At the end of November, with the end of the 1999 Formula 1 season, the entire team of Prost returned to their headquarters in France on a chartered flight.

It's just that at this time, the faces of everyone on the plane are not very good-looking, and everyone is silent. The two official drivers of the team were like strangers, without any communication at all, and even the seats were very far away.

Team boss Prost leaned back on his seat with his eyes closed, this year's F1 season can be described as exhausting, more tired than when he competed with Senna on the track.

I thought that last year's team scored 9 points and finished seventh overall, but I didn't expect that in the whole season this year, the two official drivers combined for only 11 races, and the points were not scored, which became the worst result since the establishment of the Prost team.

At present, it is not only a matter of results, but also the atmosphere of the whole team has fallen to the bottom, Alessi and Heidenfeld have fought in the pits more than once, and there is no cooperation between their teammates at all, and the relationship is not even as good as that of opponents.

If it weren't for the team's current difficult situation, Prost would have wanted to get rid of both of these two official drivers and bring in fresh blood to restructure the team.

However, it is a pity that the current financial funds of the team cannot afford to pay the transfer fee of the strong drivers. This is also one of the important reasons why Prost is willing to take the risk of signing Zhang Yifei, that is, the Chinese kid is cheap, as long as the basic salary is given.

Moreover, there are many Chinese people and the market is huge, and having such a Chinese driver in the team can be of great help in sponsorship.

For example, the team's main sponsor, Acer Computer, plans to cancel this year's sponsorship in the face of such a poor performance of the team. But Zhang Yifei's arrival in the team brought attention and the rising Chinese market, and in the end, Acer chose to renew his contract for another year, saving the Prost team, which was on the verge of financial collapse.

However, PSN Network does not have any market in China, and they chose to cancel the sponsorship. Relying on the funds of a single sponsor is completely impossible to cover the expenses of the team.

Because Formula 1 cars are so expensive, no matter how much Prost saves, the team's budget for next year will exceed $30 million. The revenue from sponsorships and advertisers, plus this year's FOM (FIA Dividend) share, is estimated to be $20 million, and there is a gap of almost $10 million.

The only thing that made Prost feel relieved was that Zhang Yifei brought in the sponsorship of the Kwok Group from Hong Kong Island, compressing the gap to $8 million, but this is still a big gap.

Another point that made Prost feel very troubled was that the French Peugeot Group was very dissatisfied with the team's results, believing that this result had affected the reputation of Peugeot Engine, and they began to consider whether to continue to cooperate with Prost Racing.

After all, engine suppliers want to use F1 to promote their own product performance and reliable labels, so that more people can identify with the Peugeot brand. The result is now completely counterproductive, who would dare to buy the cars produced by such an engine company with a completion rate of 30 percent?

Prost was angry and helpless at this point, and he gave up the cheap Honda engine and chose the Peugeot engine, which is also a French company. It is because of the plot of Greater France, thinking that as a French company, everyone can help each other and build a French team that dominates the world.

As a result, I didn't expect that the team was now facing a difficult situation, and Peugeot actually threw the black pot of poor performance on its own team. Don't they have a B number in their minds, how many engine failures have occurred on the track, and it is all caused by the driver's handling errors?

However, now Prost can only bear these accusations silently, and he is no longer qualified to choose. If Peugeot doesn't supply the engines, he will have to buy more expensive engines from other suppliers, which will make the current situation even worse for the fleet.

This time, his important goal when he returned to France was to contact Camel Cigarettes and Brazilian tycoon Diniz, if he could get the sponsorship of these two giants, then the financial crisis would be solved, and there would be plenty of rich money to develop a better Prost race car!

After a long flight, the team members finally arrived in Paris, where they would transfer to their headquarters in Versailles.

On the other hand, the personnel left behind at the Versailles headquarters were also ready to greet them.

But none of this has affected Zhang Yifei, who is sitting in a racing simulator, practicing on different F1 tracks to lay the foundation for future races.

However, in the past two days, there is an additional Mont Liri track in his practice range, because he is very dissatisfied with the results of the previous few days.

In Zhang Yifei's view, he practiced on the track three times, not to mention that he could catch up with the lap time of the official F1 driver, at least to reach the level of the test driver Emile. After all, if you don't even have the speed of the test driver, then you won't be competitive on the F1 track.

As for the objective reasons such as the first contact with F1 and the unfamiliarity with the track, Zhang Yifei is not within the scope of consideration, and it will not be his excuse.

It can be said that he is highly consistent with Cosell's point of view, that is, only look at the result and not the process! No objective reason can change the result, and the outside world will not care about these messy reasons.

"Kossel, what do you think is wrong with me this round?"

After running a lap of the track simulation, Zhang Yifei asked Cosell, who was watching behind him.

Although the racing simulator has all kinds of inconveniences and cannot simulate all the conditions on the real track, there is one thing that is still very good, that is, the team members can more intuitively see the process of the driver running laps and find some operational flaws.

In fact, later generations of F1 drivers have first-person cameras, which can perfectly see the driver's line. However, in this era, limited by the level of wireless transmission, it is already very good to be able to make a team call without problems, and the real-time transmission of images is basically impossible.

At most, after the run, watch the video and analyze it slowly, it is impossible to watch the driver control in real time like this.

"The timing of the gear change is not good enough, it doesn't match the revs perfectly, don't you feel the power gap?"

The biggest difference between an Formula 1 car and a junior formula car is probably in the power.

Renault's kind of racing car, the maximum speed is more than 10,000 yuan, and now the JS51 racing car, the maximum speed has reached about 20,000, and the horsepower is three times the crushing.

The sequential gearbox can only be said to shorten the shift time as much as possible and reduce the power loss caused by the shift clearance. However, the matching of the speed and the rpm is still up to the driver himself.

Now Zhang Yifei's biggest problem is the habitual low-speed shifting, which leads to weak power when the car accelerates, which affects the overall racing performance.

This is just like the way ordinary people open a manual transmission to save fuel, many times they start to change gears before 2,000 rpm, and this speed range is not the maximum output range of engine power.

If you want to get the fastest power response of the engine, you need to step on the accelerator deeply and pull the rev up to get the maximum power of the engine.

Zhang Yifei shifted gears at low speed, naturally it may be to save fuel or something, but it can only be said that the habit of driving the primary formula before has not been completely corrected. In addition, I am not used to the difference in the maximum revs of F1 cars, and these things need to be practiced to be mastered.

"I feel that the timing of the shift is not precise enough, and I will correct it."

Zhang Yifei nodded, in fact, he knew it in his heart, but some things are just like habits, and it is not so simple to change.

But as a professional driver, you have to make a change

In order to start faster, Su Bingtian spent two years to change his habits for more than ten years, changing from the right foot to the left foot.

And today Zhang Yifei does not have two years to change his shift habits, and the time limit he gave himself is only three days!

Within three days, the gear changes on the racing simulator had to be perfectly adapted to the power range of the JS51 car. In this way, the next practice session at the Montrière track will be able to make another big improvement and catch up with the lap time of test driver Emile.

Even Zhang Yifei still has an ambition in his heart, that is, he doesn't want to be the No. 2 driver, let alone a wingman. If possible, he would like to surpass the current veteran of the team, No. 1 driver Alessi, and become the lead driver of the Prost team!

"Oh, and then there's a little bit more speed, and some high-speed corners at full throttle. Not just the simulator, but also on the track. ”

Cosell emphasized again, he thinks that Zhang Yifei's current opening method is still a bit conservative, which may have something to do with his unskill.

But on the F1 track, the opponents he has to overcome are far from the level of junior formula or F3.

The 20 people on the F1 track are, without exaggeration, the 20 most skilled on the planet. If you want to defeat them, in addition to the strength factor, you must play more than them.

Was Senna's driving skills really better than Prost? The answer is actually no, even if Corell doesn't appreciate Prost's conservative style, and even thinks that he can be called a track coward at some point!

But he still has to admit that Prost is not inferior to the track at the technical level. Otherwise, when he made his second comeback, he would not have relied on a bloody desire to prove himself, and he forced Senna, who was already at his peak, to win the 1993 Drivers' Championship.

"Full throttle?"

Hearing this, Zhang Yifei said with a wry smile on his face: "Koser, don't you know that the Monliary Circuit does not have the kind of maintenance that a professional F1 track has, and many shoulders have been damaged. ”

"You can also turn at full throttle on the simulator, how can you ensure that the shoulder of the corner is intact on the track?"

In the face of Zhang Yifei's questioning, Korsell just replied indifferently.

"It's none of the business with me, you should ask Alessi how she did it. Or if you don't feel satisfied, you can ask Prost to repair the Montrily circuit to perfection and then plant a piece of flowers, do you think it's okay? ”