F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 210: The End and a New Beginning

During the return trip, Reni brought Shulong a second piece of good news.

That is, even after the 5-second penalty, they still maintained their P3 ranking, with a lead of only 0.018 seconds.

It wasn't just because Red Bull and Hamilton played an absurdly fast game; Gasly and Perez, who were in positions P5 and P6 respectively after the game restarted, also made a significant contribution.

The three raced for five laps in the back, but the panting Prancing Horse ultimately couldn't withstand the onslaught of a herd of mad bulls and was finally defeated by Perez driving the Toro on the last lap.

I parked the car back in the third parking space and saw Verstappen lying on his rear wheel, I couldn't tell if he was crying tears of joy or trying to soothe his engine.

After his teammate got out of the car, he ran over and gave him a bear hug, making both of their helmets thud loudly.

"Thank you! Thank you. I really hope we can fight side by side like this for another 10 or 15 years!"

Shu Long simply patted Verstappen on the back; such questions are always difficult to answer.

Everything has its peak and then decline. There is no team that can remain strong forever, and perhaps there will never be a driver who stays at his peak forever.

Just like Hamilton.

Shu Long watched as Verstappen was swallowed up by the throng of people, then turned to look behind him, where a somewhat forlorn Mercedes was slowly approaching.

For Hamilton, who already has one hand on his eighth World Cup title, today's scenario was undoubtedly a bit too dramatic.

Before I could even say hello to the old man, another wave of people in red and black team uniforms surged in and swallowed up Shulong as well. How could we forget the biggest contributor to the team today?

Horner even wanted to strangle Shulong in his arms, while Marko simply put the team's pre-made championship t-shirt over the white T-shirt welded to his body, looking completely too excited to speak.

This was probably the magnificent scene he had imagined countless times in his mind when he first signed with Shulong.

Max and his father embraced and wept on the other side. Old Tapan's eyes were particularly kind at this moment, and he even came over to give Shulong a big hug.

Although there have been some unpleasant incidents over the years, when Shulong first ventured into Europe, he was able to find a way to develop, and Verstappen did indeed act as a mentor to Shulong.

If he hadn't introduced Shulong to the owner of the Reca Technology Club, perhaps the eventual discovery by Marco wouldn't have happened.

Hamilton, who was in the corner, was also embraced by his father. To the outside world, he may always be the glamorous seven-time world champion, but in front of his father, he was just a child who needed encouragement and comfort.

Shu Long subconsciously looked around, but unfortunately, the people he most wanted to share his joy with were not among the crowd.

My parents, my grandfather, my girlfriend, and the friendships I've gradually rekindled.

Perhaps a sumptuous dinner awaits him when he gets home, but this is not the end of a complete season for him. Before the game, when his mother asked him if he wanted his parents to come to the stadium to cheer him on, Shu Long just shook his head somewhat embarrassedly.

Let's just treat it as an ordinary branch station during the year.

But once he was actually in that atmosphere, he seemed to start to regret it.

I don’t know if those of you watching the live stream will be able to see this, but Shu Long found the nearest camera and tried his best to show the elements that his family had pieced together.

The top of the helmet features two red dragons drawn by his mother, Zhang Xin, with the character "dragon" written by his grandfather in the middle. The back of the helmet is a photo of him and his father squatting together repairing a go-kart when he was a child.

Finally, he took out the pendant that Gan Mengning had given him, which symbolized the "yin" of Tai Chi, from his collar and pressed it against his forehead.

Today's interviewee is Jason Barton. Since I asked him to sign an autograph for my mother last time, the two have become quite familiar with each other.

When the microphone was brought to his mouth, there was no deliberate attempt to make things difficult. The speaker deliberately avoided mentioning the collision that ultimately caused the red flag to be struck by the dragon, and simply praised his outstanding performance throughout the match.

Next was Hamilton, whose emotions seemed to have calmed down quickly, except that his eyes were still slightly red.

Last year, when Hamilton secured his seventh world championship title in Türkiye, he uttered that memorable quote on TR:

"To all children with lofty ambitions, you can do it too, I have always firmly believed that!"

Missing out on an eight-title miracle naturally brings disappointment.

But after so many years at the top, is Hamilton deep down worried that someone will take his throne, or does he secretly hope that someone will give him the same thrill of facing a challenge that he hasn't felt in a long time?

Finally, amidst cheers from fans dressed in orange support gear, their star of the day, Max, arrived. It was his turn.

As the golden ribbons fluttering in the air slowly landed, the awards ceremony came to a close.

On stage, soaked to the bone by Max and Horner, Shu Long helplessly wiped his face, the neon lights flickering between his fingers, everything so beautiful it seemed almost unreal.

Quietly withdrawing from his jubilant teammates, after the enthusiastic noise subsided, Shu Long suddenly just wanted to find a quiet corner to enjoy a moment of peace and quiet of his own.

"Toto?"

"Where are you headed? Aren't you planning to celebrate with your racing team?"

"No, not really. There's going to be some fun tonight. I'm covered in sticky juice. Should I go find an ice bucket to soak in and then change my clothes?"

Toto smiled with a somewhat complicated expression. Shu Long couldn't tell if it was due to exhaustion, but he felt that Toto looked much older than the spirited champion team leader he had been two years ago.

"You know what? Whenever the media asks me if I regret not poaching you from Red Bull, my answer is always no. But how many years are left on your contract with Red Bull?"

Shu Long didn't answer, but just stared into Toto's eyes. For some reason, the two of them suddenly laughed at the same time.

The situation and nature of things are different now.

If Toto had insisted on buying Shulong back then, it would have been a timely help. At that time, the supply and demand relationship was that Shulong needed opportunities and the team could provide them. Now, the team needs drivers and Shulong can provide their abilities.

Are you leaving or not? When are you leaving?

Whether he can maintain his current competitiveness will largely depend on his personal mood.

Without dwelling on the question, as if they had merely exchanged greetings, the two waved goodbye and left casually. That evening, everyone stayed in the hunting grounds for a long time. After taking a shower and changing his clothes, Shulong calmed down a bit and gradually began to get busy.

During this race week, he asked the team to bring at least five of his old helmets so he could exchange them with everyone in the paddock as souvenirs.

His primary target tonight is Kimi, who is about to leave the paddock.

Although he had asked Vassel to take him to meet with Old Layman beforehand, who knew if Kimi would forget about it because he was celebrating his retirement and got drunk again? Before the teams started their nighttime celebrations, Shulong went to complete this primary task.

It wasn't the helmet he was exchanging for that final race. Shu Long had specially reserved the helmet Kimi used in the 19 Bahrain Grand Prix, and he was exchanging it for the helmet he used when he was still with the Mavericks at the same race.

In that match, Shu Long and Lao Lai Tou engaged in one of the few close battles in their professional careers. After the match, under the guidance of Uncle Wai Tou, Shu Long also received some valuable life advice from Kimi. In Shu Long's memory, it was a very meaningful match.

In addition, there are Alben and Perez, who will soon be going their separate ways. After tomorrow, they will be wearing Williams' team jerseys.

Back at Milton Keynes headquarters, Shu Long had already swapped helmets with Alben. Now, he's preparing to exchange his resurrection special edition helmet from the Hungarian leg for the helmet that Perez used in Azerbaijan this year.

One is his first career race win, and the other is his first and only Red Bull career race win, both of which are very memorable for both of them.

Shu Long has always felt a little embarrassed about taking away Lao Pei's spot in the middle of the season, but after so much time, everyone seems to have let go of a lot of the resentment in their hearts.

After all, not everyone has the ability to defeat Verstappen repeatedly. Perez only managed to do so once in the first half of the year with Azerbaijan. At other times, he struggled to even keep up with Verstappen's pace.

Looking at the results Shulong achieved after returning to the team, it's hard not to feel relieved.

In addition, Shu Long and Alonso also changed to a helmet with the main color of the old Renault Blue, which was specially made after Tou Ge became his agent. It was used at the 19 Spanish Grand Prix, Alonso's home race.

Then he went to exchange his helmet with Hamilton, getting the same calfskin helmet Hamilton wore at the 18 Brazilian Grand Prix.

This was something that had been arranged with Hamilton before the final stop. When Shu Long arrived with the helmet, he was worried that the old man would be upset, but instead he was teased and joked about by him.

Does perfection only come from mutual deference on the track?
As rivals, giving their all on the track is perhaps the highest level of respect they can offer.

In Hamilton's own words, today's game was probably the most heroic he had played in recent years, and he could be considered to have lost with honor.

Finally, there was one left that was originally kept as a spare for this station, and Shulong thought about it and went to exchange it with Latifi for another one.

To be honest, Latifi's loss of its seat this year is somewhat related to him. If Perez hadn't been squeezed out by him, Latifi might have been able to compete for another year.

Moreover, they had just crashed into someone else's car during the race. As Verstappen's second-greatest contributor to this year's victory after Shu Long, exchanging helmets at this race would be a way to keep a memento.

Although the preparations were a bit rushed and somewhat perfunctory, I didn't expect them to be so pleasantly surprised.

As a nobody on the track who couldn't produce any results, even Latifi himself probably didn't expect that Shulong, who usually had little interaction with him on the track except for laps and whose skills were at opposite ends of his own, would take the initiative to ask him to exchange helmets.

The age difference outside of the race, coupled with the lack of overlap in their social circles, meant they rarely spoke to each other, and the impression they left on each other was that they had decent personalities.

It feels like we're from completely different worlds, doesn't it?

Exchanging helmets now is also a way of making friends.

However, Shu Long only learned the next day that just the night before, when they exchanged helmets, Latifi had posted a farewell tweet to the team and wished his teammate Russell well, but was immediately bombarded with thousands of comments from Hamilton fans.

The reason is that many people believe Latifi is the culprit who ruined Hamilton's eight titles, and feel that he and Mick were fighting an unnecessary battle for a ranking that had no value whatsoever.

Such remarks are the harshest insult to a driver. Regardless of personal or racing ability, the moment you sit in the cockpit, no one wants to not want to fight for speed.

Even Ma Zeping... never mind, let's not mention him.

Ma Zeping tested positive for COVID-19 before the race and missed the final race of the year. It's fortunate that he didn't come, otherwise who knows how chaotic the night would have been.

Shu Long simply sent Latifi a few encouraging messages, telling him not to pay attention to the noise from outside the arena.

Just like him, he simply couldn't be bothered to open any social media.

Latifi is only the "culprit" and he's already being cursed like this. I can't even imagine what kind of curses he, the "instigator," would suffer. Why bother adding trouble for yourself?

After the race, there is only one day of rest. Starting from the 14th, Pirelli will conduct tests on 18-inch tires for next year. Williams is the only team that will not participate in the tests because of budget constraints in the previous two years and did not design a special test car.

So the helmet was replaced in time, since the person was preparing to pack up and leave the paddock the next day.

Verstappen participated in the Red Bull test on the 14th, while Shulong participated on the 15th.

Zhou Guanyu will drive this year's Alfa Romeo to participate in the youth driver test on the 14th, and will also participate in the 18-inch tire test the next day.

On Red Bull's side, Yuri Wips was driving the No. 69 car from the Shulong race car, and he even made it onto the wall, making Marco's eyelids twitch.

Speaking of Zhou Guanyu...
The final race of F2 was also in Abu Dhabi, where Zhou Guanyu and Piastri won the final week's sprint and the race respectively. In his final year, Guanyu, a third-year student, finally won the world championship and graduated with honor.

Piastri narrowly lost by less than 10 points. He has already officially renewed his contract with Prema for another year to continue competing in F2, and will replace Zhou Guanyu as an official Alpine test driver.

As for performance.

On his first day, Zhou Guanyu was driving an Aro, a car that even Kimi couldn't save. Among all the rookies, he still managed to get the 5th fastest lap time on the first day of testing, which seemed ordinary but was actually quite impressive.

We had to see what kind of cars were ahead of us: Alpine, McLaren, Toro Rosso, and Mercedes.

Even compared to its slowest car, the Alfa Romeo was nearly a second behind in Abu Dhabi qualifying, and Vassell was quite satisfied with Zhou Guanyu's performance.

Red Bull has been unusually relaxed lately. Apart from Marco, who is struggling with the less-than-ideal performance of the new generation of youth trainees, almost everyone else has entered a semi-vacation state.

Verstappen was just slacking off on the first day of testing, while Shulong's main task was to teach Max to speak Chinese in a short period of time.

This is both to prepare for Red Bull's entry into Bilibili next year and to provide material for the program list of Bilibili's annual New Year's Eve Gala.

(End of this chapter)