Chapter 415: Chapter 415

Moreover, in those two laps Qin Miao had already completed his task, he gained Hamilton a full three seconds of time.

The distance between Qin Miao and Hamilton is now 5.197 seconds, and after Verstappen overtook Qin Miao in the next lap, Verstappen’s distance to Hamilton was at least 5.9 seconds.

For Mercedes and Hamilton, this is definitely great news.

The starting straight of the 40th lap, Qin Miao faced Verstappen’s attack again. Although Qin Miao still made defensive moves, the range of movement was small, just taking the defensive line to the inside, without more actions.

Verstappen didn’t push to the limit with the slipstream this time, steadily overtaking Qin Miao from the outside.

Clearly, that collision served as a wake-up call for him.

Qin Miao returned to his familiar third position again.

Meanwhile, race control issued a notice that the collision between Qin Miao and Verstappen would be investigated.

Upon receiving this news, Toto immediately made a call.

However, this call was not to the FIA, but to Mercedes staff on standby at FIA.

These people are specifically there to pressure the race control and seek benefits for Mercedes drivers.

controversial collision between Qin Miao and Verstappen on the track, it’s the perfect time to deploy these people.

After being overtaken by Verstappen, looking back, the fourth place Leclerc couldn’t bring any pressure to Qin Miao. Now the only thing Qin Miao needed to worry about and pay attention to was whether his right rear tire was really leaking or something.

But after Qin Miao ran another two laps, the team gave a response: "The car is fine, continue to protect your tires."

At the same time, after two laps, race control also gave the investigation result: the investigation is over, it was a normal racing incident, and no penalties will be imposed on the two drivers on track.

As the battle between Qin Miao and Verstappen ended, the live broadcaster also switched the camera to Hamilton and Verstappen.

At this time, Verstappen was 5.5 seconds away from Hamilton.

In fact, the tire states of the two cars are different, Hamilton’s medium tires have run 4 laps less than Verstappen’s medium tires.

If this pace continues throughout, Verstappen will definitely be gradually left behind.

Plus, Qin Miao’s two laps of blocking directly dashed all the hopes Verstappen had for winning this race.

And on the forty-third lap, Mercedes came up with their strategy, directly calling Hamilton to pit with twenty-three laps left to swap for a set of medium tires with a durability of 93%.

Many people were bewildered by Mercedes’ maneuver, what are you doing?

According to the normal mode of thinking, Hamilton’s car is better than Red Bull’s now, and his tires are newer too, logically, what Mercedes needed to do was let Hamilton continue to run his pace on the track and though the tires might struggle in the last few laps, this way of running is absolutely stable, according to this pace development, the championship is highly likely to land in Hamilton’s hands.

But the Mercedes strategy team thought more, Red Bull had nothing to lose, Verstappen couldn’t rely on the champion position after experiencing Qin Miao’s wall of sighs.

If run normally, as said above, the best result could only be a second place.

So Mercedes strategy team predicted Red Bull’s strategy team would predict that they think Red Bull will pit within two laps at most since Verstappen still has spare old tires.

What if Verstappen doesn’t pit when Mercedes does?

Chasing a set of medium tires that have only run two laps against one that has run fourteen laps shouldn’t be too hard, the gap between these two sets of tires will grow larger.

Moreover, Mercedes strategy team believes in Hamilton’s long-distance pace as they believe in Qin Miao’s defense ability. For more chapters visıt novel{f}ire.net

But Red Bull didn’t think that much.

Because the pressure from Mercedes’ Qin Miao was too great, Verstappen felt that even if he changed to new tires and passed behind Qin Miao, he would get caught and slapped by Qin Miao...

When Red Bull’s strategy team saw Hamilton pitting, they were momentarily stunned, then looked at each other, perplexed.

Damn, how can you do this?

Why did you pit early?

No, why? What’s the purpose of this move?

Red Bull’s strategy group was briefly chaotic but quickly adjusted back and started to study if it’s possible for Verstappen to follow Hamilton’s pace and pit at this time to change tires.

Then they discovered if Verstappen pitted to change tires, he would inevitably have to face Qin Miao again.

In the state where Qin Miao almost developed a keen sense in defending against Verstappen, Red Bull strategy team couldn’t determine how much time Verstappen would lose behind Qin Miao’s car.

Although just after the collision with Verstappen, Qin Miao let him pass in the next lap, no one could guarantee whether Qin Miao let Verstappen go because Verstappen was no longer a threat to Hamilton at that position, or because Qin Miao’s own tires couldn’t withstand such intense defensive moves, or it was due to guilt after the collision with Verstappen.

No one expected that from the moment Qin Miao entered Mercedes and twice fiercely defended against Verstappen in Bahrain, Qin Miao would become one of the decisive figures in determining the championship this season.

After thoughtful consideration by the Red Bull strategy team, they ultimately decided not to let Verstappen pit to change tires, to keep running the whole race with his rhythm.

No choice, if not pitting to change tires, the result of the game still has some suspense, and if Verstappen’s defense is determined enough, he might keep Hamilton behind until the race ends.

But if following Mercedes’ pace, Red Bull really wouldn’t have any winning chances at all.

Because not only would Verstappen need to face the gap between himself and Hamilton again, but he would also face Mercedes’ No.2 driver Qin Miao once more.

Soon, after Hamilton completed the tire change and re-entered, the situation in the field became Verstappen leading, Qin Miao running his pace 4 seconds behind Verstappen, with Hamilton trailing Qin Miao by thirteen seconds and catching up to Qin Miao and Verstappen at a speed of 0.8 seconds per lap.

But this figure wasn’t accurate, because as time passed, Verstappen’s tires would gradually start to degrade, and for Hamilton, with a pair of medium tires that only ran two laps, running the subsequent race was no pressure at all.

So Hamilton’s pace of catching up would only get faster, and the suspense now is how many laps Hamilton would need to catch up to the Verstappen ahead.

On the forty-fifth lap, Qin Miao received a notification from the team that the tire status was well-preserved, leaving some room, and could slightly increase speed.

But Qin Miao didn’t accelerate, still maintaining his tire-conserving pace.

Fiftieth lap, Hamilton erased the thirteen-second gap between himself and Qin Miao, totaling seven laps, undeniably fast.

And this time, Qin Miao didn’t wait for Hamilton to overtake him on the starting straight, Qin Miao knew even if he blocked Hamilton there would be no benefit, letting him pass just like a backmarker wouldn’t lose anything.

So Qin Miao actively let Hamilton pass in the DRS zone between T9 to T10 as if he were a backmarker.

Considered as a favor returned.

What Qin Miao didn’t know was when Hamilton saw Qin Miao giving way, he awkwardly said thank you in Chinese.

After Hamilton overtook Qin Miao, there were sixteen laps left in the race, and he had 7 seconds to close up to Verstappen.

Honestly, seeing this, everyone knew Hamilton would definitely catch up to Verstappen before the race ends.

Now the suspense turned into whether Verstappen could defend against Hamilton’s attack once Hamilton entered his DRS zone.

And worth mentioning, after Hamilton overtook Qin Miao, he wasn’t able to distance from Qin Miao. Instead, Qin Miao managed to follow Hamilton by leveraging DRS, ERS, and the slipstream.