F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 138 I'd rather make a mistake than do nothing!

The reason for this was that Red Bull was willing to risk extra tire damage in order to launch a surprise attack while Shulong was struggling to enter the station.

But after getting rid of Shulong, if Verstappen doesn't want to add an extra pit stop time to his schedule, he can only slowly maintain his tire on the current road surface, which is six parts dry and four parts wet.

This is the most annoying type of rain battle.

You either have to let it rain the whole time and not let the track dry out, then you won't have to choose tires that are so awkward and uncomfortable right now.

Alternatively, we could make the track even drier, allowing everyone to race on dry tires on slightly damp tracks, which would then create a situation where drivers compete purely on skill.

On the surface, the game seems to be stuck in its current state. Shu Long is unable to catch up with Mercedes ahead, and Verstappen behind him is also unlikely to pose a threat to his position for the time being.

If this competition can continue like this, then it seems pretty good that Shulong can at least get a third place on the podium.

But at the same time, Shu Long also learned from TR that Leclerc took advantage of the virtual safety car during the yellow flag test to pit and change into a brand new set of semi-weather tires.

When Hamelin relayed this message, his tone carried a hint of relief and self-satisfaction, sounding as if to say, "See? Even Ferrari thinks now isn't the best time to dry the tires!"

Although Shu Long kept his microphone off for most of the time while he was cursing, the P-room could see the in-car footage of the two Toro Rosso race cars from many different angles. You could tell just from his body language how furious he was.

This basically means that the team's strategy is working fine for now, so you can relax and focus on driving your car.

Shu Long said he was too lazy to comment further at the moment.

Whether the judgment is correct or not may not be a big problem, but it is definitely problematic if a decision is dragged out for so long!
The drivers are giving it their all on the track just to gain a few seconds, or even just a fraction of a second, advantage. Is it appropriate for your strategy team to be so leisurely, sipping tea and coffee?

Moreover, after the particularly outrageous self-destructing truck strategy in Austria, Alonso repeatedly reminded Shulong that as a driver, he should sometimes have more of his own opinions on the track and not just blindly listen to the team.

As a former Ferrari driver, Ao Ge is definitely a veteran who has been persecuted by the team's strategies, especially at such a sensitive time when Red Bull is in turmoil. Listening to his "old man's advice" is definitely the right thing to do!

There is another matter that must currently raise concerns for Shulong and the Little Red Bull racing team.

Because Hulkenberg, who had been closely following behind, also pitted at the same time, Leclerc's tire change did not result in a loss of position. On the contrary, he is now rapidly closing in on them at a speed of nearly three seconds per lap.

Besides Leclerc, Hulkenberg, who is right behind him, is actually on par with Ferrari in terms of lap time.

Although one pit stop dropped Leclerc to nearly twenty seconds in the lead, if he continues to chase at his current pace, he will outpace Bottas on the track in just a few laps.

Fortunately, a brief yellow flag appeared on the track around lap nineteen. This yellow flag directly disrupted Leclerc's momentum and made Shu Long nervous, while the team was even more anxious.

Shulong is a bit overly sensitive these days; as soon as it sees a yellow flag, it wants to pull into the station to change to a dry tire.

Don't blame him for being stubborn. Given the current state of the track, which has already been approved by the race organizers to use DRS, he is fully confident that he can make up for the pit stop time as quickly as Leclerc, as long as he pays a little attention to the water accumulation in a few places.

Unfortunately, the yellow flag was very short-lived, giving Shulong no chance to interrogate the strategy team, and the game quickly returned to the normal rhythm of the green flag.

Sainz made a mistake at the last corner before the starting straight. He hit the curb too hard as he exited the corner, and the water on the outside of the track caused him to understeer very severely. His subsequent failed recovery maneuvers caused the McLaren under him to start spinning.

This series of maneuvers almost turned him into the third director of the race. Fortunately, Sainz's mistake was incredibly lucky. The out-of-control car mysteriously stopped right next to the track wall, and the other side only barely grazed the gravel run-off area.

There was no collision and no risk of getting stuck. It soon reversed itself back onto the track and started the race again.

Fortunately, no safety vehicle was deployed under the yellow flag.

Despite the interruption to Leclerc's pursuit, if we're talking about who on the track most wanted a safety car, it would undoubtedly be Ferrari's Leclerc crew.

If the safety car had actually been deployed, then all the cars that didn't pit due to the yellow flag caused by Ricciardo would now have to consider pitting. Leclerc, who just pitted, wouldn't need to pit and could easily take the lead in this race without lifting a finger.

Little Red Bull was relieved that its strategy hadn't been "frustrated," and naturally stuck to its original view, but that didn't mean Shu Long had given up on the plan.

It is said that there has been only light precipitation of level one to two within the track area, but in reality, such a small amount of rain is not enough to affect the water accumulation on the road surface.

Even though the weather forecast indicated that the rain might increase in the near future, Shu Long felt that it would be better to go to the pit and get a dry tire before the rain intensified, rather than stubbornly sticking to a set of half-old, struggling rain tires.

Then, on lap 21, the first brave soul to put this idea into practice appeared.

It's Magnussen again!

After initially betting that the rain would intensify quickly and suffering a crushing defeat by sticking to full wet tires on the track for half a day, he once again went all in this time, betting that the rain would not change for the time being, and pitted to get a set of red tires.

This time, Hamelin did not provide timely feedback to Shulong in the TR. Besides the fact that Magnussen himself posed no threat to their position, he also did not want Shulong to be misled by the strategy of a last-place team.

Magnussen was already at the back of the pack, so even if this strategy went wrong, there wasn't much left to lose. But Toro Rosso was currently in P3, and the cost of recklessly giving up that position could be extremely difficult for the team to accept.

But it was no use. Shu Long no longer wanted to place all his strategic hopes on the team. The race pace of maintaining the tire and cruising gave him plenty of free time to keep an eye on the rankings of the drivers who were passing by on the roadside.

"Magnussen went into the pits, right? What kind of tire did he get replaced with?"

"Uh—half a rain."

"Stop! Dude, I hope you're telling the truth. I can see the broadcast screens on the roadside facing the audience!"

"Okay, okay, he changed to a red tire and went out."

"Then could you please keep an eye on his lap times with these red tires? Is that alright?"

What more can be said about such simple conditions?

At least Shulong didn't rush to change his tires just because others did. At least he compared the data before making a decision. Hamelin could only agree, though he still had some doubts in his heart.

Although the sluggish strategic decision-making just now was not caused by a mere race engineer, in terms of the overall strategic direction, Hamelin still leaned more towards the team's side this time.

Rainy conditions mean there will be many unexpected situations on the track.

Just as Hamelin told Shu Long before the race, the key to the rain race is to stay on the track; anything can happen as long as you stay on the track.

Shu Long may simply want to take advantage of the rain race to try his luck, but in Hamelin's view, the P3 position means that this young driver doesn't need to gamble at all. In addition to being aggressive, stability is also an essential quality for an excellent driver.

Shulong's resume is already impressive enough; the key now is not to reveal any flaws that could allow the other side to make moves. "No matter what you think, I still don't think dry tires are the best option right now, buddy. If you could see the rainfall and water accumulation at the entrance of the pit shed, you might not think so."

"I trust my gut feeling more, my friend. I'm the one still on the track driving right now! And I've noticed that Leclerc is closing the gap with us much slower now, hasn't he?"

"That's what I was thinking too. Leclerc almost drifted out of control at Turn 17 just now, even on wet tires. I don't think he would have performed any better on dry tires!"

Shu Long did not reply; arguing was pointless, only data was more convincing.

Exit laps don't count; Magnussen's dry tire setup proved to be far more effective than most teams anticipated.

The first timeout was slightly slower due to the water accumulation in the last two corners, but it was still roughly the same as the lap time on the semi-wet tires. The same was true for the third timeout, but here it was only less than 0.5 seconds slower than Leclerc's fastest semi-wet tire.

This is a comparison with the current fastest lap time. In fact, Magnussen's third timeout lap time is faster than his own lap time on half-wet tires.

Of course, the most crucial point is that in the second timeout, when the track was almost completely dry, Magnussen's lap time was already 0.9 seconds faster than Leclerc's single timeout, which is currently the fastest lap of the entire race!

Before the team could respond, the roadside broadcast screen displayed the data for that segment, and upon seeing it, Shu Long immediately turned on the team's TR without hesitation.

"How many minutes did the weather forecast say the rain would intensify?"

"The current data update schedule shows it's been about eight to ten minutes. Weather conditions are unpredictable, but I still don't recommend you do it now."

"I'm about to enter the station, you'd better get ready quickly!"

"I really won't consider it anymore."

"Yes, definitely, absolutely! Hurry up! Red tires!"

The weather is indeed unpredictable; otherwise, based on the previous calculations, the rain on the track should have intensified by now. The fact is, the ground is almost completely dry, and there hasn't been any rain at all.

But Shu Long didn't care about anything else at the moment. He acted first and informed the team later. After notifying the team, he didn't care whether they were ready or not. He turned into the maintenance area without hesitation after the lap was over.

To be honest, after the Red Bull Ring race in Austria, Shu Long is now a bit PTSD about the team's strategy.

In particular, in this race, he and Verstappen seemed to have formed a direct competition for the podium position again. Whenever there was any opinion within the team that did not agree with him, he felt that someone was trying to sabotage him again.

However, Hamelin was not wrong about some things.

After Shulong drove into the maintenance area, he found that the road surface here was indeed much wetter than the track outside, and when the car slowed down, he could clearly feel the raindrops, which were not small.

This time the arrival at the station was indeed a bit rushed. The tire-changing engineers from Red Bull had just jogged to get ready and hadn't even had a chance to catch their breath before the train arrived.

A tire change in 3.7 seconds
Without even looking at the timer, Shu Long, sitting in the car, could clearly feel that the person on the right rear had poked him three times with an air hammer while removing the tire.

"Come come come"

I gripped the clutch and shifted into second gear. The red indicator light had just gone out, and the green light hadn't even fully come on yet, when I released the clutch halfway through its travel.

The dry tires screeched as they whizzed across the wet road, and Shu Long, eager to make up for the lost time changing tires, immediately launched into the air.

With a Z-shaped twist reminiscent of inertial drifting, the car, under the trembling gaze of the Red Bull mechanics, slid and drifted, throwing itself onto the repair area lane.

"Where am I now, and how many places have I dropped?"

"Two, only Leclerc and Verstappen have passed. Verstappen is 22 seconds away from you, and Hulkenberg is behind you, eight seconds away."

"Not bad, at least it's a stretch of clean air, huh?"

"There's good news. Vettel also pitted and changed to a red tire right after you. Hopefully, you made the right choice."

"I hope so too! But let me give you a line from a game, buddy—'I'd rather make a mistake than do nothing!' Hope you like it!"

As expected of a young person
Hamelin was both amused and exasperated. He didn't know which game the line was from, but that didn't stop him from finding it quite reasonable at that moment.

"Keep pushing forward, but be careful, and whatever you do, stay on the track!"

"Copy!"

Finally, I no longer need to be careful about the fragile operating temperature of the semi-rain tires. After switching to a set of old red tires, I can really run like the wind. On my second lap, I improved my lap time to 1:29.

It doesn't sound very fast. Yesterday's qualifying lap times were mostly in the range of 1:12. Since we've started dry tire racing, there should be more than that.

But what if we compare it to those cars with semi-wet tires?

This lap time was on average almost 3 seconds faster than the previous cars with semi-wet tires.

As for why it was the old red, it was because the competitiveness of the Little Red Bull at this station forced Shulong to give it his all in the qualifying rounds, and he used up six sets of the new red in the three qualifying rounds.

We do have new yellow tires, but the track surface isn't completely dry yet, so switching to yellow tires might cause a big problem with tire warming up.

Moreover, considering the possibility that the rain might intensify later, even though it was an old set of tires, it wouldn't stop Shulong from squeezing out the remaining performance within the limited number of laps.

On lap 24, having fully grasped the grip conditions of dry tires on the current track, Shu Long once again updated the fastest lap time of the entire race to 1:28 seconds.

At this pace, it's very likely that Shulong will be able to catch up with Verstappen after four laps, and by the eighth lap at most, he'll have a chance to challenge Hamilton!
Don't think it's really easy. This kind of semi-dry track is a huge challenge for both wet and dry tires.

Shulong's lap times put a lot of pressure on the cars ahead. By lap 26, both Verstappen and Mercedes were considering pitting and switching to dry tires.

Even though the weather forecast showed that the rain was actually increasing, and even though Raikkonen was already feeling the rain again on the feedback track.

However, under Shu Long's relentless pressure, Mercedes and Red Bull ultimately decided to pit for dry tires.

Unlike the red tires used in Shulong, they went even further and switched to yellow tires, seemingly betting that the rain wouldn't have much of an impact and preparing to run on dry tires all the way.

(End of this chapter)