F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 190 Who's Next?
"Well done, next up is Aokang, gap 1.6 seconds."

"Copy! I recognize him. I'll take him down within two laps!"

"Yeah, we believe you."

Alonso performed exceptionally well in qualifying yesterday and was originally scheduled to start in P6 today.

As a result, he was hit by Gasly at the start, and after his spinning top went out of control, he has now dropped to P15. It's obvious who Alpine is.

After ending the brief team call, Shu Long raised his hand and tore off the first layer of protective film on his goggles, which was already covered with water stains, tire rubber particles, and exhaust oil stains, and threw it away from next to the HALO frame.

After slightly shifting his lane from the car in front and confirming the road conditions and braking points ahead, Shu Long quickly returned to behind Ao Kang. His late braking in the dirty air reduced the time difference between the two by 0.17 seconds.

Knowing your opponent in advance isn't entirely useless. F1 racing is not only a competition between teams, cars, and drivers, but also a competition of information. Based on the opponent's skills and personality, you can indeed come up with completely different offensive strategies.

And O'Con.
Shu Long didn't have many opportunities to directly engage in combat with Aokang during the match, but he actually knew quite a bit about the man.

When he was still in Red Bull's youth academy, Gasly mentioned his childhood friend Shu Long's "glorious deeds." In Shu Long's first F1 Grand Prix, he was directly involved in the battle for the championship thanks to a gift from Ocon.

Not to mention that his agent, Alonso, is now Ocon's teammate, and when chatting with Alonso in private, he often heard him praise this "workaholic".

Off the field, Aokang is a humorous young man who loves to laugh and has a good personality.

But on the track, there's a kind of "barefoot but not afraid of wearing shoes" kind of "fighting," which is probably the most intuitive characteristic that Shulong can summarize for Aokang.

Therefore, to overtake Aokang, one must be clever.

Just as Shulong had promised the team at the beginning, he closed in on Ocon very quickly, especially at the famous Turn 8 of Istanbul Park, where he reduced the gap between the two cars to 0.73 seconds.

It's called Turn 8, but it's actually a series of four high-speed left turns that have been combined into a giant U-turn that lasts for an extremely long time.

When the track is dry, this is a huge test of a driver's courage to lock onto the throttle and their neck strength.

However, in a rainy race, the speed is naturally not as exciting as when sprinting at full speed on dry tires, but the details of controlling tire grip and car traction become paramount.

As an opponent in the paddock, Shu Long does not underestimate any opponent just because their car is less competitive or has a worse track record than his own. He has even seriously studied the cars of Haas's two top performers this year, Mick and Ma Zeping, and Aokang is no exception.

Aokang's offensive and defensive style is that of a ruthless and aggressive player, but his driving style is actually more gentle and steady.

This not only gave him excellent consistency in the race, but also indicated that the opponent had a fairly good ability to compete in the rain and maintain a good tire condition, and usually the speed performance would not be too weak.

But for Shulong, being too gentle means you're not pushing your limits, and if you're not pushing your limits, you're not fast enough!
The impact of polluted air in continuous high-speed corners is quite serious, so Shulong specially chose a different racing line that intersects with Aokang twice.

It's not the optimal solution for a dry track, but the track surface is currently wet, and there's less tire rubber and mud on the unconventional racing lines, which gives the Shulong a better grip.

Of course, the risk is that you need to deal with the possibility of sudden hydroplaning at any time.

Shu Long had tested the grip of the unconventional racing line during the warm-up, but with only one lap, even with his photographic memory, he couldn't gather much track information.

Luckily, I was lucky today and made the right bet!

After exiting Turn 8, there is a long downhill straight. Shulong, who quickly closed the following distance, absorbed the wake of Aokang and reduced the distance to 0.43 seconds.

If DRS were available, Ocon might not even have been able to hold onto his position on the longest full-throttle stretch of the course after Turn 10.

Unfortunately, it's still raining.

Since Shulong didn't have DRS and the track layout didn't offer many opportunities, he wasn't in a hurry to complete this particularly grueling task for O'Connor in the lap he had just finished.

After smoothly navigating the final series of low-speed corners (12, 13, and 14) of the race, Shulong, back on the starting straight, used the wake to once again close the gap between the two cars.

However, continuing to force their way through the wake was too dangerous for both of them. Just as they passed the halfway mark, the dragon made a pulling motion outwards.

It seemed that because the water mist kicked up by the race car was too dense, O'Connor acted as if he didn't see anyone and didn't take any special action.

However, Shu Long's departure clearly caught Aokang's attention. When he sensed that the other party seemed to be getting restless, Shu Long immediately moved inside, as if he was preparing to fight for the inside and slow down.

as predicted!

If you don't notice, that's fine. But once O'Connor discovers the car behind you intending to overtake, regardless of whether the two are in the same racing group, given his personality, he definitely won't be able to resist wanting to "go head-to-head" with you.

However, Turn 1 of the Istanbul Park circuit is a high-speed downhill left turn, which is somewhat similar in characteristics to Turns 1 and 2 of the São Paulo circuit in Brazil.

Seeing that Aokang had been tricked into going to the inside, Shulong simply stopped being polite.

He decisively returned to the outside line and applied a light touch of the brakes, smoothly transferring the car's weight to the front wheels. Then, using the inside angle of the outside line, he plunged into the No. 1 high-speed corner at extremely high speed.

This scene somewhat defied a driver's common sense. The fact that they were side-by-side in the corner made Ocon seem flustered and scramble to his feet. With the space occupied by the dragon, he was unable to get enough buffer line to exit the corner. The Alpine car, squeezed into the inside space, visibly lost a lot of traction.

Since his opponent had surrendered on his own, Shu Long remained calm and unhurried.

Instead of rushing to take advantage of the shorter inside line of Turn 2 to overtake, he leisurely turned back to the outside line of Turn 2, which Aokang had given up, and found a very comfortable full-throttle acceleration angle for himself.

"who is the next?"

"Vettel, a gap of 2.4 seconds. Also, although you might not particularly care, it was a very beautiful overtake!"

"Thanks! Who said it was meaningless? You've really boosted my emotional value right now, buddy!"

With a gap of 2.4 seconds, it looks like we'll have to chase for a while. Instead of making any boastful remarks, Shu Long asked about Hamilton's location.

The answer is P8. Shortly before Shu Long overtook Ocon, Hamilton used the slipstream to overtake Perez, who was driving a Toro Rosso, on the starting straight.

[That's good! A competition needs a bit of challenge to keep it from getting boring, right?]

Shu Long was now fully in the zone. As if sensing the chill of the rain outside the car, he shivered slightly in the cockpit, every muscle fiber in his body trembling slightly under the stimulation of adrenaline.

However, at this stage of the race, even in rainy conditions, which is Shulong's forte, it is not so easy to overtake.

The fact that Shulong was able to overtake so many cars right at the start of the race was not only due to its superior starting response and control over the limits of grip, but also because the competitiveness of the cars behind it was generally not that great.

Of course, a very small number of drivers are indeed really bad.

Two Haas, two Williams.

There's also Alfa Romeo, who couldn't even fix the simplest water system for a race car, and was so anxious that even Kimi, who was about to retire, was willing to use up his next week's speaking time just to vent his frustrations in TR.

However, as the car formation gradually lengthened and everyone got through the most chaotic initial phase, even Shulong could no longer cut through the enemy like he did at the beginning.

After all, [Friction Control] can only keep him extremely sensitive to the car's grip, but it cannot change the physical laws of this world. The risks of aggressive driving also exist for him.

No matter how capable a person is or how fast a car is, when it's time to drive it properly, he can only maintain a steady pace.

On lap 9, Shu Long finally closed to within one second of Vettel.

After all, he is a four-time world champion. Although Uncle Tilted Head's performance has been in a slump in recent years, a world champion cannot have any obvious weaknesses.

Even though the title of "King of Spinning Tops" has been almost stamped on Vettel by fans, it doesn't stop the young, slightly tilted-headed uncle from contributing many classic victories in rainy battles.

This time, overtaking Shu Long really took a lot of effort. It seems that Aston Martin reminded Vettel to pay attention to Shu Long's actions at Turn 1. The first attempt to repeat the same trick was immediately seen through by the experienced four-time champion.

However, after patiently laying the groundwork for another lap, Shulong managed to pull ahead and overtake his opponent by taking advantage of the curve of what could be defined as a fake bend in the second DRS section. "Who's next?"

"It's Checo, gap 1.9, Hamilton is currently up to P6, gap 6.3."

"Tsk~ He's still got it!"

"Yep, his next opponent is Norris, and this time he shouldn't be able to break through so quickly."

"I hope so! Someone please tell Lando that if he can really stop Lewis, I won't bully him next time we play Fall Guys!"

This saved René from having to worry about it. The public TR message naturally reached McLaren, and Norris's race engineer gleefully relayed Shulong's meaning to his own driver.

"Damn! I almost made him cry last time, how can he say that! Where's Lewis?"

“1.4 seconds behind you, that’s a joke, Lando, focus on your game.”

"Of course I'm focused on my game, damn it!"

McLaren's owner, Zach Brown, was amused by the young men's online interaction and didn't try to stop his own factory team. Instead, he got involved with TR and started fanning the flames.

While illegal cheating during a match is unacceptable, Hamilton was also a direct competitor of McLaren in this game.

It's one thing if they can't outrun them on dry ground, but anything can happen in the rain, and McLaren isn't going to let the old man go so easily either.

However, Red Bull...
Shu Long took three laps to catch up with Perez, but it's unclear whether Toro Rosso secretly gave some team instructions, because Shu Long didn't even feel much resistance before Perez let him pass.

Ah, to be honest, this was indeed unexpected by Shu Long.

Because if he were in that position, no matter what the team said, he would at most tone down the intensity of the fight, but he would never give way to the car!

What's more, being forced to fight someone in the middle of the season would make anyone unhappy. Shu Long was even prepared to endure Perez's resentment and anger, but buddy, you really have no temper?

He didn't dwell on it too much, after all, Shu Long wasn't here to settle his score with Perez in this match; Hamilton was the target he needed to keep a close eye on all day.

"who is the next?"

"It's Aston Martin's Stroll, 2.6 seconds behind. Their lap times aren't fast, keep it up!"

How is Lewis?

"P6, it's tough, but Norris is still on defense."

[My good son! Daddy will get you a new set of candy wrappers later!]

Young Master Stroul's ability to fight in the rain is actually not bad; as long as he doesn't try to be the master of ideas, he can be considered both fast and steady.

However, he was too composed today. He calmly let the old man go and showed little resistance when Shulong caught up.

There's no need for Shulong to wait for the straight to absorb the wake; he overtook the car by merging with the two intersecting lanes at the very wide Chicane deceleration corners of numbers 9 and 10.

"Well done, buddy! You're a P7 now!"

"Who's next? Lando? Or Lewis?"

“It’s Norris. Hamilton is currently at P5, and Gasly is 7 seconds ahead of him.”

"This isn't good, is it?"

"Don't think about that now, let's take care of all the targets one by one."

Norris's defense wasn't entirely ineffective; at least the gap between Shulong and Hamilton was reduced to less than four seconds.

But the next 7 seconds of clean air could be enough for Hamilton to regain his time advantage, at which point Red Bull's strategy of penalizing and surrounding him for this race may be doomed.

I'm not kidding.

Bottas, who was leading in the clean air, was able to update the fastest lap time every now and then, but Hamilton broke the record on his very first lap, just as he entered the 7-second zone.

There's also some bad news, though I'm not sure if it can be considered good news.

Gasly's lap times dropped significantly, or rather, they didn't drop much, but his lap improvement was starting to fall behind the top-tier cars.

This resulted in him being pulled further and further away by Leclerc in P3, while being caught up by Hamilton behind him.

It seems like they can create some air pollution problems for the old man in advance, but such a lap time performance probably won't stop Mercedes for long. Shulong still needs to find a way to improve the pace.

Poor Norris, he just fought desperately to hold off Hamilton for a while, and before he could even catch his breath, he was about to face workplace bullying from Shulong who was completely unrecognizable.

Finally, lap 26.

With Norris letting out a bitter "Bullshit!" in the TR, Shulong completed a pull-over after Turn 11.

Overtaking didn't take much effort, but catching up took up a lot of time. This was mainly because the semi-wet tires had drained a lot of water from the racing line, and everyone's lap times were rapidly improving, making it increasingly difficult to improve one's position.

Hamilton's pursuit of Gasly is not progressing as quickly as expected. Red Bull and Mercedes are comparing the lap times and tire wear of the two players, and both seem to be considering a long run.

Rain racing is a little different from dry racing. The F1 rule that requires the use of two different compound tires in each race does not apply to rain tires. If you have the ability to protect your tires, you can choose to use the same set of tires all the way through the race.

Stopping at stations always adds unnecessary variables, so wouldn't not stopping at stations effectively control the risks?
Alpine has already notified Ocon in the TR to do everything possible to protect the tires. They are currently on the edge of the points zone, but their car is not competitive enough. It seems that the only way to squeeze in is to try some unconventional methods.

However, for Red Bull and Mercedes, the 0-pit strategy is only an alternative. The teams have only told the drivers to use the tires carefully. The specific strategy to be implemented will have to wait for the strategy team to analyze the current situation on the track.

There is now only one variable: McLaren's Ricciardo will pit on lap 21.

If the new semi-weather tires don't offer a significant lap time advantage over the old semi-weather tires, then it's worthwhile to risk running the entire race with one set of tires.

Currently, the two McLaren players are Ricciardo with a lap time of 1:34.7 and Norris with a lap time of 1:34.9.

With a mere 0.2-second advantage per lap and 32 laps remaining in the race, and a pit stop at Istanbul Park taking around 22 seconds, this advantage of getting new tires is clearly not enough to make up for the losses incurred during the pit stop.

So all the teams are currently stalling; nobody wants to gamble at this time.

On lap 29, Hamilton finally overtook Gasly, but his lead over Shulong was still around 4 seconds. The team still couldn't decide whether to execute a no-stop strategy.

Red Bull didn't give Shu Long a chance to ask "Who's next?" because Little Red Bull directly called Gasly into the station.

Gasly is already slower than the two Mars rovers, so it's only a matter of time before it gets overtaken. Instead of continuing to waste time outside, it would be better to give Shulong some clean air so it can push a little further.

On lap 31, Gasly's lap time on his new semi-wet tires was 1:35.133.
It's a very strange number; it's even slower than the old tire.

This actually means that the track is gradually drying out, and the surface temperature of the track is showing signs of slowly rising.

There was still some water, as the light rain had been falling continuously, but the track was at a very awkward point, unsuitable for both dry and wet tires.

The drainage grooves on semi-wet tires are no longer very useful, and their smaller contact area with the ground compared to slick tires actually reduces their maximum grip.

At roughly the same operating temperature, the semi-weather tires on Shulong's vehicle, whose treads are now almost completely worn down, are precisely the tires with the best grip performance at present.

Red Bull finally found their way to overturn the table at this moment—to hell with preserving the pregnancy, let Shulong focus all its efforts on catching Hamilton!
(End of this chapter)