How Did I Become an F1 Driver?

Chapter 950 - 374: All Thanks to the Competition’s Support

Fortunately, the collision wasn’t serious, and Leclerc’s car suspension wasn’t affected, so he could still return to the track.However, the problem was that a large piece of Leclerc’s left front wing was knocked off.

With such damage, Leclerc had to enter the pit lane to replace the front wing.

Although the Ferrari team took only 8.8 seconds to change tires and replace the front wing, when Leclerc came out of the pits, he was directly behind Yuki Tsunoda and ranked 8th.

In the 55th lap, Qin Miao caught up with Bottas.

Facing Qin Miao, Bottas was quite determined to defend.

However, in the face of tire advantage, Bottas’s resistance seemed somewhat redundant, and besides, Bottas was just a pure speed track racer, clearly inferior to Qin Miao in both offensive and defensive capabilities.

And in the DRS zone on the 55th lap, Qin Miao easily completed his overtake of Bottas, moving up to the fourth position.

At this point, the gap between Qin Miao and Norris in front was only 7 seconds.

And there were still 7 laps left in the race.

Given that Qin Miao was closing the gap with Norris by 1.5 seconds per lap, catching up and overtaking Norris was just a matter of time.

It’s surprising that Mercedes performed poorly in the qualifying, but nobody expected that despite their underwhelming performance, they still managed to have a chance at a podium finish.

On lap 60, Qin Miao reached the DRS zone behind Norris.

As for Norris’s resistance against Qin Miao, it was basically like a little girl resisting a 200-pound muscular man.

Virtually ineffective.

In the DRS zone, with the terrifying acceleration provided by the soft tires, Qin Miao easily overtook Norris in front of him and moved up to third place.

After this event, the Mercedes team’s pit box, which hadn’t been featured in broadcasts for a while, was finally given some air time by the director.

It could be seen that after Qin Miao overtook Norris, everyone in the Mercedes pit box cheered, and many even hugged and clapped each other.

Even Toto, who hadn’t been in a good mood recently, had a smile on his face.

It’s hard to imagine this is the same team that was fighting for the championship last season, yet now they are thrilled with just a third place finish.

It only goes to show that fortunes change!

Ultimately, the positions of the top three drivers did not change anymore, with Verstappen crossing the finish line first, followed by Perez and Qin Miao.

After Qin Miao were Norris and Bottas.

Leclerc regretfully crossed the finish line in sixth place.

The final rankings for this race were as follows:

P1: Verstappen +26 (fastest lap)

P2: Perez +18

P3: Qin Miao +14

P4: Norris +12

P5: Bottas +10

P6: Leclerc +8

P7: Yuki Tsunoda +6

P8: Vettel +4

P9: Magelsen +2

P10: Stroll +1

Driver’s points ranking after this race is as follows:

1: Leclerc .85

2: Qin Miao .56

3: Verstappen .51

4: Perez .44

5: Sainz .32

6: Norris .30

7: O’Kang .28

8: Hamilton .25

9: Bottas .22

10: Magelsen .16

11: Ricardo .8

12: Tsunoda .8

13: Zhou Guanyu .6

14: Gasly .5

15: Vettel .4

16: Alonso .1

17: Stroll .1

Team’s overall points ranking:

1: Ferrari: 117

2: Red Bull: 95

3: Mercedes: 81

4: McLaren: 38

5: Alpine: 29

6: Alfa Romeo: 28

7: Haas: 16

8: Toro Rosso: 13

9: Aston Martin: 5

10: Williams: 0

It was quite unfortunate for Zhou Guanyu in this race because his starting position wasn’t ideal, and his team made a wrong decision on the timing for a tire change.

As a result, he only entered the pits to change tires a lap after other drives did, missing out on the best opportunity to change tires.

So, regrettably, Zhou Guanyu was unable to score any points in this race.