F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 193 Best Off-Field Mouth Duet

The idea of ​​using the engine to dictate the championship outcome is not unprecedented at Mercedes. For example, Hamilton experienced unusually frequent engine failures the year Rosberg won the championship.

The situation is slightly different now, but it cannot be ruled out that Mercedes may continue to try to change the late championship race by improving its engine.

So this is when team leader Horner comes into play. His strategy can be summarized as crying and making a scene, constantly conveying to the FIA ​​his suspicions that Mercedes cheated in the development process.

Obviously, the FIA ​​cannot simply believe one side of the story, but as long as Mercedes is annoyed by the frequent inspections, Horner has already achieved his goal.

Shulong still holds the top spot in the three training sessions, while Mercedes' two players have shrunk back to around P5 and P6. The technical team behind the scenes judged from the data that they had reduced a significant portion of their engine power.

There's still something fishy going on!

If you're not afraid of it breaking, why are you limiting the power? Why are you worried about the engine breaking if it's not illegal overclocking?

Clearly, from Red Bull's perspective, if it wasn't due to tampering with the engine, why would Mercedes' engine reliability suddenly become so polarized compared to before, even without major changes to the technical regulations?

In the past two years, people's impressions of these engine brands in the paddock were basically as follows: Honda: powerful but not durable; Ferrari: powerful but not durable; Mercedes: powerful and durable; Renault: GP2.

The last engine that was powerful but not durable was Ferrari, and they have basically confirmed that their engines were cheating. So what about Mercedes, whose engine reliability has suddenly plummeted?
It's not just Red Bull and Horner who are stirring up trouble over this issue; Binotto, while not as outspoken as Horner, has also publicly expressed his doubts about Mercedes' engine technology on several occasions.

Regardless of the facts, based on the data from practice sessions, Mercedes will have to choose between speed and reliability in this race.

However, given the layout of the Austin circuit, even if Mercedes opted for speed, it might be difficult for them to compete with the two Red Bulls.

Originally, it was thought that Red Bull would easily take first and second place in this race, but after entering the Q3 stage of the qualifying rounds, unexpected events occurred one after another.

Data analysis of tires showed that the fastest strategy in the race would likely be a two-stop strategy of yellow-white-white tires. In Q2, both Toro Rosso cars used yellow tires for lap times.

Shulong and Verstappen have nothing to worry about; they secured first and second place on the leaderboard after just one round of flying.

But they entered Q3
Shulong clocked a time of 1:33.121 on his first lap to take pole position, with Verstappen 0.2 seconds behind in P3.

Upon returning to the pit lane, they discovered that the tail wing had been cracked. Red Bull had no choice but to take emergency repair measures, grabbing some super glue to temporarily patch it up.

There's one thing I really have to complain about: Austin's COTA circuit looks very standard. The track is wide and incorporates the style of many other famous European circuits. There are many consecutive corners and high-speed corners. Just looking at the layout, there's no doubt that it will be a very fun track to drive.

But I'm just really annoyed!

Because this track is just so damn crazy!
The difficulty in conquering this track is not even finding the best racing line, because its very wide track gives drivers a lot of options for the line.

The real challenge lies in the uneven distribution of the four tires and the unpredictable changes in contact force during these irregular bumps.

However, it now seems that Red Bull may need to solve more than just this bumpy ride problem.
Since the tail fin of the dragon appears to be undamaged for the time being, Red Bull can only send out the second vehicle ahead of schedule to perform flight laps.

Everything was fine until the first timing segment's purple indicator improved the lap time by 0.113 seconds. In the second timing segment, four out of the six timing markers were purple.

As a result, just as Shulong reached the top of the long DRS straight after Turn 11, the already trembling winglets suddenly closed downwards.

Shulong, who was sprinting at full speed, felt this change very clearly. His speed suddenly dropped by 16 km/h, as if someone had punched him in the stomach.

"What the tail fin!"

"We are inspecting!"

"I can check my eyes and I'm 100% sure they're fucking broken!"

Shu Long helplessly vented his anger by repeatedly using the DRS lever behind the steering wheel, but the movable wing at the rear of the race car was completely unresponsive, as if it were dead.

As soon as he slammed on the brakes before entering turn 12, that bastard seemed to mock him, making a "crackling" sound as it slammed on the brakes with obvious pleasure.

It looks like the connecting shaft broke!

The extremely abstract tail fin configuration resulted in an even more abstract tail dynamic; the dragon didn't even complete its flight circle before turning back to the P-room.

Verstappen was already out there with super glue on, and with less than two minutes left in Q3, he clearly didn't have another chance to do a flying lap.

"What on earth is going on?! I've never heard of this kind of malfunction before!"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, turn off the engine, get out of the car and calm down. We can discuss this later."

The Shulong people who got off the bus were almost bursting with anger, but all the people in charge were still in front of the Pit Wall outside. After looking around, they couldn't find anyone to discuss the problem with, so they simply took off their helmets and fireproof balaclavas and went to the VIP viewing area at the back to complain to Gan Mengning and the others.

That's absolutely outrageous. If it weren't for his exceptional car sense, he might have crashed on the track and ended up having to start from the pit lane.

No one understood, so the guy with dreadlocks came over and patted Shu Long on the shoulder in a comforting manner.

This is probably one of the advantages of having Chinese as your native language; even when you're speaking ill of a racing team to their face, it's still very well encrypted.

The tickets for this Grand Prix were paid for by Lao Li to repay a favor. However, due to a lack of connections and resources, coupled with his limited funds, he could only afford ordinary grandstand tickets.

However, the Americans' awareness of epidemic prevention is quite worrying. You can hardly find any law-abiding citizens wearing masks obediently anywhere in the entire place. Shu Long is really worried about them being pushed around by that group of fanatics outside.

Fortunately, Horner has always been very easy to talk to about these things, saying that as long as they don't film or show the contents of the pit room without permission, they can come and go freely in and out of the team area.

I can't go into too much detail, because even Shulong isn't quite sure why such an outrageous thing happened.

Not long after, cheers erupted in the pit lane as Verstappen, with a bandage on his rear wing, set a new fastest lap, clocking a time of 1:32.910 to take pole position by a margin of 0.209 seconds.

P2 is Hamilton, who set a time of 1:33.119 on the last lap. It seems that Mercedes still cannot give up their hope of winning the championship and chose to gamble on speed in the end.

But just as Red Bull predicted before the race, even though Mercedes opted for speed, they could only lead Shu Long's first lap time by 0.002 seconds.

But for tomorrow's main race, Hamilton might be the one who's worried about being sandwiched between two slices of cheese again.

The damage to the tail fin of the dragon was not complicated; the connecting shaft was broken.

The repairs weren't too difficult; the mechanics worked overtime and completed the repairs in less than 40 minutes, and also did some emergency reinforcement work on the tail fins of the dragon and the Verstappen.

Even the rear wing failure was something that was expected, because the best rear wing kit that the team matched for this race based on the track characteristics was the medium downforce kit that was previously predicted to have potential problems!
It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but Mercedes wasn't the only team skirting the edge of the rules this year; Red Bull was also constantly testing the gray areas of the racing regulations.

One of them is the flexible winglets they use. These winglets can pass the FIA's static load test and can tilt backward under the action of straight-line airflow to change the angle of attack of the tail wing, main wing and flaps, thereby reducing drag and increasing tail speed.

This method was prohibited by technical instructions after the summer break.

The problem wasn't too noticeable with the high-downforce tail wing, but with the medium-downforce tail wing kit, the overall airflow layout and connection structure were incompatible from the start, and the issue became even more apparent after changing the carbon fiber weave of the tail wing.

Especially when the DRS is engaged, the flaps at the top of the tail fin will exhibit noticeable oscillations, making them particularly prone to component fatigue due to the additional load.

This problem was discovered far too late.

The late-arriving teams had already upgraded the entire rear layout of their cars, so they simply couldn't allocate more budget and time for wind tunnel development under the new regulations to create a new rear wing kit.

After qualifying, there was no way to make a replacement. No matter how difficult it was, they could only try to make do with what they had, otherwise they would have to accept the retirement penalty and waste the hard-earned result from qualifying today. But there was no good solution at the moment, and after discussion, the team could only come up with a workaround that was not a solution at all.

Since DRS has problems, we should try to avoid using it.

If we can't take the lead tomorrow, the top priority is to stay outside the DRS range of the cars ahead. The most important thing is to ensure that we don't have to retire due to a malfunction and to maintain our current ranking points.

Judging from the current starting positions of Shu Long and Verstappen, the team's proposal is clearly aimed at Shu Long.

If you can secure the lead at the start or fail to improve your position at the beginning, then it's as if nothing happened.

If you only move up one place, then you should honestly move out of the DRS range of the car in front and complete the task of keeping Hamilton in check.

Sunday afternoon, 14:00 PM.

Right above the P room, on the large rooftop platform that provides viewing spots for Paddock Club members, Lao Li was pretending to interview Asheng and Teng Weifeng about their impressions, but Gan Mengning didn't come up with them.

The pandemic has given everyone a perfect excuse to cover their faces completely. Gan Mengning, who has appeared on camera with her face covered several times before, is no longer as shy about it as before. Now she is obediently staying in the corner of the P room wearing a pair of big headphones and listening to the team's TR.

Although Horner approved their viewing of the game in the pit room, there were restrictions on what they could and couldn't film there. To avoid their vlog being filled with voyeuristic footage from their pockets, the three sneaky guys decided to go up to the rooftop to gather more material.

As the track light turned green, Verstappen, in the front row, took the lead, guiding the cars behind him to warm up their tires.

Suddenly hearing the roar of an engine downstairs, Lao Li quickly turned his camera to the track below and captured Shu Long, who was starting at P3 today, waiting in place and not in a hurry to leave, intending to let Hamilton in front of him keep his distance.

"OK—brothers! The match is about to start! To be honest, I never expected to be able to stand so close and present all of this to you. It's truly an honor to have this opportunity!"

"It seems that Shu Long's car had some problems during yesterday's qualifying session. I hope everything goes smoothly for him in today's race. Of course, I also hope that he can continue to bring us new surprises."

This is Lao Li's fourth opening statement today. Due to copyright issues, he cannot broadcast it live, and the recorded content released also cannot present a large amount of coherent match storyline.

The final cut may be pieced together from a large number of fragmented clips. It is currently unknown which clips will be used. In order to achieve the final video effect, some original sound from the scene and some post-production dubbing may be used.

Before this, he could only repeat these things over and over again to accumulate material, so this time it was basically just Lao Li who wanted to produce the VLOG of watching the game.

Asheng and Teng Weifeng both felt that copyright issues were troublesome to handle, and even if they produced content, it would be difficult to create a more informative final product than the previous Shanghai competition. The other reason was to avoid suspicion; they did not want their accounts to rely heavily on topics related to Shulong to generate channel content.

Not long after the racers completed their first lap of warm-up, they returned to the starting straight. Old Li took a sip of water to moisten his throat and focused the camera on Shu Long, who was slowly rolling back into his starting grid after completing his final burnout.

"Holy crap! That was so cool, guys! You have no idea how amazing it was to see it live! I was totally blown away!"

Before the passionate words could be finished, another, even more passionate wave of voices stole the show.

The traffic lights lit up one after another with a series of "ding, ding, ding," followed by the simultaneous roar of the engines of twenty of the world's top racing cars in front of them, like the ancient dragon's roar that was about to suppress all living beings in the world.

Old Li could no longer even hear his own hoarse roars. When the last signal light suddenly lit up, even the most talkative person held their breath in the chilling atmosphere created by the engine heat on the track.

"Click——"

As the five red lights went out simultaneously, the engine sounds on the track seemed to fall silent for a moment before roaring back up with a hundred times the intensity of their previous roars.

Every start of the race at Shulong is the focus of attention. Even casual F1 fans know how to quickly identify the highlights of the long race. This is also true for Captain Li, who has been studying the race extensively for some time.

But what happened next caused his blood pressure to spike, and he couldn't help but blurt out a few lines of traditional Chinese poetry on the spot.

Shu Long's start was still quick, visibly closing the gap between him and his teammates ahead. However, perhaps Verstappen was wary of the team's suggestion during yesterday's meeting, and immediately went to block the path of his teammates behind him.

The problem is that Hamilton, who was in P2, also had a strong start today. After Verstappen forced his teammate back, he belatedly squeezed Mercedes' number one car to the left side of the track.

But it didn't work!
The Austin COTA circuit is wide, so even if Verstappen pushes Hamilton to the edge of the track, Hamilton can still have a very generous entry angle.

Verstappen, on the other hand, was bumped by the sloping terrain of Turn 1. The lowest tire temperature of the lead car in the entire race made him lose his grip, and Hamilton took advantage of the situation to squeeze him out from the outside of Turn 1.

Hamilton thus took the lead, while Verstappen's attempt to steal the lead backfired, as Shulong, who had calmly avoided the initial setback and readjusted his cornering rhythm, stole the position.

"What is he doing?!"

Not only Captain Li on the rooftop, but also Shu Long was questioning the convoy in the TR at this moment.

Seeing this, Horner didn't know how to respond, and just rubbed his temples in exasperation.

"We need to take back Mercedes' place."

"So, does that mean it's my turn now?"

"Yes, that's the case, at least for now, unless something else changes."

"Ha~ copy!"

Turn 3 to Turn 6 is a series of high-speed S-curves with a Silverstone feel. At Turn 2, the dragon, which was blocked by Mercedes, readjusted its line before entering the corner, but it seemed to give Verstappen a chance to fight back. Before Turn 4, he charged up with his straighter, outside-cut line.

But Shu Long, who was in a bad mood at the time, didn't give him any leeway. Relying on his superior position and priority to enter the corner, he had no intention of leaving any space for the car behind him. He slammed the door shut with great force, immediately silencing Verstappen, who had ill intentions behind him.

Desperately?

This season, we're barefoot and have nothing to lose. If you're so capable, let's not even compare ourselves!

Since ancient times, the strong fear the stubborn, and the stubborn fear the reckless. It is clear that Verstappen could not bear the loss of being overtaken by Hamilton by 13 points, and after being hit hard by Shu Long, he became more obedient.

Unfortunately, the road surface was quite bumpy on the continuous high-speed curves all the way up to Turn 10. The price of blocking Verstappen was that Shu Long's own cornering rhythm was also messed up, and he was almost pulled away by Hamilton by more than a second.

Fortunately, the characteristics of this track were a perfect fit for Red Bull. With the stable aerodynamic advantage of the three consecutive high-speed right turns from turn 16 to 18, they were able to close the gap to about 0.7 seconds in time.

However, this gap is not small enough. Shulong stabilized his pace a bit and prepared to lay more groundwork for overtaking before making other plans.

Use DRS with potential risks as little as possible, and wait until you have accumulated enough advantages before delivering a decisive blow, so as to avoid unnecessary complications.

The tense opening phase of the match finally came to an end, and Captain Li on the rooftop was finally able to catch his breath.

"This, oh this."

What were you about to say?

"Oh, right! I'm not even sure if you guys heard what I yelled into the microphone just now, but I highly recommend that every one of you come and experience this live if you have the chance! The engine sound and the speed are just so exhilarating!"

Okay, let's stop recording for now.

Old Li first put away his camera, then exchanged a silent glance with his two accomplices, before finally unable to hold back and cursing out loud.

"Damn it! What a bunch of stupid teammates!"

(End of this chapter)