As the race progressed, watching the mist rise from behind Qin Miao's car, Leclerc couldn't help but curse in the team TR.

He always knew Qin Miao's defensive abilities were terrifying, but Leclerc had only ever experienced them in "i Raising" or on a simulator. This was the first time he was blocked by Qin Miao in reality.

To be honest, this feeling was truly frustrating.

After experiencing it once, Leclerc never wanted to experience it again.

After all, Qin Miao was the first car to go all out on the track after the red flag, and the spray he created while driving at full speed was the most.

In the following laps, the time gap between Leclerc and Qin Miao was within one second, but Leclerc seemed immobilized by Qin Miao, locked behind him.

Leclerc tried many ways to attack Qin Miao.

Yet, like he had eyes on the back of his head, Qin Miao always blocked Leclerc's route at the place Leclerc wanted to initiate an attack.

The Monte Carlo circuit is not wide, so Qin Miao only has to block Leclerc's critical attack route once for the attack to fail.

Facing such a Qin Miao, Leclerc truly felt like he was punching on cotton, with no strength to exert.

And in front of Leclerc, Qin Miao didn't feel much pressure while defending against Leclerc, after all, there are only a few corners where overtakes can be made on this track. Even on some atypical corners, you just need to pay attention to the line before entering the corner, go a bit narrower, and you can block the car behind.

Although this method compared to normal cornering slows things down a bit.

That's why during the offense and defense between the two cars, the front car got away quickly.

But now Qin Miao is in the lead, so it doesn't matter if he's slow or not.

As a result, based on Qin Miao's defensive strategy, more and more cars lined up behind him.

By the time the race reached the 5th lap, five cars were already blocked behind Qin Miao.

Actually, by the third lap, the Red Bull team noticed the track conditions improving and had Gasly pit to change to intermediate tires.

After switching to intermediates, Gasly's speed on the straights indeed improved significantly, but in the corners, his car frequently locked up and experienced understeer, making it even slower than full wets overall.

However, since it wasn't raining anymore and the track conditions improved as the race went on, Gasly's speed increase was only a matter of time.

By lap 7, even without the safety car ahead, many spectators viewing the chain of nearly 10 cars felt like they were still watching a safety car train.

And Qin Miao was the safety car.

Behind Qin Miao, Leclerc felt like Verstappen, who wasn't satisfied with the safety car's slow pace.

By lap 9, some areas of the uphill section in the first timing segment already showed dry patches on the track.

By lap 11, most of the track had visible racing lines, but still, no one was willing to change tires.

Partly because of the Monte Carlo circuit's characteristics, and also because the dry spots were only just the racing line.

If you pit to change tires seeing the racing lines, your out-lap may be faster, even much faster than the car ahead, but since the water outside the lines hasn't dried, overtaking the car ahead would mean your dry tires would touch the water.

Then you'll face quick tire cooling, graining, failure to brake properly, and understeer issues.

So, even with a set of dry tires that are 5 seconds faster per lap, as long as there's water on Monte Carlo, you can't overtake the car ahead.

Another crucial reason is Qin Miao spent 11 laps bottling up all the drivers behind him.

Among the drivers behind him, the largest gap to the car ahead was only 1.7 seconds.

Moreover, due to track conditions, drivers rarely swapped positions.

In this unusual state, pitting to change tires and dropping out wouldn't mean just three or four positions lost.

For instance, the 10th place driver pitting would definitely drop to the last place.

The only good pit window is for drivers outside the top ten.

They could pit and change to dry tires while having hardly any cars ahead.

They could focus on their lap times.

When the drivers ahead pit, they could use the gained speed and time to attempt an undercut.

Despite this, no one dared pit during this time.

No one knew how the dry-looking track would behave with dry tires.

While the drivers behind Qin Miao grumbled, by lap 14, the situation finally turned.

Frankie told Qin Miao through the team TR: "Don't hold back the cars too much, release the cars behind slightly. You need to create a suitable pit window for yourself."