CHAPTER 550: CHAPTER 239: FIVE-STAR POISON MILK

Saturday, the day for the third practice session and qualifying race.

The weather remained sunny on Saturday, and the day’s schedule was similar to Friday’s.

Breakfast in the paddock before eight, team meeting at nine twenty, meeting with the engineers at ten, then a break at eleven and preparations for the eleven-thirty practice session.

In the third practice, Qin Miao mainly focused on testing his qualifying speed, but the final results of the session were not ideal for him.

Perhaps due to the new floor, the car’s stability at its limit was somewhat lacking, which affected Qin Miao’s speed during the qualifying simulation.

After the practice, this information was submitted to the team’s engineers and those at the factory, but the exact solution won’t be known until the qualifying race starts.

Soon, it was 3 PM local time, which marked the beginning of the qualifying race.

In Q1, Qin Miao primarily tested the team’s adjustments to the car’s floor.

In the end, the result was satisfactory as Qin Miao regained his speed in Q1 of qualifying.

Qin Miao advanced to Q2 in seventh place.

The audience had gradually gotten used to Qin Miao’s style of not giving his all until the last lap of Q3 in qualifying.

Although some people have criticized this approach as risky and prone to crashes.

But at least so far, Qin Miao hasn’t suffered any major losses because of it.

Soon, Qin Miao also smoothly advanced in Q2 in fifth place.

Given the strong performance of the Mercedes car and Qin Miao’s skill, failing to advance would indeed be unusual.

Notably in Q2, Verstappen and Perez, the two Red Bull drivers, set their fastest lap times on soft tires.

While Qin Miao and Hamilton used medium tires.

This suggests that in the main race tomorrow, Red Bull plans to make a move on Mercedes right at the start.

In Q3, Qin Miao had two sets of brand-new soft tires and still retained hard, medium, and soft tires for the main race.

Even though Qin Miao planned to start on medium tires, his excellent tire management allowed him to save a set of medium tires, having used only one set during practice.

Qin Miao seems to be particularly fond of being over-prepared when it comes to tire management.

In the first lap of Q3, Gasly was the first to come out.

Then followed by the two Red Bulls and the two Alpines, and lastly the two Mercedes.

Although the Hengelo track is relatively short, making overtaking and yielding inconvenient, at Q3 there weren’t many cars on the track, and since Qin Miao was out with other drivers, he didn’t encounter any slow cars during the first flying lap of Q3.

After completing the first flying lap of Q3, Qin Miao temporarily placed fourth, right behind Perez, with a gap of 0.1 seconds between them.

Qin Miao’s fans were calm about his position without finding it surprising.

Supporting Qin Miao has this perk; during qualifying, until the last moment, you never know Qin Miao’s true single-lap speed.

So there is always an anticipation for Qin Miao’s lap times.

After completing the first flying lap and returning to the garage, Qin Miao asked Frankie to pull up Verstappen’s recent flying lap, while comparing it with his lap on another screen.

However, due to time constraints, Frankie’s provided screens were merely two videos played together, with a slight time-axis difference, but this didn’t hinder a driver of Qin Miao’s caliber.

Qin Miao mainly wanted to see how Verstappen completed the lap and whether there were any differences with his driving style.

After reviewing Verstappen’s video, Qin Miao also checked his teammate’s footage.

Verstappen’s video was a broadcast excerpt, while the Old Man’s was directly from the on-board storage card given to Qin Miao.

Comparing the driving styles of two top drivers, Qin Miao spent all his time between two flying laps.

With about two minutes and forty seconds left on the Q3 clock, Frankie sent Qin Miao back out.

But as soon as the last flying lap of Q3 began, all the drivers, including Qin Miao, realized that the track conditions had worsened, with grip noticeably reduced.

It was likely due to a drop in track temperature.

Through the live broadcast feed, Hamilton and Verstappen both clocked yellow sectors in the first sector of their final lap.

Although Verstappen clocked a green in the second sector, he still couldn’t match Hamilton’s normal second sector speed.

Hamilton’s run was simpler, with yellow sectors across the board on his final flying lap, and even though Verstappen clocked green in the last two sectors, he was still 0.4 seconds slower than Hamilton, ultimately crossing the line in second place.

Qin Miao was rather unfortunate; despite clocking green in all three sectors of the last lap and being 0.2 seconds faster than his first lap,

his position didn’t change as Perez also improved by 0.2 seconds in his final lap.

Amidst the commentators’ regretful comments, Qin Miao finished the qualifying session in fourth place.