Chapter 1065: Chapter 408: Sainz’s Lifelong Rival (2)

Although this position will be affected by Sainz’s car’s turbulent air during the corner, by the third lap, the DRS will be activated, allowing the lost speed in the corner to be regained using DRS.

Indeed, after Qin Miao moved behind Sainz, Sainz’s pressure increased and his speed improved significantly.

Basically, every lap, Sainz experiences about a 1% increase in pressure levels.

But Qin Miao is not planning to get any closer for now.

Because if he gets too close, there will be an opportunity to make a move.

At that point, Qin Miao might not be able to hold back.

Besides, the points gap between third and fourth is only one point.

Although Qin Miao’s overtaking is always steady, it is still a risky move; there’s no need to gamble the competitiveness of next season’s car for an extra point.

Now, Qin Miao is continuously putting pressure on Sainz and, if conditions permit, will also poke out from behind to further apply pressure.

Qin Miao just wants to see if Sainz can maintain his composure under the enormous pressure he’s giving and bring home third place.

Under Qin Miao’s continuous pressure, ironically, the most comfortable person is Leclerc.

Because of Qin Miao’s presence, Sainz is no longer a threat to Leclerc, allowing him to comfortably maintain a long-distance pace on the track.

As a result, even when the race reached the tenth lap, the track engineer informed Leclerc over the team radio: "Shire, your current lap speed is 0.09 seconds faster than Verstappen, which is a good sign, keep it up."

...

While Qin Miao was playing with Sainz upfront, Perez had already charged into fifth place by the 15th lap, with Qin Miao just ahead.

However, at this point, there was still a three-second gap between Perez and Qin Miao, with 8 laps remaining in the race; based on Perez’s current speed, he wouldn’t be able to catch up to Qin Miao in this race.

Unlike Perez’s impressive performance, Qin Miao’s teammate Hamilton encountered some troubles in this race.

Two Haas cars in front of Hamilton were blatantly forming a DRS train right in front of him.

Even though Hamilton had chased up to within 0.4 seconds of Mick in the DRS zone and his overall car speed was 0.6 seconds faster per lap than the two Haas cars,

due to the DRS train, Hamilton couldn’t gain enough positional advantage in the DRS zone, and he was blocked by the two Haas cars.

It wasn’t until the 22nd lap that Hamilton managed to overtake Mick with much effort, entering the points zone of the sprint race and earning a point.

The sprint race wasn’t long, so it soon ended.

Verstappen started from pole and brought home first place.

To his surprise, Qin Miao saw Sainz at a pressure value of 74% ahead of him, still stably completing his task and bringing the car across the finish line.

When did this guy’s mentality become so good? Despite the immense pressure, he didn’t make any mistakes on the track.

Although it was a bit of a pity that Sainz didn’t make a mistake on the track, Qin Miao was quite satisfied with this result, at least the car didn’t face any issues on this track, right?

After the race, the rankings and scores are also the starting positions for tomorrow:

P1: Verstappen +8

P2: Leclerc +7

P3: Sainz +6

P4: Qin Miao +5

P5: Perez +4

P6: O’Kang +3

P7: Magelsen +2

P8: Hamilton +1

Notably, Qin Miao originally thought that Zhou Guanyu, starting from the back of the grid, wouldn’t achieve a good position in the sprint race phase.

Unexpectedly, when calculating the positions at the end, Zhou Guanyu had directly reached 13th place, meaning he will start from 13th place tomorrow.

Anyway, Zhou Guanyu couldn’t score points in this race, so reaching 13th from 19th is already a commendable achievement.

As a joke, Zhou Guanyu single-handedly made up for the car’s disadvantage in this race.

The sprint race’s post-race process is actually similar to the main race.

The top three drivers in the post-race can also receive their respective rewards, but unlike the main race’s trophy, medals are awarded for the sprint race.

Also, the fastest lap in the sprint stage does not score points.

After completing the car inspection, Qin Miao returned to the team house, and during the post-race meeting, Toto was quite pleased as he patted Qin Miao on the shoulder.

At least in this insignificant sprint race, Qin Miao safely brought his car back and also scored 5 points.

Toto was satisfied with this.

As for Hamilton...

At the race start, he had a collision with Gasly on his right; Gasly’s left rear wheel hit Hamilton’s right front wheel.

With the left rear hitting the right front, you can imagine the result, and Gasly’s car was sent flying.

From Hamilton’s perspective, this incident was not his fault. After all, from his point of view, he had Albon on the left and Gasly on the right, and he had nowhere to evade when Gasly moved over, and he had already braked in advance.

But in fact, from the rear view, there was still some distance between Hamilton and Albon on his left.