After two laps of battling, the gap between Hamilton and Qin Miao had reached 10 seconds, and it seemed likely to continue increasing.
Verstappen was beginning to grow impatient.
Although the wear rate between the medium and hard tires in Bahrain wasn't vastly different, it wasn't non-existent either. As time went on, Verstappen's speed would continue to decrease, and the longer it took him to overtake Qin Miao, the smaller the chance of catching up to and overtaking Hamilton became.
After defending against Verstappen for two laps, Qin Miao had already figured out some of Verstappen's attacking habits, giving him confidence for the third lap of defense.
...
In the Mercedes pit, Toto, who had been full of worry, looked at Qin Miao's data in front of him, with his mouth almost stretching from ear to ear.
Every now and then, he would chat a bit with Qin Miao's race engineer, Frankie.
