F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 184 The Umbrella Holder

When was the last time Ricardo won a championship? Perhaps no one is more qualified to answer that question than Red Bull.

In 2018, Ricardo's last title with Monaco was three years prior.

Even the race engineer who worked with Ricciardo to overcome mechanical failures and defend the championship is now sitting in front of the Pit Wall outside the Red Bull pits, continuing to serve as Shulong's current race engineer.

"Come on, Renee, don't be so shy. I bet you're eager to talk to your old friend right now?"

Shu Long, who had chased after P2 from behind, didn't rush to celebrate. Instead, he started joking with his new colleagues whom he had already become familiar with.

The other bad guys in the voice channel also started chuckling. Horner saw that Reni's face was almost turning pink, so he volunteered to start.

Although Ricciardo chose to leave Red Bull, he did not actually fall out with his partners who had worked with the team for so many years. Moreover, given his personality, it is hard for people to dislike him. After all these years, he still maintains a good friendship with everyone.

But this is too strange. Your own driver finally made up for the team's mistake and returned to the podium, but all the people congratulating the driver of another team are doing this.

“Okay, okay! ‘Daniel! I knew you could do it, we all believe you’ll show everyone what kind of driver you are sooner or later!’ Is that alright?”

"Hmm—it felt a little perfunctory, but the most important thing is to show genuine feelings, so I'll just barely pass you."

"Just keep laughing there. Here's a friendly reminder: be prepared."

"What are you ready for?"

"Ha~"

One thing must be admitted: René's cold laugh made Shu Long feel a little uneasy.
However, the next part of the TR segment was Horner thanking Shu Long for his contributions to the race. There wasn't time to think about it in detail, so Shu Long could only park the car in front of the P2 exclusive signboard.

Since they didn't win the championship, they decided not to try anything fancy this time. Shu Long simply jumped out of the car and waved to the camera.

After Ricciardo had hugged each member of his team, he went up to hug his Red Bull senior.

"Congratulations! We've always known what kind of driver you are, and thank you for your guidance over the years."

"No, no! I should thank you for going easy on me. I saw your overtaking maneuvers just now, they were fantastic!"

"Ah—there's also the issue of luck, isn't there?"

At this point, it would be a bit much to be modest. Ricardo, who had taken off his helmet, stared at Shulong as if he were an idiot. It wasn't like they hadn't met in the paddock for the first time. Who could he fool by pretending like this?
"You just wait, you brat!"

【What are you waiting for? 】

Hey, can you guys please speak more clearly?!

Unfortunately, Shulong's doubts remained unanswered, and Ricciardo quickly immersed himself in the revelry with the team.

Ok
For Shu Long now, standing on the podium may be a common occurrence, but Ricardo has really been away from this stage for a very long time.

However, just as Shu Long put down his helmet and took a couple of sips of water, he seemed to catch a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Ricardo pulling down his crotch in public.

etc.
Some less pleasant memories came to mind. This Australian always seemed a bit careless, and he usually seemed to have some kind of habit after winning a championship.

The awards ceremony proceeded very quickly, faster than any Shulong had ever experienced before. When the cheerful "Carmen Overture" began to play, it meant that the much-anticipated champagne-spraying segment was about to begin.

Shu Long glanced nervously at Ricciardo's shoes, then smashed a bottle of champagne and immediately launched a fierce attack on the three McLaren team members beside him. As soon as he saw anyone stop to touch their face, he quickly poured a bunch of foam on them to attract their attention.

Come on! Shoot me! Don't leave a single drop!

One person's firepower can't compare to three. The only Red Bull on the stage was quickly drenched by three evil papaya oranges and fled in panic. Then, Shu Long despairingly discovered that Ricardo had quietly left the attack and walked to the edge of the podium to sit down.

Do not--!
It was too late, and stopping early wasn't a sign of a change of heart. Ricardo took off one of his shoes and started chugging champagne into it.

"Here she comes, long-awaited Shoey!"

"Hahaha! Someone's already wearing a mask of pain: Don't come any closer!"

No one sympathized with the poor child; everyone was now completely absorbed in watching the spectacle with schadenfreude, staring at the shoe that Ricardo had refilled after drinking it all and handed to Shulong's mouth.

Thank goodness, at least it's been cooked once.
With a face full of resistance, Shu Long closed his eyes, steeled his resolve, tilted his head back, and began to pour the contents into his tightly closed mouth.

He looked like he had drunk it, but he had actually poured it all down his collar. However, before taking his shoes off, he deliberately puffed out his cheeks to pretend that his gas tank was full.

No one exposed his obvious little scheme.

Norris, that honest kid, took it and gulped down a huge mouthful. Although he couldn't hold it in and spat it out, you really dare to eat it!
The McLaren owner went even further. Zach Brown seemed to be enjoying it, opening his mouth wide and letting Norris pour the contents into it.

You guys are awesome!
As Alonso was right, stay away from McLaren or you'll be unlucky!
After the competition, Horner delivered Shulong's 991 to Milton Keynes, England, as promised, and even granted him a holiday to go home.

This was something that had been discussed beforehand, and it concerns Shulong's personal and team sponsorship issues for the next season. It's a win-win situation for both sides.

However, Horner hopes that Shulong will not stay there for too long. The next race, the Russian Grand Prix, is in two weeks, and the team is preparing to introduce a new round of large-scale car upgrades in advance. If possible, it would be best to return to the factory a few days in advance to run the data using the simulator.

This is not only to further improve the competitiveness of this year's race cars, but also to conduct some testing work for next year's new regulations.

The main change is a major overhaul of the entire rear suspension system, and the team will also install some upgrade kits that were not installed on the second car for comparison purposes.

Um.
In the few races since their return, there have indeed been some differences in the configurations of the cars driven by Shulong and Verstappen. The main differences are in the flaps on the front wing and the stripes on the floorboards.

The few upgrade kits that are relatively uniform are mainly the serrated design on the rear wing, side cases, and diffuser edges.

However, Verstappen seems to have confirmed most of the positive results of the upgrades. Since it is time to prepare for the next season, it would be better to unify the configurations of the two cars.

Although it's said that the rear suspension upgrade was mainly based on simulator data run by Verstappen, the team seems worried that the new upgrade might affect the race for the drivers' championship. They even plan to test the new kit on Shulong at the next race.

This is probably one of the immediate benefits of Red Bull officially promoting Shu Long.

Previously, due to the significant gap in ability between Perez and Verstappen, many of the team's upgrade parts not only failed to improve him but also seemed to have a negative effect on him during races.

So Red Bull's upgrade strategy for the first half of the season was like a pure gamble; they'd install any radical upgrades they could find on Verstappen, while Perez was mainly responsible for comparative testing of the older components. Now things are different.
These are all stories for later; after someone returned home, they were already on the verge of collapse.

The family's agency has actually completed a lot of negotiations and has secured five sponsorship projects, the largest of which comes from DJI, even more than what Douyin gave in 19.

In addition to its personal sponsorship of Shulong, DJI seems to be looking to reach a multi-faceted cooperation project with Red Bull.

This is currently Red Bull's most valued sponsorship project. Drone shooting technology is actually highly compatible with Red Bull's promotional methods, whether it's shooting F1 racing footage or other extreme and dangerous projects sponsored by Red Bull.

On the contrary, Douyin, whose cooperation with them had been relatively pleasant before, encountered resistance from both sides.

Because TikTok overseas is still in the stage of buying traffic to expand its market, it is not easy to calculate how much effect Douyin's sponsorship of Shulong in 19 has actually achieved.

With everyone staying home due to the pandemic, Douyin's user market has seen significant growth, making this the perfect time to further strengthen its cooperation with Red Bull.

To get into Red Bull, you need to invest double or even more money than when you were with Little Red Bull. This isn't really a problem for Douyin's current size, but since so much money has been invested, Douyin naturally wants to make more demands on the projects it collaborates with.

One of the demands was to obtain exclusive publicity and distribution rights.

This presents a slight challenge. Red Bull already has overseas video partnerships, and its overseas operations do not need to rely on Douyin's still-developing reach. The commercial contracts between the two platforms are actually in conflict.

Conversely, for its domestic promotion in China, Red Bull hopes to conduct its campaign on a platform whose user age is more aligned with the demographics of Chinese car enthusiasts.

With the success of Red Bull's New Year's Eve galas in 19 and 20, its influence in the domestic market seems to be even greater. Red Bull seems to prefer to promote itself on this video platform, which is similar to YouTube, and importantly, it won't impose any mandatory bundling clauses.

Of course, there was another small influencing factor: even though Shu Long did a few promotional programs on Douyin to promote his entry, his overall attitude towards operation was a bit negative, and he was not as diligent in posting videos as Gasley.

Gasly really loves playing with TikTok's short video shooting function, but Shulong is a complete lazy person. He usually gets a headache just thinking about coming up with video content, but he is unwilling to just make something worthless to get by.

But Douyin doesn't really care about that. As long as Shu Long shows his face and says a few nonsense words, car fans will be very happy. The publicity is absolutely top-notch.

This actually doesn't quite align with Shulong's consistent values: either don't do it at all, or if you do it, do it well.

No substantial progress was made as they were about to leave, but before returning to Milton Keynes, Shu Long suddenly suggested that Douyin talk to Zhou Guanyu and Alfa Romeo.

The representative from Douyin looked surprised and eagerly asked Shulong if he had any definite news from inside the hunting grounds.

However, Shu Long simply raised his index finger to his lips, indicating that it was unspeakable.

Zhou Guanyu is indeed one of the drivers with the highest probability of signing with Arro, but Vassell did not actually reveal enough certain information to Shu Long that day.

Shu Long doesn't lack anything for the time being. Having proven his abilities, he has a place everywhere in the paddock. Sponsorship is just icing on the cake.

Having been caught in the rain on his way here, he didn't mind holding an umbrella for those who came later.

After the last stop, Zhou Guanyu's points returned to the top of the standings, but he only led Piastri by 2 points, and the situation for the championship is still unclear.

Since Vasser values ​​the Chinese market behind them to some extent, before everything is finalized, Shu Long also wants to see if he can give Aro a taste of the benefits first.

At least assuming similar skill levels, drivers with substantial sponsorship support will undoubtedly have a higher priority.

I was so busy for two weeks that I barely had time to breathe. I spent almost half of my time on airplanes. Apart from picking up Shulong at the airport that day, I didn't have much time to enjoy some alone time with my girlfriend. Soon, the car team urged me to board the plane to Milton Keynes.

The child was so jet-lagged that he was almost insane. After landing and taking a nap, he was forced to sit in the simulator's cockpit.

Red Bull used two development quotas at the tail of RB16b in this round.

One change was the redesign of the gearbox assembly shape, and the other was a redesign of the rear suspension layout, lowering the connection point between the rear suspension and the rear of the race car, with the main purpose of further improving the aerodynamic effect of the rear of the race car.

Furthermore, the gearbox bracket, rear suspension anti-collision structure, and rear wheel braking system are more integrated, which are also the ultimate modifications made by Newey, the aerodynamic genius, with the full cooperation of Rob Marshall, for the sake of aerodynamic effect.

Based on my experience driving the car on the simulator, the overall driving feel is quite different from before, but it shows a higher lap time ceiling and better driving stability.
Okay, this is still pending. Anyway, before Shulong officially took over, Alben, who was in charge of a lot of simulator work this season, seriously reminded someone that this thing was not easy to handle.

Of course, the positive test results do not mean that Red Bull's title hopes are completely secure this year.

In Red Bull's three consecutive races, Shulong used a medium downforce wing kit at Spa, a high downforce wing kit at the Netherlands, and a low downforce wing kit at Monza.

There are no problems with the last two components.

However, Red Bull's mid-range downforce rear wing kit this year seems to have a design flaw. The team is struggling to resolve the resonance issue of the wing kit's connection structure on DRS, which will greatly affect the car's DRS efficiency.

The reason why Shulong didn't notice it was because it rained almost the entire Spa tournament week, and DRS was banned most of the time.

As for the main race, it was never properly started, so naturally no problems could be found.

However, whether considering the track characteristics throughout the season or the compatibility with the design of this year's Red Bull race car, the medium downforce rear wing kit is the most suitable and commonly used accessory for Red Bull.

The subsequent Russian Grand Prix will also be more suited to a moderate downforce tail wing, at which point the Shulong will likely face a considerable challenge again.

Why is only the dragon-binding formation present?
That's because Verstappen and Hamilton's accident in the previous race was ruled by the race organizers to be primarily Verstappen's fault, resulting in a three-point penalty for the next race and a two-point deduction from his super license.

Of course, this punishment is negligible.

Because the Monza accident also damaged the gearbox and engine of Red Bull's No. 1 car, and Honda happened to release a new battery upgrade kit, Red Bull decided to replace the entire power unit, making it the fourth power unit for the season.

So what if I'm penalized three places? I'll just go to the back of the line and wait for you to punish me. You think you can punish me?
Just as Shu Long arrived in Sochi with the team, preparing for his own race while also giving Zhou Guanyu extra coaching, another young driver from the Red Bull academy arrived in the pit lane, specifically wanting to see Shu Long.

This year's F3 season concluded with the Sochi circuit as the venue for the final race, making the competition for the F3 annual championship exceptionally fierce.

The young driver who came to see Shulong is currently ranked second in the overall standings, so the result of the last race could very well directly determine who will be the final champion.

Although Marco felt that such a competitive level was a bit unacceptable for a second-grader, he still wanted to see if Shu Long could provide any help before the race, after all, Shu Long's father's status in the racing world was indeed extraordinary.

"Hello, hello! I'm Jack Doohan. I've been following your races for a long time. Back when you were still racing F3, I practically idolized you!"

(End of this chapter)