If you look at the track from an aerial perspective, the Sochi track looks particularly clean.

Today the weather is cloudy, the air temperature is 14 degrees Celsius, the track temperature is only 17 degrees Celsius due to the rain that has just fallen, the air humidity is 75%, the southeast wind blows, and the wind speed is 8.2 kilometers per hour.

During the period before the start of the race, Matthew had been driving a clear water car on the track to clean up the water on the track.

I believe that after the qualifying session officially begins, it will not be long before the water on the track will dry up.

Originally, Red Bull wanted to wait for Verstappen to finish three training sessions before giving Verstappen a new engine.

Verstappen's old engine could still run a practice session, but it couldn't stand the test of a qualifying and race race.

After three trainings, Verstappen was given another engine, which on the one hand collected data and protected Verstappen's engine durability to a certain extent.

Now that the three exercises have been cancelled, Red Bull has directly replaced Verstappen with a new engine.

Verstappen's engine quota has been used up, so Verstappen needs to accept a penalty for replacing the engine this time.

So Red Bull replaced everything on Verstappen's car with a new one, which was like eating all the time penalties at once.

As a result, Verstappen will be sent to the back of the squad for tomorrow's main event.

In addition to Verstappen, Leclerc and Latifi also opted to replace engine parts on their cars, and were also sent to the bottom of the team.

Then, in the analysis of the three commentators, the qualifying round began.

At the beginning of qualifying, everyone went out on semi-wet tires.

Although the rain stopped at this time, and Matthew was cleaning up the stagnant water on the track in the time before the start of the race, there was still a lot of rain on the track.

As mentioned earlier, the fine asphalt of the Sochi circuit is not conducive to rainwater evaporation and infiltration drainage.

In the first half of Q1, Qin Miao's feeling was not very comfortable, and the track was particularly slippery, which was much lower than the rainy state on the Meiben simulator.

So in the qualifying stage, Qin Miao was skidding while re-acquainting himself with the way of driving on this track in rainy weather.

It is worth mentioning that Verstappen will need to accept a penalty for tomorrow's main race, so Red Bull will give up tactically in qualifying.

Coming out and letting Verstappen fly twice, he ran Verstappen's newly installed engine past the break-in period, and after making sure the engine was working properly, he let Verstappen go back.

Naturally, Verstappen did not participate in the follow-up Q1.

Those who often play simulators will definitely remember the track in Sochi.

Compared to the tracks of Silverstone, Spa Francorchamps and Monza, the Sochi circuit is a bit too unpleasant to drive.

The best feature of the Sochi circuit is that most of the corners of the circuit are 90° right angles.

Running a race here, you will have the feeling of being caught by the teacher and then the teacher will forcibly test your basic racing skills.

In the first flight lap of Q1, Qin Miao finally improved his ranking to eighth.

The reason why it was so slow was mainly because it started to rain lightly again, and there was no sign of drying on the track at all.

Even though the 19 drivers on the course are now using semi-wet tyres to drain as much water as possible from the track, the effect is limited, and there is no obvious line on the track after 10 minutes of Q1.

In the end, Q1 was just a few less rainy corners with less obvious lanes, and Q1 was over, and those lanes were soon filled up again with rain.

Therefore, after the end of Q1, Qin Miao's results were not very ideal, and he was finally promoted to Q2 in sixth.

This is not that Qin Miao wants to challenge the blood pressure of the fans, let them recall the feeling of cerebral infarction, Qin Miao really didn't know that the Sochi track would be so slippery in the state of rain, so when running the flying circle, he was always cautiously testing the limits of the car and himself.

So the final result is not too pretty.

But Q1, just be able to advance, what more bicycles.

In the end, after the Q1 watch was stopped, the eliminated riders were: Kimi, Mick, Giovinaz, Mazepin, Verstappen.

Pan Zi didn't even come out to run in the second half of Q1, no one else was in the car, and the car was also covered with a rainproof cloth by Red Bull's people and pushed to the back of the team's P room.

After a slight break at half-time, Q2 began.

The rain really stopped in Q2, and the drivers on the track started to have a clear line after two laps, but it was still the same problem, even if there was already a line on the ground, the ground was still too slippery.

The gaps in the asphalt are filled with tiny droplets of water, although the cars don't drive over the asphalt as they do on rainy days on other tracks, causing them to be invisible to the drivers behind them.

However, there were drainage difficulties, and after running the entire Q1 with 19 F1 cars on semi-wet tyres, the track did not improve significantly, and the ground was only showing a driving line, with no signs of drying out.

Therefore, after the first flight lap of Q2, Qin Miao did not enter the P room to adjust, but continued to stay outside to run.

Although the water dries slowly, it is not that it will not dry.

As the course conditions continue to improve, the lap times will get faster and faster, and if you pit at this time, you may miss the fastest lap opportunity, so basically all the drivers are running on the track during this time.

It's just to seize that fleeting opportunity.

But one thing to say, Qin Miao still hopes that in the final stage, he can have the opportunity to return to the pit lane in the last flight lap of Q2 and change a set of soft tires to run.

It's a pity that when Q2 ended, Qin Miao didn't wait for such an opportunity.

In the final Q2, everyone also ran on semi-wet tires.

Qin Miao finally advanced to Q3 with the fourth place.

When Q2 was over and Qin Miao got out of the car to move his body, Toto came over and praised Qin Miao's progress speed.

The riders who were eliminated in Q2 were: Sebastian Vettel, Gasly, Tsunoda, Latifi, Leclerc.

Latifi didn't say that Leclerc was sent to the back of the team because he would be sent off, so he ran Q1 of qualifying as a practice race for more than ten minutes, and after collecting enough data, like Verstappen, Q2 didn't run out of the team.

In the preparation stage of Q3, the director gave a long-range shot very meaningfully, and on the sea level outside the camera, the thick dark clouds had dispersed, and the golden sunlight illuminated the sky in the distance.

In Q3, the driving line on the track is even more obvious, and the track conditions have improved to a certain extent.

At the same time, Qin Miao gradually became familiar with the driving experience of the Sochi circuit in rainy weather.

So the speed was a lot faster than the team estimated.

However, at the beginning of Q3, everyone was still running on semi-wet tires.

Qin Miao wanted to change to dry tires, but the team persuaded Qin Miao.

Reyes held a tablet next to Qin Miao's car and said: "The analysis department believes that the water on the track has not completely dried up now, and the water has gathered again during the pause in Q2, if you really want to switch to dry tyres, our advice is to run a valid lap time with semi-wet tyres first." ”

After thinking about it, Qin Miao finally chose to follow the team's advice and walked out of the pit area with half-rain tires.

And came out on semi-wet tires and ran the first flight lap of Q3.

The final time was 1:44.8, 0.8 seconds slower than his teammate Hamilton.

However, Qin Miao had just crossed the line, and before he could communicate with his team that he was about to enter the pit stop, there was a sudden change on the track.

Russell was the first to enter the pits and switch to the soft tyres amid everyone's unexpected gaze.

Well, the team, which was still running qualifying on half-wet tires on the track, couldn't sit still.

Under the effect of the catfish effect provided by Russell, there was no need for Qin Miao to take the initiative to mention it, and the team took the initiative to call Qin Miao back.

But at this time, Qin Miao had just finished the first flight lap of Q3, far away from the entrance of the pit lane, and it was only six minutes before the end of the race.

The Sochi circuit is the longest track of the season, and it takes time to run back, change tires, and go out for a lap after changing tires.

And today it rained again, and the temperature on the track was not high, only 15°C.

The normal operating temperature of soft tires is generally around 90-110°C.

With such track conditions and track temperatures, it is difficult to heat up the soft tyres.

You can't heat up the tires by twisting left and right yet.

Otherwise, the stagnant water on both sides of the lane will tell you why there are three points of water next to the slide and how expensive the F1 car really is to repair.

Therefore, it is very likely that an exit lap will not be enough to raise the tire temperature to a suitable level, and a warm-up lap will be added.

But the problem now is that at this time, there are only more than six minutes left before the Q3 stoppage, and Hamilton's fastest flight lap also took 1 minute and 44 seconds, and five minutes is simply not enough time for Qin Miao to raise the temperature of the soft tires to a suitable level.

So Qin Miao only had one chance to fly in the end in the end.

With the exception of the riders behind Russell, the rhythm of the drivers in front of Russell was all disrupted by his pit stop this time.

And in this, directly in front of Russell is Qin Miao.

Qin Miao even maliciously guessed that Russell's sudden pit stop this time was likely to be deliberately revenge on him.

It was deliberately for Williams' crew to release Russell behind him.

But in any case, Qin Miao still had to fight for it in the last lap of Q3, so he said on the team's side: "Box." After that, Qin Miao finished his return lap with the attitude of running a qualifying race.

Then I came to the P room of the team, changed into soft tires, and rushed out directly.

The rhythm of the tire change is the same as the pit stop tire change in the race stage, if there is a time counter in the lower right corner, you will find that Qin Miao's tire change time this time is only 2.0 seconds.

After all, in addition to Qin Miao, the staff of Meiben also knew that the next time was very important to Qin Miao, plus Monza had pit Qin Miao once, and all the technicians of Meiben were in a state of full strength when they helped Qin Miao change tires this time.

It is worth mentioning that Hamilton had already come once before Qin Miao came in to change tires.

However, Hamilton's tyre change took a long time, because the entrance to the pit lane in Sochi was not wide, and Hamilton came in a little too fast, and he slipped a little at the pit entrance, and the left front nose wing hit the parapet wall directly into the pit entrance.

It wasn't a light blow, as Hamilton's front left nose was broken straight away.

The crash directly knocked out a Mercedes-Benz C-Class.

The good news is that Hamilton's suspension was not affected by this impact.

But none of the tyre changers expected Hamilton to break his nose during the pit stop, so they weren't prepared for anything.

It was only after Hamilton's car was parked in a pit position that it was discovered that Hamilton's front nose was damaged.

The staff in charge of replacing the front wing hurriedly removed Hamilton's broken front nose wing, and then held the damaged front nose wing and trotted all the way into the convoy P room.

It took at least half a minute for him to trot out of room P with a brand new front wing.

And Hamilton didn't have enough time for this delay.

On the other hand, when Hamilton was changing tyres, Russell had already started his first flying lap.

However, as mentioned earlier, the temperature of the tires cannot go up in such track conditions.

After one lap, you have to move on to the next warm-up lap.

As you can see from Russell's results, which he had already started flying, he was 1.1 seconds slower than he had run on rain tires on his first lap on soft tyres.

But by the time he started his second lap, the soft tyres had reached the right operating temperature, and the speed was immediately improving.

In the first time period, Russell was 0.5 seconds faster than he had run on the half-wet tyres.

And all the riders who ran the extra lap were much faster than their original time on the last lap before the end of the race, averaging more than one second.

Sainz, on the other side, went straight to the second time period purple, and the second time period alone was 1.2 seconds faster than Hamilton's second time period.

On the other side, when Qin Miao started his first flying lap, there was still a minute before the end of the game.

It may seem like a minute is quite long, but this little time is not enough for Qin Miao to raise the temperature of his tires after running this lap and run another flight lap.

So it can be said that Qin Miao didn't even run the last flying lap.

On the other side, Hamilton was the same, and by the time the countdown to Q3 stopped, he was only two corners away from crossing the finish line again.

In the end, the driver who took pole position in this race was McLaren's Norris.

Norris was also one of the lap runners behind Russell, and his pole position could only be said to have been his luck and he took his chances.

It is different from the two landlubbers of Qin Miao and Perez.

From Spa in the past, to Sochi today, Norris has proven to everyone that he can adapt to the rain.

In Q3 of the final qualifying session, neither driver of the Mercedes team had a very good result.

And after the qualifying round, Qin Miao's TR was even quieter.

Qin Miao didn't speak, and no one on the convoy side spoke.

For a while, everyone was silent.

(End of chapter)