Car Racing without Money

Chapter 860: Chapter 353: The Future Belongs to Me

"Bei really is a genius driver. In his very first rally event he came up with a cross-mounted tire setup, saving almost a full minute of pit stop tire-change time!"

Red was full of emotion at the sight; he had originally thought of Chen Xiangbei only as a historic-level rookie in formula racing, but never imagined that his talent in WRC was in no way inferior to his talent in F1.

In the nearly hundred-year history of rallying, no one has actually tried running different types of tires in combination during a competitive stage; where on earth did Chen Xiangbei get this inspiration from?

"Saving one pit stop for a tire change does indeed secure a huge time advantage."

"But compared to running four snow tires, the grip of his car is much weaker, which means it’s more slippery and harder to control, and his cornering speed will also be greatly reduced. The specific pros and cons still have to be judged by the final result."

Allen spoke up in rebuttal. As a professional commentator for WRC, when it came to tire configurations for different road conditions, he naturally understood far more than the F1 commentator Red.

This time his counterargument was just as well-founded.

The essence of a car’s cornering speed is actually the difference in grip.

As long as you don’t exceed the limit of the tire’s grip, you can go as fast as you dare.

Once you break through the physical limit, even a Car God is powerless.

Although Chen Xiangbei had saved time on tire changes, his speed on the ice and snow sections would drop sharply.

The merits of the strategy would be decided by the times, not by calling him a "genius" in advance; for all they knew this spur-of-the-moment idea might make him more of a "mad genius."

Facts proved that Allen’s words were not without reason. On the subsequent ice and snow section, Chen Xiangbei’s pace clearly slowed and he was obviously struggling.

The reason why this cross-mounted tire plan never became mainstream in WRC naturally lies in its downsides and flaws—namely, it requires a perfect combination of timing, terrain, and driver.

The timing and terrain part is easy to understand: you must have a stage with complex, ever-changing surface conditions that happen to match the characteristics of both types of tires before you can use this setup; otherwise the speed is far inferior to running a single tire type.

The "human" element is that this kind of tire combination places an insanely high demand on the driver’s car control.

Ice and snow surfaces are already extremely slippery; the whole car is constantly in an ice-skating state. The slightest misstep and you’ll hit a wall or tumble off a cliff; with no grip, the driver’s room for operation is very small.

Basically from turn-in you have to be prepared to trace-drift the entire corner, with the full arc of the corner already drawn out in your mind.

On a normal paved track, the corner radii are the same, and on top of that, the driver has run them hundreds or thousands of times and knows them by heart. It’s just like in computer games like Popkart or QQ Speed—veterans almost all have muscle memory of exactly how to slide each turn.

But WRC uses unpaved stages, and with the added factor of extremely low visibility in a night stage, the demands on Chen Xiangbei’s car control rise to a terrifying level.

Theoretically, for a cross-border rookie, there should be zero chance of success!

But that is only in theory; in essence, Chen Xiangbei is not some cross-border rookie at all.

Compared with many unfamiliar F1 tracks that Chen Xiangbei had never actually raced on, or only driven on a simulator, in WRC he had in his previous life literally run almost every stage, especially famous sections like Monte Carlo.

Perhaps the terrain has undergone some subtle changes compared to the future, but to some extent rallying is more forgiving. Just like the Monaco Monte Carlo Circuit: the ultimate standard for "kissing the wall" in F1 is guiding a car at 300 km/h with millimeter precision.

In WRC you’re only at a bit over 100 km/h and being accurate to within a dozen centimeters is enough.

Adding in the fact that Chen Xiangbei already had nearly a one-minute lead, he could afford to take corners with a much larger margin and had no need to dance on a knife’s edge.

Drivers are not berserkers; especially in complex stage conditions, what they need even more is one hundred percent rational thinking and calm.

With a dozen cars blasting down the stage, as the distance of the first segment shrank, the time gap between the other drivers and Chen Xiangbei was also shrinking.

"Team, what’s the time gap between me and Bei?"

Raikkonen, usually taciturn, took the initiative to ask the team this time.

The ice and snow section was Raikkonen’s strong suit, and also the strong suit of Finland’s drivers. Among the dozen or so top WRC drivers, those from Finland made up as much as two-fifths of the field, far more than any other nationality.

Raikkonen knew he had been behind Chen Xiangbei on the previous sections, but now that they were nearing the end of the ice and snow section, he was convinced he could claw it back.

"Twelve point seven four seconds."

Hearing this answer, Raikkonen’s eyes went slightly unfocused.

He may never have taken a stage win since crossing over into WRC, but that didn’t mean he was some kind of rookie.

Over an entire season of so many stages, even when compared against Leb’s data, the gap on a single split between them was usually around five seconds. Today was the first time he’d found himself more than ten seconds down to a rival.

Was this really the result of the no-change cross-mounted tire setup, or was Chen Xiangbei just this outrageously strong?

It wasn’t just Raikkonen; Leb and Ogier asked their teams the same question, and their responses and reactions were almost identical—their whole being filled with disbelief.

The very top-tier WRC Monte Carlo Night Race—was it really being crushed just like that by an F1 rookie?

No one knew the answer. On the broadcast, as the altitude climbed higher and higher and the ice and snow thickened, a white-liveried Fox RS was charging forward; as the braking frequency increased, the glowing red calipers stood out more and more sharply in the night, as if the car were flying forward on four Wind-Fire Wheels.