F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 197 Sheet Metal Tactics
"Nooooo!"

Leclerc, who had been leading the way, was knocked away twice by the crossbar. With the finish line just ahead, he could only watch helplessly as Shulong twitched and crawled forward with a smirk.

Unfortunately, this time he was knocked quite high, and when he landed, he happened to hit the sweeper that had just spun around again, and was actually knocked straight into the finish line by the stick.

"Oh? Haha~ yes yes yes! P1! Let's see what the others are doing?"

Leclerc, now in the spectator's view, switched several times before finally getting to Shulong's side, only to find that this hot dog candy, after missing out on first place, wasn't in a hurry to advance and returned to the edge of the platform to wait for another familiar princess candy to appear.

"Oh my god! Lando, watch out! Guess what he's planning to do?"

"What is he planning to do?! No, no, no, I see him!"

Norris arrived late, yelling all the way, and spent a long time outmaneuvering the bar and thin air before finally shouting, "Only three people left!" He was preparing to launch a surprise attack.

"I am coming!"

"No, you didn't!"

Shulong, dressed in a suit and turned around, grabbed the princess candy bean that was lunging forward in mid-air, and threw Norris back onto the turntable with a backhand over-the-shoulder throw.

If Leclerc was knocked straight into the finish line, then poor Norris is now in the opposite situation, despairingly looking back from the sky at the 365 miles he'd traveled.
“Bullshit!”

A few sounds of blood dripping from the table came from the other end of the voice chat, which quickly turned into Norris's mournful howls.

"What's wrong with you?"

"I can't fxcking move!"

"Aha?"

Leclerc joined in with a laugh that sounded like an old vacuum cleaner. Shu Long, unable to contain his curiosity, turned and rushed towards the finish line, eager to see what kind of trouble Norris was causing this time.
It turned out that the blow had knocked him right between two triangular elastic stakes. The poor princess candy was now being bounced back and forth between the two sides, and the keyboard quickly received a heavy blow that cost it health.

"You can't do this to me! My birthday is the day after tomorrow! Right now, I'm a very sensitive person who really needs emotional support!"

"Oh, okay, okay, okay~ Who told you to be the only one doing the live stream? It's for the sake of the show, the audience will like watching it."

"Bullshit! How about we switch games, shooting games? Fortnite or Call of Duty?"

Shu Long was the first to object. He just wanted to lie in bed and play some relaxing games with a controller, and didn't want to get up and fight with a keyboard and mouse.

"Besides, you guys are really bad. If it weren't for the fact that I have to be the one to put up the pressure in every game, it might be a good idea."

"How about playing a racing game?" Leclerc ran into Norris's live stream and glanced at it. "The viewers said they want to see us play F1 21."

"Great idea, but who would carry a simulator around the world? I only have a controller!"

"Maybe Max?"

This remark instantly resonated with the three of them, making them laugh. There really was a hardened Autobot in the enclosure who had to be accompanied by the simulator wherever he went, and suddenly three more vacuum cleaners appeared in the voice channel.

The controller is barely usable for driving, although it lacks a lot of tactile feedback. However, for drivers of this level, the sense of speed conveyed by the screen alone is enough to get a pretty good feel for the game's semi-realistic physical limits.

But clearly, the viewers watching the live stream weren't buying it; they wanted to see the three of them running around with keyboards.

That's an interesting idea, but who usually installs emulator games on their laptop? None of the three of them have that weird habit.

The hotel's internet speed was okay, considering its star rating; the download took less than an hour. During that time, Norris suggested they find something else to do.

"Oh, wait a minute, the boss is calling. You guys go ahead and have fun."

Norris and Leclerc knew that something must have happened on the team's side, so they decided to start playing Fortnite and team up for a couple of rounds.

Shu Long picked up the phone that was beeping loudly. Horner's name was clearly visible on the screen. Before getting up, he disconnected the voice channel, and only after entering the bathroom and closing the door did he press the answer button.

"boss?"

"Are you free now? I deliberately waited for your break before calling."

"You were spying on us?!"

"What do you mean by voyeurism? I can also be a subscriber to the live stream! I'm just showing concern for the daily mental and physical well-being of my employees!"

"So, what exactly happened? By the way, you've returned from your trip to Teotihuacan?"

Shu Long really didn't expect that there would be temporary work to deal with at this time. The Brazilian Grand Prix and the Mexican Grand Prix are back-to-back race weeks, and normally no major changes should be made to the car at this time.

This can also be seen from the actions of the three fathers of the Mexican team after the race.

Horner, Newey, and Whitley relaxed and went on a trip to famous tourist attractions in Mexico after the game.

Shu Long and his group were in the same boat, except that everyone knows how chaotic the situation was outside Mexico and Brazil, so when they had nothing to do, they could only come to the hotel here in advance to hang out and play games together.

They could have invited more people, but among the members of their usual gaming group, Russell needed to learn a lot from the Mercedes team recently, while Albon was working overtime at the Milton Keynes factory, making his last contribution to Red Bull before heading to Williams.

As for Verstappen and Hamilton...
The old man is under immense pressure to win the championship, so he obviously doesn't have much of a mood to fool around with the young guys.

Verstappen is even more of a mystery; you can only call him when you want to play driving simulator games together, otherwise you can't find him at all.

The reason these three could often get together was that, apart from Old Lai, who was calmly preparing for retirement, they were the three with the least psychological pressure in the paddock.

They don't need to compete for championships, they all have long-term contracts with teams, and their current performance is quite outstanding, so they don't have to worry about not having teams wanting them.

If it were the same anxious situation as last year, Norris and his friends would also often be unable to get Shulong to hang out with them.

Perhaps someone without pressure is like Ma Zeping?

Perhaps provoked by Shu Long, Ma Zeping made headlines again after the Mexican Grand Prix by harassing women at a nightclub and nearly getting into a fight with security guards.

An American racing team wearing Russian flags is already abstract enough, but it's still not as abstract as Nikita Mazepin himself.

Unfortunately, the Haas team has almost been bought out by his father. No matter how bad Ma Zeping drives or how bad his reputation is, unless there are some unforeseen circumstances, his position in the paddock is probably more secure than Mick's and comparable to Stroll's.

Of course, this has nothing to do with Shu Long. If possible, he doesn't want to get involved with Ma Zeping in any way.

Aside from these trivial and unpleasant things, Shu Long, whose performance in every race this year has been quite convincing, is in a very relaxed state of mind. He can't think of any reason why the team would want to cruelly exploit his limited leisure time.

The only unexpected event was that the cargo plane carrying the supplies was slightly delayed in Mexico due to weather conditions.
But this has nothing to do with the driver. Do you expect me to work overtime and drive an Euro Truck to pull it up?

This is too much... wait, is Alben working overtime?
"Is it related to Alben?"

"A little bit, but mainly it's about you. We might need you to help the team experiment with some rear wing designs in the later races."

"But didn't you say before that you didn't have the extra budget or time to develop a new tail fin?"

"No, but we do have the budget to manufacture a few more sets of spare parts."

Simply put, it's still a problem with the same tail wing design used for medium downforce.

Aside from the Brazilian Grand Prix, which has a high demand for high downforce rear wing kits, the layout of almost every track, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, is clearly more suited to medium downforce rear wing kits.

Verstappen's rather unexpected victory at the Mexican Grand Prix can be largely attributed to the track's characteristics and a bit of luck. The team even posted a message on their official media after the race: "Valltteri, it's Max." to tease their rival.

But if a team wants to compete for the championship, it cannot place its hopes on its opponents in every race.

Mercedes is getting faster in every game now. If Red Bull is content with the status quo and refuses to change, it will undoubtedly be crippling itself and surrendering.

“We suspect that Mercedes has found a way to achieve higher downforce at the cost of minimal drag, in addition to the power unit. So we must find a way to solve the problem of incompatible spare parts under medium downforce conditions.”

"So? We don't have a similar solution?"

"Yes, there is, but it needs to be used in conjunction with next year's new ground effect floor to function, which is not within this year's R&D budget. In addition, although the team cannot redesign a completely new rear wing, we can make cuts and adjustments to the existing rear wing."

No wonder they mentioned having a budget for producing extra spare parts. So they're planning to brute force their way into creating a medium downforce wing from their existing high downforce wing?

This is absolutely insane! Shu Long could hardly believe his ears.

Unfortunately, Horner's answer was yes.

This is the data that Albon has been calculating for the team recently. Newey has quickly identified several cutting options, and Albon's task is to help the team quickly eliminate obviously wrong options on the simulator.

As for the rest...
"So I'm sorry, man, this is crucial for the team. We may need you to make some sacrifices in the races to help the team with testing."

"But how much money will I lose?"

"Don't worry, we understand this time. We don't need to use your so-called 'small request.' As long as you can get into the top three in every remaining match, our points and bonuses will be calculated based on the champion's score; if you get into the top five, we'll calculate based on the third-place score, how about that?"

Hmm—sounds pretty good?

It's settled then!
Horner on the other end of the phone clenched his fist excitedly. Besides being pleased that Shu Long's cooperation would greatly increase the chances of winning both the driver's and team championships this year, he also seemed to have found a way to deal with Shu Long's small favors.

If they can use personal connections to manipulate the motorcade, why can't they use the same thing to manipulate Shulong in return?
From a psychological perspective, the more the team owes the rider more and more, the deeper the bond between the rider and the team will become.

Besides, what is this little bit of bonus?
In the past, Red Bull could spend more than 500 million euros a year on research and development, but this year the budget cap has been directly limited to 120 million euros, and they don't know where to spend the extra money.

Even if the drivers' salaries were included in the budget cap, they could easily afford to pay extra fines to ensure the bonuses were paid out.

The team hadn't originally planned to do this, but Shulong's ability to adapt to the last-minute change of high-pressure components before qualifying last week amazed the team.

Having witnessed Shu Long's performance from beginning to end, Newey scratched his shiny bald head and, without further ado, proposed this insane idea.
As for Shu Long's final question about when the so-called cutting experiment would begin, Horner's answer was that it would begin at this station.

However, the Interlagos circuit at the São Paulo Grand Prix is ​​a very typical high downforce circuit, and this week the FIA ​​has also added a sprint race format to it.

Therefore, the team will probably only give him a little time in practice to try out the "cutting" operation on the actual car. In the official race, the team will probably return to the use of the regular rear wing kit.

"Oh, by the way, you guys were so focused on playing just now, you probably haven't even noticed yet. I bet you'd be happy to see it."

"what?"

Horner, the old riddle-maker, seemed to have no intention of explaining, and hung up the phone hastily after uttering that remark.

In fact, there's not much need for explanation; the news is already everywhere. Alfa Romeo recently announced that Zhou Guanyu will join the team next season, partnering with Bottas to compete for the team.

Good guy!
Due to the F2 calendar this year, the next race won't be until Saudi Arabia. Shulong hasn't seen Zhou Guanyu for a while since the Russian Grand Prix.

So now you've quietly done something big behind Daddy's back, haven't you?
He first sent an "annoyed" emoji to warm up his emotions, then decided to postpone his condemnation of Zhou Guanyu. He was in a good mood now and planned to first have some fun beating up Norris. "Hmm? I'm done here, how about you guys? Are you done with this game?"

"Soon! So the team is looking for you because they've got some new upgrade that will make them dominate the battlefield?"

"Pah! Watch your words, young man. You can't really control your tone when you're 'driving' on a keyboard!"

"Tch~ Let's make this clear first, you two can't deliberately try to bump into me later! My birthday is coming up soon!"

Okay, okay, I know it's your birthday soon.

Shu Long picked up his phone and sent a long string of mysterious code to Leclerc, preparing to plan a "surprise" for Lando.

Happy times always seem to pass too quickly, and everyone soon got into work mode for the competition week.

The media day turned into a bit of an unpleasant affair. After the official announcement of his departure from the team next season, Giovanni was clearly unhappy and posted a sarcastic comment on social media: "Cash is king."

This means that he was squeezed out not because he lacked ability, but because the team valued the sponsorship brought by Zhou Guanyu more.

On the contrary, Piastri, who many people believe had his chance to enter F1 taken away by Zhou Guanyu, publicly spoke a lot of good things about Zhou Guanyu when he was officially announced as Alpine's reserve driver for next season.

Vassell was also very direct in the interview, saying that he did not support this attitude.

The team has given Giovinazzi three years, but the world is small and the F1 circle is even smaller. Thousands of drivers dream of having such an opportunity, and the team always needs to maintain a professional standard to meet new challenges.

Steiner, sitting to the side, twitched slightly, his expression a little awkward. He felt a tickle in his nose and a burning sensation in his ears.

However, F1 officials were clearly very happy, seemingly because Zhou Guanyu was going to inherit Kimi's team. They even made a special congratulatory picture of Old Lai handing over the steering wheel, symbolizing a "war correspondent," to Zhou Guanyu.

The slogan is that classic, timeless TR phrase: "Hey! Steering Wheel!"

Capital is quite straightforward in this respect; it welcomes anyone or anything that can help them expand their market.

Shulong's arrival has made them realize the huge market potential of this Eastern region. In fact, the FIA ​​and Liberty Media Group are no longer satisfied with just bringing in more Chinese drivers; they also want to bring in Chinese factory teams.

Where there are unhappy people, there are also happy people.

Even Mercedes stated that since Bottas signed his contract with Arro, the team has never seen him so relaxed, happy, and fast.

As a result, Bottas has become much more enthusiastic when he sees Shulong recently, as if he wants to learn more about his future teammates from Shulong in advance.

However, once on the field, opponents are still opponents.

Hamilton is going to switch to an internal combustion engine again, and regardless of his final qualifying sprint result, he will be penalized five places down.

This is both good news and bad news for Red Bull.

Mercedes appears to have figured out a solution that minimizes costs while maximizing engine competitiveness.

Including the internal combustion engine that was replaced this time, as well as the one that was installed in the Turkish Grand Prix, Hamilton will now have two sets of 80% new engines with very limited usage to cope with the next four Grand Prix.

In this respect, Red Bull found itself in a passive position.

Moreover, judging from the first training session, Mercedes seems to have considerable confidence in their decision to change engines, because they are really fast.

As usual, since the qualifying session, which determines the starting grid order for the sprint race, will be held immediately after the first practice session, and the results of the qualifying session will affect the starting grid order for the main race, there is basically no question of hiding anything during the first practice session. Everyone is trying their best to find the limits of the car.

However, Hamilton led the two Red Bulls by a huge margin of 0.4 seconds, and there was no change in the subsequent qualifying session.

The veteran once again won pole position by more than 0.4 seconds, with Shulong P2, Verstappen P3, and Bottas P4.

Kids, this isn't funny!

Despite using the same aerodynamic kit as the Monaco team, Mercedes managed to reach a top speed of 333.2 km/h on the Brazilian Grand Prix, a track with high downforce conditions. This put them 11.5 km/h ahead of Bottas, 13.7 km/h ahead of Shullon, and a full 15.2 km/h ahead of Verstappen!

Is this normal?

Verstappen was completely baffled after the qualifying session.

Bottas's speed is still within acceptable limits, and Shulong's speed can be understood as his engine being newer, but how can Hamilton be this fast?

Driven by a mix of resentment and curiosity, Verstappen inexplicably stood behind Mercedes' number one car after qualifying and gestured with his hand to measure Hamilton's rear wing.

This is a clear violation of the rules of the closed vehicle inspection area, but it usually doesn't cause any problems and no one cares about it. There has never been a precedent for such a penalty.

Unfortunately, this tragic scene was captured by fans in the main grandstand and posted online, immediately attracting the attention of the race organizers.

First, Verstappen was called into a small dark room and given a lecture. There were no more severe penalties or time-outs, but Verstappen was fined 5 euros in protection money.

The precedent was based on the fact that Verstappen did not apply any force when he touched the back of the tail fin, no parts moved, and no direct damage was caused, but this was not to be repeated.

However, making the above judgment meant that the FIA ​​needed to re-inspect Hamilton's tail wing, and it was during this inspection that the problem was discovered.

F1 technical regulations have very strict requirements for the DRS opening gap: the maximum measurement interval cannot exceed 85mm when activated, and the gap cannot exceed 10mm when not activated.

Hamilton exceeded the limits in both of these aspects, but not by much, probably only around 0.2-0.4mm.

It's hard to say whether Mercedes deliberately cheated or it was just normal deformation caused by component aging, but Hamilton's violation of technical instructions is an indisputable fact.

According to Technical Regulations 3.6.3, Hamilton will be disqualified from qualifying and will start tomorrow's sprint from P20.

Buying a bottom-ranked team from the opponent for 5 euros was an unexpected stroke of luck, but there's no doubt that Verstappen's 5 euros was absolutely worth it!
On the second day of training, Shu Long finally began testing the heavily modified tail fin, which was physically damaged.

To this end, he even carried a "barbecue grill" full of sensors on his back, which means he didn't even bother with any additional sensors.

The driving experience was surprisingly good, but it didn't quite match the characteristics of the track, so I didn't push too hard and the effect wasn't very noticeable.

However, Newey did not seem particularly satisfied. Based on his assessment using "eye-tunneling" and data from sensors, he believed that this cut would create chaotic turbulence at the rear, causing the car to become dynamically unstable at the rear in corners.

The only thing that has made up for this is the adaptability of the dragon, but if you want to pursue a higher limit, you can't just rely on the driver, so you still have to make changes!

It's a pity that this tail wing, which cost over $800,000, has been destroyed after being slashed several times.
The remaining time was spent switching back to the high-downforce rear wing and then fine-tuning it over a long distance.

The advantage of using the sprint race to determine the starting order for the main race is that, in the past, it was forbidden to change the car setup after qualifying, but this year's sprint race, which was being piloted for the first time, did not have this problem.

Teams can look for the best lap time in qualifying and then switch back to settings more suited to the race.

Moreover, since the points awarded in the sprint race are too few, most teams prefer to play it safe rather than engage in aggressive offense and defense. If a car is damaged in the sprint race, the penalty will be real.

However, in the afternoon, no one expected that Mercedes would put a set of red soft tires on Bottas during the 24-lap sprint race.

A 24-lap sprint race isn't long, but it's certainly not short either.

As the name suggests, this mini-race requires drivers to push with all their might on every lap.

At the same time, tire wear must be reasonably controlled on each lap. A race that is too short will not allow the team to execute pit stop tactics. If tire wear is too high, it will be pointless for Kuku to drop positions in the later stages.
At this point, putting Bottas on red tires makes Red Bull suspect that Mercedes sent him to cause trouble, in order to slow down the pace of the two Red Bulls, especially Verstappen, and allow Hamilton to minimize the gap at the start of tomorrow's race.

To be honest, this kind of bizarre tactic that harms others without benefiting oneself is surprisingly effective.

There's a problem with starting from the front row: by the time the cars at the back of the line are ready, the tires that were just warmed up at the front are already pretty cold.

Why don't we try to guess who's driving the car at the back of the line that determines when the convoy is ready?
Verstappen's €5 boomerang purchase yesterday has ultimately backfired.

Hamilton, penalized to P20, dawdled and finally stopped in his starting grid after much urging from Shu Long. The tires of the cars in front of him were almost as cold as rocks.

Especially for race cars using yellow tires, the grip is nowhere near as good as that of cars with red tires!

Verstappen was immediately outmaneuvered by Bottas at the start. Shu Long put up a brief resistance, but Bottas managed an unrealistic late brake before Turn 4, pushing him to the front.

The most impressive thing is that, with clean air coming in, the Bottas, thanks to Mercedes' smarter downforce settings this year, provided exceptional tire protection, and the two Red Bulls, panting and churning behind, couldn't catch up.

In contrast, Hamilton, who started from the back of the pack, put on a solid overtaking show and eventually made it all the way to P5!
what? !

As a former rival of Ferrari who tricked Mercedes into adopting a low-downforce setup, Vettel, who was utterly defeated in this race, couldn't help but joke with the team engineers afterward.

"I'm going to touch Hamilton's tail fin in a bit."

"No way! It's too expensive!"

"Just kidding, how about I touch the forewing? Maybe it'll only cost 25000?"

Well.
The team did not respond, but there is no doubt that a consensus has now been reached in the paddock that Mercedes' engine this year may be even more outrageous than Ferrari's in 18 and 19.

The key issue is that we still can't find any violations!

Even though Hamilton will start from P10 tomorrow due to the change in internal combustion engine, such speed advantage and overtaking efficiency still gave Red Bull a sense of foreboding.

Bottas will start ahead of them again tomorrow, just thinking about it gives me a headache.

Optimistically speaking, the best strategy for tomorrow's main competition is tentatively yellow-white-white or yellow-white-red.

With the added variables involved in the entry process, perhaps Mercedes wouldn't have been in such a difficult situation as it was today.

On a more optimistic note, Hamilton will start in the middle of the pack tomorrow, meaning he can no longer artificially manipulate the tire temperature differences of the cars in front of him to influence the start of the race.

Even on a more optimistic note, given Shu Long's starting ability and the absence of external interference, Bottas, who appears to start in P1, is merely a useless defensive wall.
After the sprint race, the teams need to make a lot of tactical preparations, while Shulong does not have as many worries for the time being.

For him, tomorrow will only present two possibilities:

He either needs to eliminate Bottas at the start and establish his own rhythm, or he needs to fail to advance in position at the start, in which case his strategy can basically follow Bottas' lead.

On the other hand, Verstappen has to rack his brains. He not only needs to find ways to get a better ranking for himself, but also has to keep a close eye on Hamilton's movements behind him.

Sometimes, being tricked into a station by a strategy can lead to complete defeat.

Before the meeting, Verstappen and his crew had been having a heated discussion, while Shulong went to the freezer in the rest area behind the pit truck and took out a birthday cake that had been prepared beforehand.

As they passed the Ferrari, he gave the driver a wink, and Leclerc understood immediately, calling Sainz to join him as they stealthily set off.

Although Sainz didn't hang out with them often because of his age, he and Norris actually had a good relationship during their time at McLaren.

The key point is that, as the most classic "egg-stealing brothers," he is the perfect person to draw the fire.

(End of this chapter)