How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

Chapter 989 386: Half a Home Field

And hadn't we already said we could just hire someone to do this? How did it end up on me again? No matter what, I'm a world champion, right? Doing this kind of thing, isn't it a bit…Qin Miao had barely gotten halfway through his wild complaining in his head when his mom poked her head in from the doorway, pointed at him, and said, "If you don't finish, you're not getting dinner tonight."

Qin Miao: …

Fine, you're the head of the household, whatever you say goes.

What Qin Miao didn't know was that after his mom left, the smile on her face was full of satisfaction.

Even though Qin Miao had already climbed to the very top of his industry, was worshipped by countless people in a glitzy world and had seen all kinds of things, her son, at his core, was still the same.

For the next two days, Qin Miao basically just stayed at home and never went out.

With his mom and his wife both around, Qin Miao pretty much never even thought about housework; he was basically just switching back and forth between training, playing, and sleeping.

And as for "making Qin Miao do the cleaning," in practice, Qin Miao had only been busy for not even five minutes before Qimeng had the cleaning service she'd called show up at the door.

On Wednesday, before the Monaco Grand Prix started, Ferrari publicly announced the cause of the problem with Leclerc's car in the Spain race:

It was because the turbocharger and MGU-H failed during the race that Leclerc's engine lost power.

And after evaluation, they concluded the issue wasn't with the car's design or the structure of the components, but with how it was driven and used.

Basically, the meaning was: there's nothing wrong with the team, it was Leclerc's driving that had a problem.

And those two components were completely scrapped, with no possibility of repair.

But as engine components, once those two things are written off, they're just written off; the original allocation limit doesn't get reduced.

On top of that, up to now Leclerc had already used two sets of MGU-H components.

The first set ran four races, and the one Leclerc had just broken was the second set, but the FIA rules only allow three sets of MGU-H components per season; if a fourth set is opened, he'll get a 10-place grid penalty for the race start.

Which means Leclerc now has to pick one of two: either use the old components and sacrifice some car performance, or open a brand-new MGU-H to ensure his performance at his home race is stable.

However, in Qin Miao's view, this choice was basically a single-option question, because with Leclerc's luck at his home race, if you don't give him new parts, that old MGU-H is definitely going to throw in the towel during the race.

But because this already involved team secrets, Qin Miao couldn't very well go and ask Leclerc about it.

Unlike Ferrari's awkward juggling with engine parts, six races had already been run this season and Qin Miao's car was still using the same engine from the start of the year; they hadn't even needed to change the gearbox.

And his teammate Hamilton was only switching to the second gearbox for this race; as for the engine, it was the same as Qin Miao's, no need for replacement.

Even though everyone knew Mercedes' car performance this season was far worse than before, in the hidden corners that the audience couldn't really see, Mercedes had pushed the durability of their engine to an unbelievable level.

Because of that, not just the Mercedes works team, but basically every team using a Mercedes engine hadn't had a single retirement due to mechanical failure so far.

Meanwhile, some interesting things had happened in the paddock too: after the Spanish Grand Prix, Vettel's bag was stolen. In the end, Vettel used the AirPods' location app to track it, but all he found were his AirPods.

The thief was probably a repeat offender and knew these things had tracking, so he just tossed them by the roadside; as for the bag and everything in it, they had vanished into thin air.

This whole operation really earned Spain a nice big "face" internationally.

On Thursday, Qin Miao left home and headed to the paddock.

Even though Qin Miao lived in Monaco, and whenever he had time in the evenings he'd take Qimeng out to walk a stretch of the Monte Carlo circuit, he was still dead serious about Thursday's official track walk.

Qin Miao had a feeling this might be his only chance this season to stand on the top step of the podium. As long as his qualifying result was good enough, and the team didn't mess up the tire changes in the race, he could use the Monte Carlo circuit's difficulty for overtaking to defend against the cars behind for the entire race.

So even though he already knew this track like the back of his hand, Qin Miao still hoped that during the track walk he could squeeze out an extra 0.001 seconds' worth of advantage for himself.

So when it came time to walk the track, Qin Miao started as soon as it opened and kept walking until the allotted time was up, completing three full laps.

When this news reached Red Bull and Ferrari, people on both sides started sucking air through their teeth like their gums hurt.

They knew as well that with Qin Miao's abilities, if he could pull off another god-tier qualifying performance like he did at the Spanish Grand Prix, they might really not be able to take the win at this round.

So after hearing this, even though all four drivers knew their cars were faster than the Mercedes, the memory of what happened in Spain made them all tense up instinctively.

The most nervous of them all was Leclerc. This was his home race after all, and since he'd entered F1 in 2018, he had never managed to finish his home race smoothly.