Chapter 1072: Chapter 410: The Mantis Stalks the Cicada, Unaware of the Oriole Behind

Then, in the 16th lap, the pit stop window opened.

A large number of drivers pitted, but there was no change in the position of the driver in front of Qin Miao.

However, by the 24th lap, Verstappen, who had pitted on the 13th lap, had also broken free from the constraints of the slower cars behind him and was now behind Qin Miao.

Coincidentally, at this moment, Qin Miao also caught up with his teammate Hamilton.

Qin Miao straightforwardly said over the team radio to Frankie, "Give me DRS."

Frankie, being one of the people in the entire Mercedes team who understood Qin Miao the most, knew exactly what Qin Miao wanted after hearing these words.

So Frankie directly turned to look at Hamilton’s race engineer.

After a brief communication between the two, Hamilton’s speed remained unchanged, but when Qin Miao entered the DRS zone behind him, Hamilton didn’t make any defensive moves and instead ran his own pace along the normal cornering lines.

On Qin Miao’s side, he comfortably enjoyed the slipstream and DRS of Hamilton on the straight, while using the inside line to block Verstappen behind him in the corners.

Now it was Verstappen who was cursing the driver in front for being detrimental to both himself and others.

After all, Qin Miao’s opponents were not just Verstappen; there were also Leclerc and even Sainz.

Blocking Verstappen here, Qin Miao was essentially handing over the top podium to the two Ferrari drivers.

Verstappen couldn’t even figure out Qin Miao’s motive for doing this.

As for Qin Miao’s motive...

His thought was actually quite simple.

At this moment, his teammate Hamilton had not yet pitted for a tire change.

So his teammate was currently behind him.

Instead of overtaking Hamilton now and facing a solo battle against the clearly faster Verstappen,

it would be better to stick behind his teammate before he pitted, using Hamilton’s DRS for defense against Verstappen behind.

Given Verstappen’s personality, as long as he senses any slight flaw when you are leading, he will surely pounce like a mad dog and attempt to overtake you, seizing any opportunity.

This way, Verstappen’s tire wear would definitely be greater than in normal driving or when attacking just one person.

Although Verstappen was using a set of hard tires at the moment, excessive wear would certainly occur under this relentless attack.

By the time Hamilton had pitted, defending against Verstappen alone wouldn’t be too burdensome.

As for Verstappen’s thought that this impasse with him was benefiting the two Ferrari drivers upfront,

Qin Miao had indeed considered this.

But sometimes the F1 track is much like a battlefield; you can’t be fixated on the gains and losses of one skirmish or one place.

Aside from the final standings of this race, Sainz only had a total of 88 points on the drivers’ leaderboard. Even if Sainz won several upcoming races consecutively, he would still need at least 3 races to catch up with me, and I’d have to score zero in those races.

Not to mention that Sainz’s teammate, Leclerc, has noticeably stronger racing skills and capabilities than Sainz.

So rather than letting Sainz score more points, Qin Miao preferred to restrain Verstappen, letting him score fewer points.

And Leclerc...

The speed of Qin Miao’s car was not as fast as his, and at this moment, he was not caught in his hands. Qin Miao really had no effective solution for Leclerc.

Back to the track.

At this point, Verstappen was being led into frustration by Qin Miao.

Because Qin Miao would always leave a seemingly exploitable flaw at the corner exits that made it appear possible to overtake him in one go.

Once or twice, Verstappen might hold back, but the more it happened, the more likely Verstappen would lose his cool.

Then, either he would be forced off the track by Qin Miao or be blocked at the corner exit.

The most crucial part was that throughout the process, Qin Miao remained in a position that allowed him to conserve his energy, with his tires barely experiencing any excessive wear, whereas Verstappen was constantly accelerating, decelerating, and braking heavily.

In the 27th lap, Leclerc pitted and switched to the white tire.

Thanks to the efforts of the two Mercedes drivers,

Leclerc came out from the pit lane 1.5 seconds ahead of Hamilton.

Behind Hamilton were Qin Miao and Verstappen.

This meant Mercedes was helping Ferrari in this race by blocking Verstappen behind Leclerc.

The director playfully cut to the picture of Ferrari team principal Binotto right after Leclerc emerged from the pit lane.

Binotto couldn’t hold back his smile at that moment, and it was captured on camera.

In the 28th lap, Hamilton finally reached his pit window, liberating his teammate and old rival Verstappen.

Once Hamilton pitted, Verstappen felt his chance to overtake Qin Miao had arrived.

Then Verstappen was dumbfounded to find that Qin Miao’s speed had significantly increased.

Verstappen quickly realized that Qin Miao had opened up the ERS for full acceleration. Even though the battery would deplete soon, he could still catch up to Qin Miao afterwards.

However, by the 29th lap, Verstappen became further exasperated when he saw Qin Miao slipstreaming with hard-tire Leclerc.

Is this never-ending or what?!

Before this, Perez and Sainz ahead of them had already completed a pit stop.