When Zhang Yifei was a poor man in the early days of his last life, he couldn't get in touch with high-end sequential gearbox racing cars, and he relied on manual transmissions to win the world.

What heel toe action, do not step on the clutch shift, etc., these are the actions of showing off their skills for veteran folk drivers, but they are basic operations for professional drivers.

Therefore, Zhang Yifei's manual transmission foundation is very solid, and it can even be said that Zhang Yifei, who uses a manual transmission, is the complete body of his strength, and he really does it like an arm, without the slightest sense of rustiness.

Later, as Zhang Yifei's driving skills emerged, he was favored by professional teams, became a professional driver, and began to come into contact with some event-level equipment.

However, Zhang Yifei was still a newcomer at that time, and he joined some second- and third-rate teams. Although it is out of the range of the civilian manual transmission and comes into contact with the sequential gearbox, those are not up to the standard of the racing level, and can only be regarded as the civilian level.

Because the sequential gearbox is still essentially a manual gearbox, theoretically you still need to press the clutch during the gear shift. However, the use of straight gears, coupled with dense gear ratio settings, combined with the strong driving skills of professional drivers, is enough to support clutchless shifting.

From this point of view alone, it is similar to the principle of clutchless shift in civilian manual transmission, as long as you can achieve a perfect match between the speed and the wheel speed, you can also shift gears without stepping on the clutch.

But not every driver has the general skills of the car god, especially the early second- and third-rate teams in China, which are stronger than amateurs in the world.

Therefore, those civilian sequential gearboxes are equipped with synchronizers, or parts similar to synchronizer functions, in order to reduce the difficulty of the driver's handling. For example, the early BMW M5, and the later supercars such as Lamborghini and Ferrari all use this kind of civilian-grade sequential transmission.

After all, the second- and third-rate teams don't want to become any world champions, and the strength of the drivers is there, making it easier to change gears in the civilian class, and in low-level competitive events, it may be faster than using the event level.

It's like an ordinary person suddenly using a full-frame SLR, maybe the effect you take a picture is not as strong as a straight camera phone.

This is not to say that the SLR is inferior to the mobile phone in terms of shooting performance, but many things do not have this ability to control, and it is better to hand it over to a professional mechanical process.

Therefore, Zhang Yifei is actually quite familiar with the gearbox of Renault racing car, even if there is a problem with the synchronizer, he still has the possibility of manually changing gears with technology.

And now the synchronizer is only worn out and it is difficult to shift gears, and it does not reach the severity of ablation and failure, and it is not necessary to step on the clutch for all shifts, which can minimize the time loss caused by manual shifting.

"Mentor, do you think Yifei-kun can do it?"

Yamamoto Ukyo also heard the conversation between Zhang Yifei and Koser, and knew that he planned to manipulate it manually.

But you have to know that this is a formula car, and you can switch gears dozens of times per minute, and it is simply impossible to do it by manually stepping on the clutch.

To be honest, Zhang Yifei's fastest lap is not slow now, even if he is surpassed by some drivers, he can still enter the top ten and qualify for the main race.

If you forcibly shift gears by stepping on the clutch, not to mention that there will be any serious mechanical failures, just say that the body can't bear it, and it is easy to suffer muscle strain.

Tomorrow is the time of the main race, it doesn't matter if you are behind in qualifying, the final result will be determined when you are behind in the main race.

"For any Renault driver on the field, my answer would be no."

"But if you fly, I choose to believe him."

Cossel's tone was flat, but unusually determined.

Cosell, who has always been very strict with Zhang Yifei and seems to be dissatisfied with what he does, gives absolute trust to Zhang Yifei when he challenges the impossible.

Hearing the words of the mentor, Yamamoto Ukyo felt very shocked in his heart, but he quickly echoed: "I also believe in Yifei-kun." ”

There is no reason, just pure trust, because they are all a team.

Zhang Yifei on the track, after talking to Cosell, understood that it was a synchronizer problem, and he began to try to make a clutch shift.

To be honest, Zhang Yifei did not have any pressure in his heart at this moment, nor was he angry because of the failure of the gearbox.

Because the failure rate of cars in this era is quite high, almost every race will have a few car failures, even F1, or even higher.

Take the Prost team, which Zhang Yifei is about to join, for example, he has not won a single point in the whole year, and so far there are still zero eggs.

Is this a driver too vegetable?

Of course, there is definitely a factor in terms of driver quality here, but it's not the whole factor. The No. 1 driver in the team, Jean Alessi, can be regarded as a French veteran, having participated in hundreds of F1 Grand Prix races and has also won the championship position.

Nick Highfield, the No. 2 driver, is a newcomer, but he is also the world champion of the International Formula 3000, and can be said to be a potential star.

Later, he returned to Sauber to compete with Kimi Raikkonen as a rookie, and at one point even outperformed Kimi and finished on the podium.

So the overall score of Prost's zero points, in addition to the driver factor, is also a problem with the team atmosphere, as well as a problem with the car itself.

PSA Group, commonly known as PSA Group, is basically a marginal brand in China, but it is the second largest car company in Europe, and its strength is good.

As a result, no one expected that Peugeot's F1 engine was really not good, and it was not at all comparable to Honda, which has a rich racing foundation, and it was not as good as its brother Renault.

It is precisely because of the high failure rate of Peugeot's engine and the fact that the drivers are also paddling, which led to the fancy retirement of the Prost team, that there will be such a scene of zero points.

Of course, this pot Peugeot Group is not willing to carry it, it itself wants to cooperate with the Prost team, launch its own engine brand on the F1 track, and show its strength.

As a result, I didn't expect this kind of counter-propaganda effect, coupled with some stubborn actions of Prost, and now there has been a crack in the cooperation between the two sides, but I don't know if there will be a complete rupture.

Therefore, the failure of the formula car is almost an inevitable part of the formula race.

There have been no failures, and it has little to do with quality, performance, and stability, it is purely due to good luck. Zhang Yifei's luck is already good, all kinds of high-intensity competitions and test drives, and the gearbox wear and tear has only gone wrong until now.

If it were an unlucky one, it is estimated that he would have stopped eating on the track a long time ago, and he would not have to wait until today.

Downshifting at the cornering brake and accelerating upshift at the corner, Zhang Yifei always pays attention to the speed of the engine, and in the case of a large speed difference, he directly steps on the clutch quickly, and manually shifts the gear at the speed that can be called the limit.

To be honest, this means that Zhang Yifei has two lifetimes of rich experience to make this kind of operation, which can not be done by any other Renault driver.

Because they were all trained in professional karting, they hardly ran other types of manual transmission cars. And because of his age, he doesn't have a driver's license, and he rarely runs on the streets and mountain roads.

Therefore, it is impossible for other Renault drivers to have such a wealth of experience in shifting gears. You must know that this is not as simple as simply changing gears, and the timing and speed must be accurate to within a few tenths of a second.

Take Zhang Yifei's current speed, his limit clutch shift speed has reached the level of 0.15 seconds, which is extremely close to the current sequential gearbox of 0.1 seconds.

After deducting the error in transmission efficiency, the time gap is compressed to less than 0.00 seconds with pure paddle shifting. If you count the driving inertia of the car itself, Zhang Yifei's clutch shift, there is almost no difference in speed.

But unfortunately this is not an everyday drive, nor is it an ordinary car race, this is a formula car, and the smallest unit of timing is thousandths of a second!

No matter how extreme and excellent Zhang Yifei is, in the face of the accuracy of thousandths of a second, the gap in transmission efficiency will still be infinitely magnified, and Zhang Yifei's lap speed will still drop again.

"The competition on the track today was much more fierce than I expected, according to the data from the event command center, the lap times of the drivers were very tight, and the Chinese drivers did not fly like in the previous two stops."

But then again, Fei doesn't know if it's because of his form, or if getting the F1 driver's contract made him slack. He wasn't very fast today, and you could even feel him getting slower, which wasn't a good sign. ”

Red explained in a puzzled tone, limited by data processing capabilities, the track command center could not give him all the driver data, and could only pick out a few key points for him to explain.

The first to bear the brunt is naturally the current hot player Zhang Yifei, whose lap time is the goal of many people's concerns. The data shows that Zhang Yifei's lap time peaked on lap 5 and began to decline gradually.

This decline is very weak, but there is a tendency to further expand, and because of Zhang Yifei's "slowness", the fighting spirit in the hearts of other drivers has been stimulated, and the overall lap time has begun to soar, and they all want to take this opportunity to defeat Zhang Yifei to prove their strength.

The narrator can know Zhang Yifei's lap time, and the team members in the pit station are always paying attention.

The lap time was dropping, but Korcel didn't have a solemn expression on his face, but he even had a hint of surprise.

Because Zhang Yifei's performance is so shocking, Cowel couldn't imagine that he could really rely on manual gear shifting to be extremely close to the level of a sequential gearbox!

To be honest, even with Cossel's knowledge, he couldn't have imagined anyone who could do this in Formula Junior with a clutch shift. Faced with this situation, many drivers can drive and drive, and if they can't, they simply enter the pits and retire.

But Zhang Yifei did not choose to give up, he was still on the track, using his ability to maintain his speed to challenge the fastest lap.

So this kind of "slowness" has nothing to do with Zhang Yifei's strength, he has done his best.

No, Zhang Yifei even surpassed the best!