[TS] Formula One Streamer - Chapter 156
The voices of the excited commentators flowing through the speakers pierced through my perfectly insulated helmet and reached my ears.
[Hamilton takes pole position! He moves up to 1st place.]
[In the end, the battle for pole position becomes a war of the stars between Hamilton and Verstappen.]
[That’s true, but the competition from the remaining four teams is also quite fierce. Renyo and McLaren are neck and neck, and Red Bull and Ferrari are also battling it out.]
-Hamilton has updated his record to 55 seconds. Is Hamilton amazing or is Binz amazing… At this point, I feel like it doesn’t make sense to distinguish between the two.
As Q3 of the qualifying was in full swing, Enrique spoke to me while I was waiting for the right moment to depart from the pit.
“Both are amazing. The race car is amazing, and Hamilton, who qualifies to drive Binz’s race car, is also amazing.”
I took a deep breath and calmly replied, quickly redirecting my focus elsewhere. With little time left in Q3, there was no room for distraction. Even though I was stationary in the pit, this waiting time wouldn’t last long. Soon, it would be time to jump into the colosseum.
“It’s about time to go out…”
-Yes, get ready. If Ricciardo passes this lap, let’s follow him back.
Enrique’s instruction to return to the track following Ricciardo, who was in the third sector. While I could have aimed for a moment of clean air, he chose to race alongside another car ahead.
This choice inevitably came with the limitation of being influenced by the movements of the car in front. In qualifying, where extracting the fastest lap time is crucial, reacting to the actions of the car ahead is a significant constraint. It’s highly likely that not only will I be unable to drive freely, but I won’t even be able to manage my pace, and naturally, I won’t be able to unleash my full power.
However, I did not have any doubts.
“Let me know when we enter the straight.”
I trusted Enrique purely because he was my colleague, so I believed him blindly without any basis. Rather, I understood and believed in him because there was ample reasoning behind his choice.
On the surface, it looks like a very unreasonable and irrational instruction. The right choice would be to participate in the race steadily at a time when the track situation is comfortable and unleash one’s full potentia, yet his instruction was entirely contrary to that.
However, running with someone in front of me isn’t solely fraught with risk. As there is risk, there is also potential return, and this was no exception.
Running close to another race car ahead does create constraints. It is difficult to manage pace, and if the car in front intentionally slows down, there’s a high-risk obligation to comply, but behind every risk lies a return.
If there’s a race car ahead, it serves as a variable. The presence of a variable leads to the possibility of creating more variables, which means there’s an opportunity to overturn disadvantages.
So, what’s advantageous about running behind another vehicle? It’s the reduction of air resistance.
It’s not difficult. One simply needs to recall that in racing genres like F1, there’s a technique called slipstreaming, commonly known as “drafting.”
By staying close behind a car in front, one can leverage the air resistance the front car faces and gain faster acceleration while conserving tire wear. Originally, the dirty air created behind a vehicle would be so damaging that it would render sticking close to the rear impossible, but in this world, all vehicles are required by the FIA to be designed in such a way that minimizes dirty air generation, thus constraining its use significantly less.
This policy, unwelcome to powerful teams that are structurally bound to be ahead, was relatively favorable for underperforming teams like Ferrari. It provided another means for underperforming teams to overcome the limitations of their race cars through the discretion of their drivers.
Then, one might question whether it would be most efficient to follow Hamilton, who is in 1st place.
To put it straightforwardly, that is impossible. Due to performance differences in race cars, even utilizing slipstreaming does not guarantee that one can maintain a following speed, plus Hamilton, in 1st place, only needs to focus on defending, making it unnecessary for him to run fast and tow vehicles behind him.
In the first place, if Binz and Hamilton decide to focus solely on defense, there aren’t any teams capable of breaking through.
Hence, Enrique seemed to decide to utilize Maniel Ricciardo from Red Bull, believing that the performance difference wouldn’t be significant enough to impede pace control.
Of course, following closely behind without a single mistake to gain an advantage, or capturing a moment of opportunity to dive in and overtake, both were no easy feats. In fact, reading the movements of the opponent rather than oneself made the difficulty even greater, to say that it was easy would be an understatement.
Nevertheless, it was something that had to be done. The race car had done its part, and now the only remaining variable was the driver, me.
At this moment, I wasn’t the only one believing. I believed in Enrique, and he believed in me. It was instruction and acknowledgment that could only exist because we trusted one another.
I raised my head to check the standings. The ranking displayed on the electronic scoreboard in white letters on a black background was the strongest evidence that his choice made sense. No, it indicated that it was a choice that I had no option but to make.
Name / Time / Team
① Lewis Hamilton 0:55:790 – Mercedes Binz
:
:
⑧ Maniel Ricciardo 0:59:001 +3.211 – Red Bull
⑨ Yihyun Yoo 0:59:887 +4.097 – Ferrari
⑩ Charles Leclerc 1:00:101 +4.311 – Ferrari
Right. To put it nicely, it’s a choice, but in reality, it’s forced. However, if I think positively, the conditions to utilize slipstreaming as an “underperforming team” are incredibly perfect.
Should I be thankful that I’m in 10th place out of 10…?
“Hah… this isn’t even funny…”
I forced a smile as I settled into the fact that there’s a silver lining amidst the misfortune.
Up there, Binz was leading with a considerable margin. Given that Binz was maintaining such an overwhelming difference, aiming for 1st place now felt like a fanciful dream. It wasn’t a matter of overcoming through physical means. Unless today was a main event with many variables. It was impossible to confront the physical limits of the race car, the “machine,” in a qualifying session overflowing with track space.
In other words, this problem is a battle taking place on the track but must be resolved outside of it.
Thus, we naturally had no choice but to set our target within the mid-tier…
-You really can’t know until you try. The mid-tier isn’t as easy as I thought.
I knew that… yet again, qualifying was far from a breeze like practice runs. Other teams began to unleash the prowess they had kept hidden until now, completely reversing the circumstances.
The teams that had been faster than us during practice were pulling further ahead, and though the gap wasn’t substantial, the team that had been slower than us, Red Bull, had now overtaken us. The mountain we needed to climb had grown steeper.
“Well, at least we are hanging in there. We only dropped 2 places from 7th to 8th.”
-Yeah, that’s true. Ah! Ricciardo has about 300m left until entry. I’ll signal you soon, it’ll be quick.
Despite the tension, Enrique’s voice was filled with conviction. I adjusted my posture and gripped the steering wheel tightly with my gloved hands, igniting my determination.
-I’m entering now!
“I’ll start!”
The race car began to move in sync with Ricciardo’s entry timing at the tip of my toes. The engine roared and reverberated over the pit. The engine, roaring to match the pit speed limit, was louder than ever before.
I nervously soothed the pulsating engine that seemed to anxiously beg to be unleashed like a wild horse, sliding out of the pit.
I could see the exit, and I heard the sound of Ricciardo’s engine approaching with a growl from behind. As the distance closed, the engine noise seemed to swell in gradient.
I started counting in my head.
One… two… three…
“Now!”
Whoosh!!!
I burst out of the pit at full speed, just barely crossing the penalty line. At the moment my speed peaked, Ricciardo’s tail appeared almost at the same velocity.
The sound of Ricciardo’s race car swooshing past me sent a shiver down my spine.
-You’ve followed closely. Prepare for the corner.
I can only describe it as a perfect timing and distance.
The first button has been perfectly fastened. Now I can think about the next step.
“I’ll focus.”
Even though I’m not joining the competition for 1st place today, that will only be the case for today. In tomorrow’s main event, I’ll ensure Ferrari’s name is included.
I began a desperate run-up.