari's engine being so powerful, it's not too surprising that there are some fluctuations in stability.
It's no wonder Ferrari approached Shu Long; one of the reasons they specifically emphasized was that they wanted him to help with some additional testing.
Despite his anxiety, Shu Long still has high hopes for Ferrari's engine. If it weren't for these two unexpected malfunctions, it's hard to say who would have won pole position.

Based on their performance in the previous practice sessions, Ferrari's two cars were indeed faster than Mercedes'.

In addition, Hamilton was clearly not in good form this weekend. According to sources within the Mercedes team, he seems to have contracted some kind of unknown flu and had a high fever throughout the race. He looked so weak that he needed help even to get out of the car.

Even under these circumstances, Hamilton still managed to secure pole position with a 0.35-second lead over Verstappen.

It's hard to say whether to admire the steely will of this five-time champion who is steadily marching toward his sixth title, or whether Mercedes's alien technology is just that fast.
But it doesn't matter, because the Hockenheim circuit did not betray the weather forecast again on Sunday. The torrential rain that started early this morning has not stopped and continued until noon, with moderate to heavy rain on the track.

Yesterday's tire strategy calculations for the race in Q2 were all for naught. When Shu Long got into the car, every team, without exception, chose blue rain tires as their starting tires for today's race.

"Long, is this your first time using blue rain tires in a race?"

"Yep, but don't worry, I've already tested wet and semi-wet tires at the Paul Ricard circuit, so I know what they feel like to drive."

"That's not what I meant. You have to remember, the most crucial thing in a rain race is to stay alive. Your starting position, P5, means endless possibilities. As long as you can stay on the track, anything is possible!"

"Like taking down Mercedes?"

"Who knows? Hamilton probably still has a fever today?"

The fatal strategy from the previous race didn't seem to have created any discord between the track duo, who took advantage of the pre-race break to casually boast in the TR.

Finally, it's unclear which sentence triggered their shared sense of humor, but their grotesque laughter finally became unbearable for Tost, who forced a few fake coughs to tell them to be serious.

At this moment, the commentators were also discussing today's rain-soaked match.

Compared to the usual Mercedes pole-to-win scenario, today's match will undoubtedly generate many more interesting moments, especially if the rain stops midway through the game.

"Huh? By the way, is this Shulong's first time participating in a rain battle?"

"I don't know. It seems so? Oh no, I remember it rained during that qualifying race in Brazil last year!"

"That doesn't count, does it? Nobody changed to rain tires. There were only a few turns and a little bit of rain, and the red tires were dried out after a few laps."

Upon hearing this, the soldier who had initially raised the question clicked his tongue somewhat uneasily.

"Oh dear, the result of today's race is hard to predict. I haven't paid much attention to the lower-group formula races. Has Shulong ever run a rain race?"

"I've already run by!"

Fei Ge and Ran Ge spoke almost at the same time. They are the type of people who usually read foreign news frequently. When they learned that Shu Long was racing F2, they often paid attention to the results of the race.

"I don't know about F3, but I remember running one race in F2?"

"Spa, right!"

"It should be Spa. I remember he won that rain race at Spa very well! He started the sprint in reverse order and ended up leading second place by almost fifteen seconds?"

"Oh, yes, yes! Now that you mention it, I remember too!"

"So, in today's rainy race, we can still look forward to Shulong's performance. Although Horner said after the last race in Austria that he would not make a decision to replace Gasly before the end of the season, we believe that Shulong should at least be Red Bull's best driver choice for next year."

Isn’t that right?
Gan Mengning, who was sitting in front of her computer right on time, curled up the corners of her mouth with a little smugness.

In her earliest memories of Shulong and racing, the competition she had on the wetlands in Haigeng when she was a child was probably her earliest and deepest impression of Shulong's racing talent.

Perhaps for this reason, as long as there is water on the track, she subconsciously feels that Shulong is invincible. Ever since Gan Mengning posted that VLOG about the Shanghai International Race, fans seem to have automatically assumed that she would get a leave slip for the weekend of the race week, and she is happy to openly and proudly cancel her leave.

Some people even encouraged her to do a live stream so everyone could watch the game together, but Gan Mengning was afraid that she might accidentally let something slip in her excitement, so she didn't agree.

Now that school is on holiday and her roommate He Xuanyi has gone home, Gan Mengning feels a little lonely being alone in her room. She looked around, got up, and took the original helmet that Shu Long used at the Shanghai International Games home game from the bookshelf.

After crumpling the sofa bag a couple more times, Gan Mengning found herself in a position that resembled an F1 driver lying down while driving. Then, she put on the special edition helmet that Shu Long had given her and casually slapped the goggles on with a "smack."

The immersion is incredible!
At the same time, Shu Long wiped off his goggles with two fingers.

The TR radio crackled with the team's message that the race would start in thirty seconds. The crew members responsible for cooling and warming up the tires began to evacuate quickly. The one who had been holding an umbrella for Shulong rubbed against Shulong's helmet twice before leaving.

"come on!"

"Copy!"

The thought that he might have to say goodbye to these lovely guys on the team soon made Shu Long feel a little melancholy, but as the green light ahead turned on, he could only quickly compose himself.

The umbrella had barely been removed when Shulong's goggles were quickly covered in water droplets, indicating that the rain was indeed quite heavy.

However, the protective film on the lens has a special hydrophobic coating. When the race car starts moving, the water droplets quickly escape to both sides of the field of vision under the action of airflow.

Due to today's poor weather conditions, the race organizers informed the drivers at the pre-race meeting that a rolling start with a safety car might be used today.

At least up until now, when the warm-up period has begun, the plan for starting the race is still to start on a rolling basis.

This is undoubtedly very unfavorable for Shulong. When starting in a rolling fashion, everyone is at a similar speed, which greatly weakens the role of his proud reaction speed during the start.

There was still a lot of water on the track. Gasly, who was ahead of Shulong, had only picked up his speed slightly when the water spray from the blue rain tires completely blocked the view in front of Shulong.

It's been such a long time since I've felt this way.

However, Shu Long was not affected in the slightest. Even though it was his first time competing at the Hockenheim circuit, his photographic memory had already created a complete model of the track in his mind several days earlier.

Combined with its innate sense of speed and space, as well as the occasional glimpses of information captured by its "eagle eyes," Shulong can maintain its rhythm even when running almost blindly.

However, to Shulong's surprise, this patrol led by the safety vehicle lasted for a full ten minutes!

"What are the race organizers doing?! How long are we supposed to keep going like this? The track conditions are already great, are they planning to cruise until we can change to dry tires for the start?"

"Don't worry, the race organizers have determined that the current track conditions are suitable for a static start."

"Ha~ Genius."

If we were to say who's in the most hurry on the track right now, besides Verstappen, who's trying to take advantage of the rainy conditions to win, it would be Shulong, whose patience has been quickly worn down with each lap of the race.

The better the track conditions here, the greater the gap between the Mars Group cars ahead and his.

Don't think he was joking when he said he wanted to beat the Mercedes before the race; often, many of his true feelings are revealed unintentionally in the form of jokes.

If Shu Long could hear this, he would definitely agree with Bing Ge's comment on the tournament's approach at this moment.

"They were all heroes who challenged the track and speed, but now the race organizers are turning them into a bunch of cowards!"

Fortunately, the FIA ​​isn't that stupid yet. At least after deciding that the ground conditions were good enough, they knew to adapt and switch back to a static start. Otherwise, Shulong might have really been cursing in the TR.

Finally, at the twelfth minute of the originally scheduled start time, the safety car's roof light went out and it returned to the pit area. Shu Long and his team also returned to their original starting grid.

Accompanied by a loud "ding, ding, ding" electronic sound effect, five red lights lit up one by one.

Shu Long gripped the clutch below the steering wheel, and began to lightly press the accelerator, keeping the engine speed around 9,000 RPM while simultaneously shifting into second gear.

"Okay, all five red lights are off! The competition begins!"

"We see... Oh, Verstappen? What happened over there with Verstappen?!"

"Huh?! Shulong! Are you going to compete with Bottas in the paint? No way, there's still too much weakness in our paint!"

"Wow, these young people are really pushing their limits! They actually managed to save them!"

The inner line's slack created a layer of white mist, and the extremely understeer race car almost couldn't squeeze into the corner.

However, at a crucial moment, he managed to straighten the car's rear end by braking and shifting his weight again, along with a slight adjustment to the throttle, and barely kept up with Bottas's subsequent pace.

After failing to climb to the top position before Turn 1, Shu Long adjusted his breathing and calmed his heart rate, which had peaked at 180 beats per minute at the start.

I got a little too hasty. The risk of that action was completely unnecessary.

The worst thing you can do in a rain race is lose your composure. He already had a pretty good idea of ​​the speed he was going at in the rain, and he still had plenty of chances before the track dried out completely.

Starting on wet ground did have some impact on his reaction speed advantage. Before the air pressure was applied to the car, the torque that could be directed to the rear wheels was very small, so he couldn't gain much of a positional advantage from the starting speed.

Given that the starting grid at the Hockenheim circuit is already quite close to Turn 1, the failure of this attempt was understandable.

While it's said that the ascent failed, it's actually just that the P5 Dragon's attack on the P3 Bottas failed. In reality, the Dragon is currently in P3.

Verstappen, for some unknown reason, has made a major mistake at the start of the last two races, dropping himself from P2 to P4 and causing Gasly behind him to fall to P10.

If it weren't for Verstappen clearing such a large opening in the paint, Shu Long probably wouldn't have made such a risky attempt.

One time on dry ground and the other on rainy ground, the mistakes were exactly the same. If it wasn't caused by the driver's own mistake, then Red Bull should consider whether there was a problem with the car's clutch.

If it was the driver's own mistake
Shu Long wanted to see what kind of expressions Horner and Marco had on their faces.

(End of this chapter)