End of the Century Talented Racer

Chapter 205 Small and Flexible

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix kicks off this weekend at the Baku circuit.Last year's race on this track became a melee, but this year's top three teams are closer in strength, and a fierce battle may be inevitable. Can the defending champion Bingcheng, who has received the most attention this season, win in this race? Winning the game, all of this may be just an unknown.

Azerbaijan Station is a street race. The track was originally designed by Hermann Türk, the queen designer of F1. The track includes several major attractions in Baku.Different from ordinary street races, the speed of this track is very fast, and there are more opportunities for overtaking. It is difficult for the leading driver to run to the end as in the Monaco Grand Prix.

In last year's competition, the field was very chaotic. Vergil of the Leyson team accidentally won the championship, and the most impressive thing in the competition was that Daniel was dissatisfied with Stewart's behavior of deliberately pressing the car and directly crashed into his opponent. The contradiction has become very sharp. The young player of the El Salvador team, A Aifan, was on the podium here last year, which is also a rare shining point in his career so far.

Stewart said a few days ago that Bingcheng may only be the second or third fastest team in the current paddock. Although Stewart still occupies the top spot in the odds list of winning this race, they are facing the complete collapse of their advantages in the past few seasons. In this difficult situation, the results of this competition will undoubtedly have a great impact on the trend of this season.

There is a gap of two weeks from the Australian Grand Prix to this race, but it is still difficult for the team's strength comparison to change much, because large-scale upgrades should continue to be carried out with concern in the future.It is foreseeable that this weekend's race will still be a competition between the three major teams, and Citroën and Porter are expected to play the role of spoilers.

阿塞拜疆大奖赛首次自由练习（FP1）在巴库赛道结束后。冰城车手西维尔做出1分44秒242的圈速占据榜首成绩。卫冕阿塞拜疆冠军的弗吉尔仅仅落后0.035秒排名次席。卫冕冠军斯图尔特排在第四。

Dongsheng did not try to sprint in this section of free practice, and Daniel only ranked tenth, 2.271 seconds behind Seawell.Teammate Santak had to replace the bottom plate during FP1 due to car failure. Santak finally ranked 15th.

As a street circuit, many drivers struggled with the grip of the track in this free practice.Many drivers including Stewart, Easter and Adonis rushed into the buffer zone, causing yellow flags to appear in FP1 many times.At the same time, several drivers almost touched the wall at the more difficult turn 15.Unfortunately, Alex and his teammate Baxter, who locked their tires during practice, were even forced to end their FP1 early.

In the first four and 1 minutes of FP10, Leysin took the top two.Vergil took the top spot with a time of 1:45, and teammate Tesrock came in second behind by 369 seconds.But the latter hit the wall at Turn 0.190 about 36 minutes into the first free practice session.The replay showed that the Leysen racing car suddenly lost control in the braking area, and the racing car collided with the guardrail directly in front of it laterally.Although the Leysin team tried to guide Tesrock to restart the power unit by radio, Tesrock finally failed to drive the car on the track again and had to end his free practice early.In addition, after the start of FP6, some sponge fragments fell on the track, but fortunately, the track staff quickly picked up the debris.

In the last half hour, Seaver, who was using the ultrasoft tire, set a lap time of 1:44 to surpass Vergil and rise to the top of the list.However, since Vergil's fastest lap time of 242 seconds behind was made with supersoft tires, it can be seen that the three major teams still have reservations on lap times.

Odemet, who brought an upgraded car this weekend, performed brilliantly in the first free practice, and Bepena's lap time at the end made the Mexican rank No.3.Zhang Yue had entered the top five with about 1 minutes left in FP20, while Altaïr, Adonis and Alfredo ranked seventh to ninth.

After a practice session, Santak denied that he was a "wingman" for teammate Daniel.Despite Santak's strong performance this season, many people believe that Dongsheng's game strategy is obviously biased towards Daniel. "I don't want to comment on that. I have the same opportunity as him. If I'm on the court, I will try my best to play." Santak said.

Santak also responded to the news that he may leave the team at the end of this season. "I remember the same news every year, but I'm still in the game and it won't be long before you know the real result. I don't want to comment on that either," Sontak added.

Santak felt that it would be a shock to the team if Dongsheng could not challenge for the title at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.According to Dongsheng's performance in street games in the past two years, Santak believes that they will be very strong in Azerbaijan this season. "This is a street race with a different layout, and it is also the first street race this year. Compared to this street race, this street race does not require too much downforce." Santak said, "So far, our The car performs well at any track, so it would be a shock if we didn't do well here." Santak believes that his perfect integration with this year's Dongsheng car makes him look forward to this race. The long-awaited victory is full of confidence.

Santak said there were no problems between him and Dongsheng.Many people in the outside world think that because in his previous game, he sacrificed his game at the expense of helping teammate Daniel, and Santak believes that this group of people wants to complicate things.

"Obviously, I want to get the best possible results, that's what I'm interested in, and after a game it's always easy for people to say we should have done this or that. Even if you win a game, you still have something to do Something more perfect," said Sontak.

"Team tactics it's up to us, who's ahead and who's behind. It's very clear, straightforward and simple," Sontak added. "It's like that in any team. Unfortunately, a lot of people try to put Things get complicated and as a team we always try to get the best result."

After a disappointing start to the 2102 season, Citroen will embark on a major overhaul of its technical operations.It is understood that the team's chief technical officer has left his current position.The reorganization also shows that Citroen is determined to solve the practical problems faced by the shortcomings of the upgrade.The shortcomings of Citroen's car this season include a lack of downforce and straight-line speed.It also exposed that the team's design structure was not as good as it had been led to believe in recent seasons.

A spokesman for Citro told Autosport: "As part of the plan to return the team to success, Citro confirms that it is conducting a review of its technical operations."

El Salvador team driver Aifan believes that it is problematic for his former teammates to conclude that the team's performance has been affected this year because the two drivers are inexperienced.

His former team-mate said recently that he felt things would become more difficult for Salvador as teams had to pick drivers based on their sponsorship money, rather than their ability.

"I don't understand what he wants to say. First of all, he has left the game, he is gone, he has retired." A Aifan responded. "Last year's car was significantly more competitive than this year's. Last year we were able to enter Q3, but this year we really couldn't."

Another driver of the team, Adonis, also said: "I don't pay much attention to comments, but it is obviously not very pleasant. In terms of the way we currently work, in terms of the way I provide feedback to the team, I think I Can’t do much more. It doesn’t matter what kind of experience you have, it’s how quickly and specifically you feed back to the engineers that matters.”

Porter, as a new team that has competed for only three years, is not easy to gain a firm foothold in F1. They have ranked eighth in the standings for two consecutive seasons.This season, Porter's guys ushered in a major breakthrough in strength, but unexpectedly continued the previous "down-to-earth" in setting goals.

Unlike the "Fourth Team" who usually set their goals on the podium, the teams under Porter's leadership do not have high expectations. "To be honest, the goal of the podium is not very realistic, it needs a lot of luck." The team leader said, "Our annual goal is not fourth, and the expectation of fourth to sixth is more appropriate. Considering the mid-stream competition Extremely intense and the ultimate winner depends on continued development during the season."

However, Wesley, who performed well in the opening three races of the season, believes that a podium is a bit unrealistic, and the team's goal is only to make continuous progress. "I don't think podiums are possible, I can only pray for some unconventional situations. Before the start of the season, the team's goal is only to be better than eighth in the year."

Indeed, this season's mid-range competition is quite fierce, and the three mid-range championships that have ended have been won by three different teams.Perhaps the "hard work" behind Porter's "down to earth" will pay off for them.

Compared with the three major fleets with thousands of employees, the mid-range fleet is far different in terms of personnel size.Porter, who buys racing components from his "ally" Dongsheng as much as possible, even has only more than 200 employees. Such a scale is also a "mini configuration" in a private team.Many people will arbitrarily think that Porter will be caught without a fight against opponents with rich budgets and sufficient manpower such as Lijiao and Citroen.

However, the team leader believes Porter, despite being smaller, has advantages that the bigger teams don't have. "Because the size of our fleet is small, we can respond faster when dealing with emergencies, and a lot of unnecessary procedures have been avoided."

"Our goal is not to be a big team, but to be the most efficient team. We are small and flexible, which is our unique advantage." The team leader added.

(End of this chapter)