How Did I Become an F1 Driver?
Chapter 120 - 91: Small Power, Great Shock (Part 2)

Chapter 120: Chapter 91: Small Power, Great Shock (Part 2)

"To be honest, you’re almost as quick as our F3 team’s official drivers in qualifying. With your current abilities, many F3 teams would be interested in you."

Upon hearing the compliment, Qin Miao merely smiled politely and didn’t pay too much attention.

Because Qin Miao felt that he still had a lot of room for improvement, he wasn’t very familiar with the car yet, and didn’t feel too confident while cornering, so he hadn’t pushed many corners to the extreme.

If he got completely familiar with this car and the track, and found a setup that suited him, Qin Miao felt he could improve his lap time by about 0.7 seconds.

Moreover, the person also said that he was just close to matching their team’s F3 official drivers’ qualifying speeds, indicating that there was still a considerable gap between them.

What Qin Miao didn’t know was that this F3 team was actually a subsidiary of the Prema Racing team.

Although this team’s F2 results fluctuated, winning the F2 world championship in both 2016 and 2017, in 2018 they didn’t even make it to the top three in teams, let alone this year, giving off an air of spiraling downwards, winning in reverse.

But their F3 team’s results have always been excellent, always a frontrunner for the F3 series championship, with their F3 drivers standing out among the F3 competitors.

And it’s worth noting that Qin Miao achieved this performance using hard tires. Although by the time he made his lap time his fuel tank was nearly empty and the car was much lighter, his tires were also quite worn, with less grip than at the start.

Considering these preconditions, looking at the staff’s evaluation of Qin Miao, it’s clearly high praise for him.

At noon, Zhou Guanyu found Qin Miao and took him out for lunch, but after they ate, Qin Miao quietly footed the bill.

When Zhou Guanyu found out, he naturally complained to Qin Miao.

After taking a break, Qin Miao went back to his training in the afternoon.

After getting familiar in the morning, Qin Miao had a certain understanding of this F3, and in the afternoon, Qin Miao began to attempt genuinely competitive lap times.

After once again buffing his car, Qin Miao drove onto the track.

At first, Qin Miao was only testing the limits repeatedly, not pushing every corner to the extreme.

Testing T3 and T4 on the first lap, T6 and T7 on the second lap, continuously using this method to get familiar with this car’s limits on this track.

This state lasted for about an hour.

After an hour, Qin Miao pitted to change to a new set of soft tires.

...

The roar of an engine sounded in the distance, as a red F3 car with immense noise and wind pressure roared past the fence of the paddock.

The wind stirred up the dust and lightweight tire debris at the trackside, spinning them into the air and then letting them fall back down.

Qin Miao had just completed his first warm-up lap on red tires.

Coming out of T18 after his flying lap, these red tires gave Qin Miao a strong confidence in cornering.

Feeling the scenery flying past both sides of his vision, Qin Miao had a sensation that he was in great form this lap, perhaps capable of clocking a decent time.

With this feeling in mind, coupled with almost a whole morning of adaptation and confidence from the red tires, Qin Miao pushed this lap without reservation, pouring everything he had into it.

When he crossed the finish line, Qin Miao suddenly felt all his energy drained, all poured into this flying lap, leaving him completely exhausted.

With this feeling, Qin Miao knew that he could stop for the day; running more would only add unnecessary risk without more gains.

So, after completing this flying lap, Qin Miao said over the radio, "I’m heading back to the pits."

The engineer, upon hearing this, immediately instructed the team to prepare to receive Qin Miao’s car.

"How did I do?" Qin Miao, still curious during his cool-down lap, asked.

There was a brief silence before a voice came through over the TR, "1:42:601...To be honest, buddy, that’s faster than our team’s official drivers’ qualifying times. How did you do it?"

Qin Miao admitted, "I don’t know, it just felt like everything flowed seamlessly."

It was the truth; during that lap, Qin Miao knew he was in an exceptionally good state, maybe the results would be good.

But he never expected his results would be as outstanding as mentioned over the TR, feeling like he just did his best, and the results were indeed excellent, everything just naturally fell into place.

Once again parking the car back in the garage.

At the garage entrance, staff were already waiting, and Qin Miao even saw Zhou Guanyu, who was leaning against the side of the Prema garage chatting with the team staff.

Qin Miao didn’t pay much attention; after parking, he quickly jumped out of his seat.

After taking off his helmet, he nodded at Zhou Guanyu as a greeting, then rushed over to the team’s telemetry engineer.

Here, Qin Miao could find his last flying lap’s telemetry data.

Now that Qin Miao’s skills had improved, he could understand the once seemingly cryptic tables.

Zhou Guanyu, curious, followed along.

Although because of internal conflicts with the Crown Prince, there was some unpleasantness with the Ferrari Academy higher-ups, Zhou Guanyu was quite familiar with the staff during his F3 period at Prema.

Coincidentally, the F3 crew servicing Qin Miao now was the same crew that serviced Zhou Guanyu back in the day, so entering Prema’s P room, the staff were not only unperturbed by his identity as a UNI-Virtuosi Racing driver, but even warmly shook hands and chatted with him.

When Zhou Guanyu got close to Qin Miao, he realized that Qin Miao was eagerly reviewing his telemetry data.

Familiar with the procedure, Zhou Guanyu also asked the telemetry engineer for a backup copy to check, but seeing Qin Miao’s results, Zhou Guanyu was silent.

Without a doubt, Zhou Guanyu felt he got along pretty well with Qin Miao and acknowledged him as a friend, otherwise, he wouldn’t have invited him to stay at his place.

But Zhou Guanyu only considered Qin Miao a simulator racing talent, which their mutual simulation racing competitions at his home also well demonstrated.

However, looking at the paper in front of him, at the data shown on it, Zhou Guanyu was silent.

Could this hell of a result really be achieved by a sim racer?

Although this result was still in the 1 minute 40 seconds range and couldn’t compare with F2’s frequent 1 minute 34, 35 times, it was achieved with F3.

Zhou Guanyu remembered, back when he was in F3, he seemed not to have done as well as Qin Miao.

While this result could be explained and excused by many reasons, like Qin Miao being in a good state, the track temperature being ideal, the car setup fitting Qin Miao’s driving preferences, etc.

But no matter what, Qin Miao’s result was genuinely solid.

After a period of silence, Zhou Guanyu reassessed his impression of Qin Miao.

He couldn’t view Qin Miao merely as a sim racer; perhaps, as Lawson said, Qin Miao was a genuine talent.

With this thought, Zhou Guanyu subconsciously began to worry whether next year he would have another strong competitor on the track given Qin Miao’s strength.

But then Zhou Guanyu quickly realized that among the Ferrari Academy packed with racers from wealthy backgrounds, no matter how strong Qin Miao’s ability was, he honestly had to go through an F3 season before possibly entering F2.

Thinking along these lines, Zhou Guanyu inexplicably felt a slight relief.

Meanwhile, in his office, Fini was holding all of Qin Miao’s lap data from today, and was faxing it one by one to Lawson.