CHAPTER 562: CHAPTER 244: HAMILTON DEFENSE OVERVIEW

Unlike the smooth progress of his teammate, Hamilton lost his clean air after three laps following his pit stop, finding Mick ahead of him, and the gap between them was only 1.2 seconds.

Hamilton now needs to figure out how to overtake Bic in front of him.

On lap 26, Qin Miao caught up to within 2 seconds behind Gasly, who hadn’t pitted yet, and the top three drivers ahead of Qin Miao still showed no signs of pitting. Thus, Qin Miao’s express train in this race ends here.

Qin Miao now has to rely on his car’s superior performance to attack while dealing with the dirty air.

Meanwhile, Hamilton made successive overtakes over these laps, first passing Mick, then overtaking Latifi, and now he finds himself behind Yuki Tsunoda.

Hamilton and Qin Miao are now separated only by Yuki Tsunoda.

However, the time gap between them is still quite large.

A full 8 seconds.

At this moment, the two leading drivers start considering whether to make a pit stop.

Because the two Mercedes drivers behind are chasing fiercely.

In clean air, Qin Miao is closing the gap to O’Kang by 2 seconds per lap, while Hamilton is closing by 2.3 seconds per lap in clean air.

Now the two of them are quickly reducing the gap to the drivers in front.

But both drivers have concerns, first O’Kang knows his biggest competitor right now is Vettel behind him.

Pitting could lead to losing position due to possible errors by the team’s engineers during the tire change.

Vettel, in fact, wants to play like the two Mercedes drivers, opting to pit once there’s enough space behind him.

However, he doesn’t have such conditions behind him, as Sainz is 14.7 seconds and Alonso is 17.7 seconds behind Vettel at the moment.

If he pits now, trying an undercut, he would most likely end up behind Alonso.

As O’Kang’s teammate, Alonso will certainly defend vigorously against Vettel before his pit stop, as expected.

Therefore, Vettel can only hang on like O’Kang on the track, waiting to see whose tires give way first.

On lap 28, Qin Miao caught up within the DRS zone behind Gasly, with the gap between them around 0.7 seconds.

On the main straight of lap 29, Qin Miao stuck closely behind Gasly after the corner, and with much advantage, overtook Gasly effortlessly on the outside line with better tires.

After being overtaken by Qin Miao, Gasly finally chose to pit on the next lap.

Upon exiting the pits, he was ahead of Mick Schumacher, gaining 7.9 seconds of clean air.

Obviously, Gasly has completely excluded Qin Miao from his target list for this race.

And his early pit stop was intended to leapfrog Alonso and Sainz in front.

Whether these two drivers will follow suit on the next lap after seeing Gasly’s pit stop and prevent being undercut remains unknown.

However, by lap 30, neither Alonso nor Sainz chose to pit.

On lap 32, Hamilton, who was chasing Yuki Tsunoda for several laps finally overtook him and reached 11 seconds behind Qin Miao.

The additional 3-second delay was mainly due to wasting time battling Tsunoda.

At this moment, Qin Miao was 10 seconds behind Alonso.

Even though Qin Miao was running the race normally without pushing his tires, he was reducing the gap to the leading O’Kang by 1 second per lap.

It is worth mentioning that Qin Miao had completed the undercut against Sainz, with a gap of only 14 seconds. If Sainz were to pit, Qin Miao would find himself ahead of Sainz, ensuring a minimum podium finish within Qin Miao’s grasp.

The race has reached this point, where the two Mercedes drivers need to fully utilize the clean air in front of them.

On lap 33, Sainz finally couldn’t hold on, and with his podium tangible, chose to pit for tires.

He exited the pit in fifth place, 6 seconds behind Qin Miao, and Hamilton’s former 10 seconds of clean air quickly turned into 4 seconds.

To be honest, upon seeing Sainz ahead of him, Hamilton, who had been chasing Qin Miao for half the race, was nearly furious.

At this moment, the seven-time world champion felt as though everyone was targeting him.

On lap 37, Hamilton finally chased down to Sainz after half the race.

But upon reaching here, Hamilton now faces another issue, which is the difficulty of overtaking on the Hengelo circuit.

On the same lap, Vettel, finally running in clean air behind, chose to pit.

The tire change took longer than expected, 3.3 seconds, leaving him around 1 second behind Qin Miao upon exit.

It seemed as if a pair of invisible hands silently pushed all drivers ahead of Qin Miao aside, queued behind him, helping him defend against Hamilton behind.

At this point, Qin Miao’s rank rose to third, higher than his starting position in the main race.

To prevent Vettel from undercutting him, O’Kang naturally chose to pit after Vettel.