F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 34 Driving a race car is like dating
Marco was right about one thing: Shulong hasn't quite figured out how to drive the F3 yet.

Being able to drive fast only shows talent, but in Formula racing, speed cannot fully encompass all the elements of the race.

Shu Long has a lot to learn right now. In the next few days, the first thing he needs to do is learn how to accurately convey his feelings about the race car and where improvements are needed to the race engineers.

Formula racing offers far more tweaking options than go-karts. Even the slightest change can drastically alter the driving characteristics of the entire car, and these tweaks are crucial to performance in standard racing.

Marco bluntly stated that he had already found an F3 team for Shulong, but he was not comfortable with the race engineers there. If the current team members worked out well, he would bring them along with the team.

The Carlins kicked out an unlucky guy named Niklas and made room for Shu Long. The driver's contract was sent to Marko on the third day.

Secondly, Shulong needs to learn about tire management.

F3 races do not require pit stops. Basically, you use a new set of tires per race. Unless you have a flat tire, only someone with a screw loose would choose to pit.

Driving fast at the beginning is useless. A set of tires needs to work continuously on the track for 35 to 40 minutes throughout the race. If someone pushes too hard at the start and ruins the tires, then you'll be in for a tough time later on.

Preservation of pregnancy is a subject that can be described as both extremely simple and extremely complex.

It's simple because even if you wrote down all the methods related to tire management in the textbook, it wouldn't amount to more than ten pages, and most of those pages would just be filled with pictures.

It's nothing more than making acceleration and braking smoother, shifting gears earlier, and choosing a more "rounded" racing line to avoid the car being in a large slip angle for a long time.

But to elaborate, this is a rather complex empirical discipline. Different race cars have different characteristics, and different drivers naturally have different feelings and habits.

But regardless of the type of race car or the driver's habits, the only thing they can do to maintain their speed is to keep running and eventually accumulate enough mileage to develop a speed-maintaining philosophy that suits them.

There are no shortcuts.

Ironically, this very thing that requires constant refinement and practice from the very beginning to the very end in the process of becoming a race car driver is actually the simplest part of the learning process at Shulong, where both "friction control" and "photographic memory" are present.

For others, learning tire management is like copying a textbook by hand. It's tiring and exhausting, and it's uncertain how much they can actually remember.

It feels like this kind of thing can't be written down on paper, and there's no specific standard answer. You might forget it all after a while, and then you'll have to copy it all over again. You might spend your whole life repeating this process.

In contrast, Shulong is like a ruthless scanner; he scans and saves the data directly to his hard drive, which is then stuffed into his brain.

For the same task, the first time you get a general idea of ​​the scope, the second time you test the limits, and then you use different methods to compare and contrast several times until you're pretty much done.

In less than a week, every nook and cranny of the F3 race cars on the Salzburg circuit was completely exposed to Shu Long.

Of course, this only applies to the low-temperature track conditions in December.

Marco finally got rid of his bad habit of putting pressure on people with his words. Now he simply ignores Shu Long and, after enduring it for a week, simply announced that he would be on vacation.

If I get angry every time I see that brat smugly raising his eyebrows at me, and then have to painstakingly rewrite a long, rambling speech, that would be too exhausting.

For these Europeans, Christmas is like the Spring Festival for Chinese people. To be honest, according to past practice, everyone should have been allowed to go home for the New Year long ago.

In the past few days, besides exchanging ideas about racing data with these engineers, Shu Long has spent most of his time squatting in a corner and cricketing with them at some evil old man.

There wasn't much to discuss. After driving around for a few rounds, the engineers had a relatively clear understanding of Shulong's operating habits.

The most obvious point is that Shulong prefers to over-train and manipulate.

Cars with a tendency to understeer are more stable, especially when exiting corners, allowing drivers to accelerate with confidence. In high-speed corners, cars can also maximize their traction advantage.

But when entering a corner, the car's response is like a sulky, haughty girlfriend. Especially in low-speed corners, it won't follow you forward even when you're holding hands, and no matter how much you try to persuade it, it won't listen to you. But once you've coaxed it, it will completely trust you and open its heart to you.

In contrast, oversteer is different. Racing is like dating a yandere anime girl. She is extremely sensitive and has a lot of ideas. If you do something wrong, she will cry, make a scene, and threaten to hang herself on the track.

But as long as you grasp the right balance in her favorability zone, you'll discover her adorable, obedient nature.

Both are nice cars, but one is for Xue Baochai and the other for Lin Daiyu.

Shu Long is quite fond of Lin Daiyu and enjoys seeking thrills for himself; the key is that he can actually handle it.

Ultimately, it's because of the dragon's exceptional adaptability to racing!
You could say that Shulong is simply lazy. When it comes to setting up a car, the general direction is often fine, and the details are almost meaningless to Shulong. It's just that he needs to slightly change the way he handles the car and the rhythm on a few corners.

If something can be solved by operating it yourself, then it doesn't need to be solved by tuning. So most of the time, the sentence that engineers heard Shu Long say most often was, "The car is very good, but I think you can be more extreme."

For example, when tuning a race car, a little downforce can be sacrificed for top speed on the straights, because the lost cornering stability can be made up for through skillful maneuvering. This way, the car's straight-line performance can be maximized while minimizing cornering speed loss.

We all drive standard-spec cars, so who can't stay on the line when cornering? Speed ​​on the straight is what really matters!
The technicians initially thought it was crazy to sacrifice their holidays for a single youth training program, but now that they've encountered a powerful mentor who can clearly help them climb the ranks, they can hardly find any complaints.

The key is that there are few problems with them; people practically wish they could be worshipped.

Shu Long has been staying in the youth training dormitory for the past few days. It's a single room with a small kitchen, and overall the environment is pretty good.

Since Marco had announced a holiday, there was no way he would schedule any other classes for the next few days. He simply introduced Shu Long to his future physical trainer and nutritionist, a young woman in her thirties named Elena Muller.

I guess you could say she's young?
Shu Long felt a little awkward about his age; calling her "auntie" didn't seem too old, but calling her "sister" seemed a bit too old.

Fortunately, foreigners don't care about this; they just call each other by name.

A pre-prepared holiday exercise list and diet plan were handed to Shu Long. This older sister was quite easy to talk to, perhaps it was one of the few ways Marco could make amends to Shu Long out of conscience, fearing that he would be driven away by his constant role as the bad cop.

There are quite a few Red Bull youth academy members who couldn't withstand the pressure and gave up on their own. Marco might not only not regret it but would scoff at others. If Shu Long were to leave, his old heart might not be able to handle it.

Along with the items delivered to Shu Long, he also received a complete set of leather gear, including a hat, long-sleeved and short-sleeved T-shirts, and a windbreaker with a removable lining. As a Red Bull youth academy graduate, he can no longer be as casual as before when participating in external activities or appearing in front of the camera; maintaining a good brand image is the most basic work requirement written into his contract.

Besides Red Bull, other types of energy drinks are not necessarily off-limits, but it's best to avoid drinking them in areas with cameras. Even the yellow-canned Red Bull sold in China is somewhat questionable.

However, Shulong doesn't have that much influence yet, and Marco didn't emphasize it in particular. He probably just turned a blind eye and mentioned it casually.

Shu Long was a little dumbfounded when he returned to the hotel from his dormitory. The person who came out of the door was a foreign couple he didn't recognize.

Shu Long would rather believe that there was something wrong with his "photographic memory" entry than believe that there could be such a carefree couple who found it too boring to wait here and went to check out and go play around in the surrounding area.

Based on the conventional thinking of Chinese people, they probably still believe that Shu Long will be practicing diligently here until the Spring Festival holiday. (In fact, Shu Long also thought so before being forcibly released by Marco.)
Shu Long, who had taken a taxi to the airport all alone and found a place to curl up and wait for his parents, received a message on his phone from Zhou Guanyu.

"What are you doing? Are you getting used to life at Red Bull's youth academy?"

"It's alright, the conditions are much better than I expected. The foreigners here really know how to enjoy themselves. But right now I've been forced to take a vacation by Dr. Marco, and I'm waiting for my flight at the airport."

"Mandatory holiday? To catch a flight?"

On the other side of the screen, Zhou Guanyu scratched his head, suddenly thinking of the rumors circulating about Red Bull's practices.

"You didn't get kicked, did you?"

"Go away! It's not as scary as people say outside. Dr. Marco is just a proud old man. Although he can be quite sharp-tongued at times, he's really not that bad compared to the teachers I had back home."

Teachers in China, especially when they need to establish their authority, are eager to belittle their students to the point of worthlessness. They readily utter phrases like "You are the worst class I have ever taught," as if a few points lower on a test would completely ruin their lives.

Of course, there are still some differences in essence.

Many teachers in China earnestly hope that their students will do well, and the purpose of applying pressure is to motivate them.

Marco's pressure on Marco was pure exploitation; even when he couldn't squeeze any more oil out of him, he was still incredibly daring, kicking without batting an eye.

Unfortunately, Zhou Guanyu had been educated in the UK since elementary school, so he couldn't empathize with Marco's actions and felt that none of them were human.

"That's because you're a freak. You can win a championship even with a broken hand. We were all dumbfounded. Birds of a feather flock together. Only freaks can get along with other freaks."

Judging from the words, it seemed like he had been scolded, but Shu Long felt that this kind of evaluation was much more pleasing to the eye than a few bland words of praise like "hope," "genius," or "future."

"People always try to use the term 'genius' to describe my achievements, casually ignoring the efforts I have made. Little do they know that 'genius' is just the threshold to enter this world. The admiration from my peers is the most sincere praise."

The news that Shu Long had signed with Red Bull did not cause much of a stir, and not many people knew about it.

Although there were media reports, and reporters came up to interview Shu Long even when his arm was in a sling, it didn't generate as much buzz as when Zhou Guanyu entered Ferrari.

One reason is that there aren't many large-scale promotional events in China that can be leveraged to capitalize on the situation. Ultimately, most people in China don't consciously associate Red Bull with racing.

Ferrari is obviously a very high-end racing car, but what about Red Bull?

Aside from energy drinks, many people's first stereotype is probably the "Why are there so few foreigners?" series, which mostly involves things like "I pay, you risk your life" that could easily lead children astray.

It only gets a little bit of discussion within the circle; you might not even find any results if you specifically search for it on Weibo.

Zhou Guanyu was probably the first person besides his family to know that Shu Long had signed with Red Bull. The Ferrari youth training program that Shu Long had joined was not only just as prestigious, but even a step above it. Shu Long had no qualms about telling Zhou Guanyu.

Of course, this is not the reason why Zhou Guanyu came to see Shu Long today.

As the crucial moment of deciding the starting lineup for the new season approaches, he has some disagreements with his mother. It's not that he wants to hand over the power to make his own life choices to others, but at times like these, seeking the perspective of an outsider might offer some insights.

"By the way, have you decided which race you'll be running next year?"

"He drove F3 and signed a contract with the Carlin team. Dr. Marko actually forced the team owner to make room for him."

"You went straight to F3?! Wait a minute, you haven't even properly raced a Formula One car yet, and you just got squeezed out by someone driving an F3 car?"

"Yeah, I felt kind of embarrassed, but the old man told me not to worry about it, saying that drivers who aren't good enough aren't even worth pitying for."

Zhou Guanyu on the other end of the phone suddenly didn't know what to say. Should he say that this was typical of Red Bull?

But in reality, things aren't much better inside Ferrari. If you don't meet the requirements, you'll be let go, and there are a lot of people with connections. They are very particular about seniority and background.

If it weren't for Zhou Guanyu's exceptional talent, delivering a perfect performance as the runner-up in the F4 British Championship in his rookie year, and Ferrari's recognition of the huge market behind Zhou Guanyu's rare skin color, he might not have been able to secure so many team resources.

His current problem is also caused by the team's resources.

"Hey Lao Shu, I have a friend who's really torn right now, so I wanted to ask you—do you think it's better to go to a small team where we can invest the most resources, or to stay in the big team, pick up scraps, and bide our time?"

Do I know this friend of yours?

　Guan Yu did not stay at Prema that year. The team itself was much less competitive when he went to Motopark. Moreover, as a rookie, he did not receive much support. Apart from a stunning start and a podium finish, his overall performance throughout the year was mediocre.

　　On the other hand, the three members of Prema have a total score of 1, 2 and 3 for the whole year. They missed a year of teamwork and then ran into Mick, which means they wasted two years of potential. Now, out of personal selfishness, I'm going to make some changes to them.

　　Thank you to F1 Racing Game King, Jincxy, Tian San Di Ba, Jin Yi Yue, Shan He Po Sui, and Copyist mars for their monthly ticket donations.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)