F1: Starting with a Simulator Master

Chapter 132 Verstappen's Strategy

All five red lights went out at the same time!

The main competition has begun!

Twenty race cars shot out like arrows released from a bow, almost simultaneously!

Although Luo Xiu was on the dirtier inside of the starting zone, the exaggerated traction from the red tires allowed him to gain a lead of almost half a car length over the yellow-tire Red Bull with just one start.

However, the expected close-quarters straight-line battle did not materialize, and the defending champion's strength was evident from the very first second of the start.

In the right-hand field of vision, that dark blue, 5.4-meter-long behemoth was suddenly pressing towards the left with a reckless attitude!

Defending champion Verstappen.

He completely ignored the optimal solution for straight-line acceleration and, in the very first fraction of a second after starting, recklessly swerved to the left!

This was a pure Verstappen-style shut-in.

He doesn't care about crashes or points; as long as he can keep his opponents behind him, he'll do anything.

Faced with the fierce closing down, Luo Xiu did not fight to the death on T1's dirty side inside.

The moment the steering wheel was turned to the right, the left front end of the No. 55 Ferrari narrowly missed the right rear wheel of the No. 1 Red Bull by a mere 0.1 centimeters.

Then, it cut back to the regular driving lane on the outside of the track.

Verstappen won the inside game with his reckless diagonal runs, while the Ferrari, forced to dodge, cut back and occupied the clean lanes on the outside.

Neither of them has lost their position yet.

But this was only temporary. Taking advantage of the grip of the red tires and the clean outer road surface, Luo Xiu managed to overtake from the outside before the corner and forcefully pulled half of the car out!

Without giving either of them a chance to catch their breath, the second round of the battle immediately unfolded on the left, right, and left turns between T1 and T3.

The two race cars then drove into the braking zone almost side by side.

With his positional advantage, Luo Xiu only needs to cut along the outside to T1, and then naturally move to the inside in T2. ​​Then he can use his line advantage to push Red Bull behind him in T3.

Turn the steering wheel and begin entering the curve.

However, Verstappen, playing in the paint, didn't play by the rules at all.

The Red Bull car didn't slow down along the curve at all. Verstappen braked unusually late, choosing to block Rothschild's path while simultaneously plunging into the apex of the corner.

The front left tire of the No. 1 Red Bull race car locked up for a moment due to the abrupt late braking and lateral movement, leaving a wisp of smoke as it plowed across the asphalt road.

Verstappen seemed determined to sacrifice his tires and completely abandon his exit speed from the corner in order to keep Roxi behind him.

Only after he passes can the cars behind him pass.

Luo Xiu's perfectly envisioned intersecting line blueprint was thwarted by Verstappen's unreasonable obstruction.

There's no road ahead.

To prevent the Ferrari's fragile front wing from being directly rear-ended and destroyed, Rochefoucauld was forced to release the accelerator pedal and even had to apply the brakes.

The smooth entry rhythm was interrupted, and he could only follow Verstappen's rhythm. His advantage on the exit of the corner was also completely lost.

As the two race cars sped out of T3 and entered the short straight before T4, since their exit speeds were no longer significantly different, Luo Xiu was forcibly pushed back into the exhaust vortex of the Red Bull.

In the studio, the director had just switched back to a slow-motion replay from a God's-eye view of the departure moment.

"A thrilling start and clash! Extremely skillful defensive artistry!"

In the commentary booth, the soldier's voice pierced through the voices of countless Chinese car fans who were staying up all night to watch the live broadcast on TV.

He spoke at lightning speed, breaking down the instantaneous game that had just occurred at the T1 corner, providing hardcore strategy explanations for new car enthusiasts who only saw the cars blocking each other but couldn't grasp the underlying dynamics.

Many new viewers may not understand why Verstappen turned the corner so slowly just now —

Please note that F1 race regulations mandate one pit stop, and the use of two different tire compounds.

"Verstappen is using a balanced yellow tire compound, which means he will most likely only experience a sharp decline in tire performance after the first 20 laps on this track, after which he will pit for white tires. Running the remaining 30 laps on white tires should not be a problem. This is a classic yellow-white pit stop strategy."

"But! Roche's car has red tires! His strategy is different from Verstappen's!"

"Red tires have the strongest grip, but are extremely fragile. In theory, Roshu will be faster than Verstappen using yellow tires at the beginning."

However, on a high-speed track like Jeddah, its performance drop-off point usually doesn't exceed 10 to 12 laps. Therefore, Luo Xiu will most likely need two stoppages tonight!

"This difference in strategy is precisely the open scheme that Verstappen used to desperately suppress Luo Xiu in T1."

On the timing panel on the left side of the broadcast, the time difference between the two race cars remained consistently at an extremely close 0.5 seconds.

The soldier calmly analyzed: "If Luo Xiu cannot overtake in the early stages of the race, that is, in the few laps when the red tires are at their strongest, and then take the lead in the clean air..."

Then their red tire starting strategy is doomed! The tires will overheat and wear faster in the turbulence at the Red Bull's rear!

If Luo Xiu were to switch to white tires after a single stop, he would need to stick with the white tires for more than 40 laps, resulting in a very slow average lap time.

If he pits twice to maintain his lap time, he'll need to do one more pit stop than Verstappen, who only needs one tire change, thus spending more time on the change.

"So what Verstappen has to do is to lap Rodriguez as many times as possible, forcing Rodriguez to pit for tires early and disrupting Ferrari's strategy."

Thus, in the latter half of the race, because Luo Xiu made an extra pit stop, he will face a time loss that would be insurmountable under normal running conditions.

The official F1 broadcast also displayed the average pit stop time loss at the Jeddah circuit on the screen.

"Everyone must remember this number —"

The soldier emphasized, "Pitting for tires at the Jeddah circuit normally results in a loss of about 20 seconds. However, with a yellow flag and safety car, the pit stop time loss is still 11 to 12 seconds!"

"This means that the current strategies of these two drivers will naturally cause Rosicky to take 20 seconds longer than Verstappen!"

If we don't overtake them now, and wait until Luo Xiu's second pit stop, hoping to use the advantage of the new tires to make up for that extra 20 seconds—realistically speaking, that's an impossible task.

What seemed like a simple overtaking battle between two cars on the track, under Bing Ge's analysis, instantly transformed into a breathtaking F1 time calculation math problem.

The race has entered the third lap.

According to the new season rules, DRS can be activated after two laps of the race.

However, just as the soldier had predicted, Rosicky was still relentlessly suppressed by Verstappen and placed in second place.

Even though Rochefoucauld activated DRS immediately on the straight, Ferrari's high downforce setup still couldn't gain any advantage in Verstappen's slipstream.

Despite having the advantage of good grip from red tires, it has no way to utilize it.

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At this moment, trouble also came knocking on their door, following closely behind the Red Bull race car.

Being tailed so closely means, for an F1 car flying close to the ground, plunging headlong into exhaust fumes reaching hundreds of degrees Celsius and chaotic turbulent vortexes.

The most direct manifestation of this is the sudden drop in downforce of the race car.

Luo Xiu clearly felt that the front axle, which should have been moving precisely, was now swaying during each high-speed cornering.

Fortunately, Luo Xiu's excellent car sense and handling skills made up for this problem of wake disturbance.

But this is only one aspect, because there are more troublesome heat dissipation problems that Luo Xiu needs to find a solution for.