Car Racing without Money-Chapter 492 - 193: A Mind-Bending Impression

"Xiangbei, good run, seventh in the first qualifying session, pit for tire change."

Odetto issued the pit command, although his words carried praise, his tone remained unchanged.

The reason is simple, qualifying speed often increases with each session.

It’s not just the drivers giving their all, and the teams boosting engine power, but also the objective factor of fuel consumption making the cars lighter as qualifying progresses.

The real battle is still ahead.

Just as Odetto anticipated, faced with Chen Xiangbei’s astonishing speed, the strategy groups in the various teams became cautious, reassessing the talent of the Chinese rookie and the performance of the HRT Racing Car.

Especially the managers and owners of the "Five Major Teams" rallied their drivers, hoping they would increase their speed in the second qualifying session.

Chen Xiangbei’s seventh position is not only a challenge to veteran drivers but also a "thrill" to the leading teams in the paddock!

If a new team succeeds in rising, it signifies the decline of an old team.

Last year, Brown GP Team successfully transformed into Mercedes, almost pushing the Renault Team out of the competition.

Now HRT aims to join the front row, who will become the next declining Renault?

McLaren? Red Bull? Or Ferrari?

In the paddock, top sponsors also face a situation of many monks and little porridge, just like whoever got the Marlboro cigarette naming rights in the past didn’t have to worry about the research funding gap at all.

The paddock has already seen Brawn GP, there is no need for another HRT!

Compared to the 18-minute first qualifying session, the second qualifying session is shortened to 15 minutes.

This means the "window period" to achieve results is very short.

In addition, with only a 10-minute gap between the two qualifying sessions, the HRT Team doesn’t have much time to celebrate, quickly changing tires and doing simple maintenance before Chen Xiangbei gets back into the cockpit, waiting for Odetto’s start command.

This time, most teams changed their strategies, launching their drivers earlier to strive for the opportunity to run two timed laps.

Many fans who don’t understand F1 qualifying might wonder why running a single lap only takes a minute, yet the entire qualifying session lasts over ten minutes, theoretically enough time for ten timed laps, yet they only run one or two?

Actually, for F1 qualifying, completing a full timed lap requires three laps.

The first lap is the outing lap, where the car exits the pit lane.

Due to the speed limit in the pit area, combined with the start line timing point being very close to the pit exit, the car often doesn’t accelerate enough, unable to achieve a fast lap time.

Simply use this lap to warm up the tires and prepare for a full-speed dynamic start.

The second lap is the actual timed lap, also known as the flying lap, where the speed achieved is the driver’s qualifying lap time.

The third lap is the in-lap, as the car passes the timing point, it means it has missed the pit entrance.

Just like missing a highway exit ramp, you can’t reverse or drive against traffic back into the pit, right?

This is why running a timed lap actually requires three laps on the track.

Someone might wonder, even if it’s three laps, it should be enough for drivers to complete two timed laps in ten minutes.

Why is time still so tight?

On one hand, it’s because teams don’t start immediately when qualifying begins, they wait for the track’s grip to improve.

Meanwhile, the outing lap and in-lap are driven slowly, and they need to avoid faster cars on flying laps, thus these two laps take around two minutes rather than the fastest qualifying lap of just over 1 minute 30 seconds.

On the other hand, on many tracks, the tires used for qualifying wear out and pass their peak grip after pushing a full timed lap, requiring a pit stop to change tires for the second flying lap.

The Bahrain Sakhir Circuit is like this, according to data from the event center, the air temperature has reached 32°C, and the ground temperature under direct sunlight has reached an astonishing 47°C, continuing to rise.

At this ground temperature, the soft red tire rubber will quickly melt, sticking like a sticky mouse board and peeling off onto the track.

Only by exiting the pits first will there be enough time to pit and change tires, completing two full timed laps.

Before the second qualifying session started, fifteen cars had already left the garages, vying to be first at the pit area exit.

The position of the HRT Team’s P garage is somewhat awkward, situated in the middle of the pit lane towards the back; when Chen Xiangbei and Trulli’s cars wanted to enter the pit lane, it was already lined up like a traffic jam.

If you don’t want to queue up obediently, then you have to cut in.

On ordinary road traffic, cutting in is considered rude.

But in F1 racing, it’s the complete opposite concept, theoretically the car behind must give the car in front space to enter the pit lane.

The reason is simple, P garages and cars have an official order, and by rule, they exit in sequence.

However, in actual operation, it’s impossible to execute synchronously, resulting in this queuing phenomenon.

In most cases, the car behind will let the car in front go.

There are only about twenty people in the paddock, everyone has times when they exit late, you let me today, tomorrow it might be my turn to let you.

Occasionally, there are exceptions, at this point you have to rely on skill to cut in.

If an accident occurs during cutting in, it’s penalized according to unsafe release standards.