Chapter 1135: Chapter 430: Dutch Fans’ Targeting (2)
Prema has no reason not to put Qin Miao’s photo in the most conspicuous spot.
Even though back then Qin Miao was wearing a Mercedes team kit.
By the usual process, after stepping up to F1, even if Mercedes valued Qin Miao a lot, he’d still have gone to Williams for a year of "training" first, nine times out of ten.
But Qin Miao was smurfing way too hard in F2, giving people the feeling that an F1 car had shown up on the F2 grid.
So Mercedes just straight-up axed Bottas and promoted Qin Miao.
In the end Qin Miao didn’t let Mercedes down; you could even say he gave Mercedes a huge surprise.
The reason Qin Miao asked that question was that he was worried—if Leclerc’s face alone wasn’t enough, maybe adding his own face on top would help a bit.
"Asshole!" Leclerc rejected him without mercy.
But very quickly Leclerc steered the topic back on track: "I’ve talked to Roxin. Roxin is actually willing to help, but the precondition is that Arthur has to win this year’s F3 title."
Qin Miao clicked his tongue: "Prema’s standards are this high now?"
"What do you think? After producing an F1 world champion, even if Prema didn’t want to raise the bar, they’d have no choice. No idea how many F3 and F2 drivers are trying to get into Prema—this is all thanks to you."
Qin Miao spread his hands helplessly: "You can’t seriously be asking me not to take that world title, right?
But given that, there’s nothing I can do to help. It’ll have to depend on Arthur’s own effort."
Leclerc nodded as well and didn’t dig deeper into that topic. Instead he changed the subject and asked, "Verstappen just got knighted recently, did you know?"
Qin Miao: ???
"When did that happen? I don’t remember hiding out in some remote mountain forest cut off from the world lately."
"It’s internal info, not public yet, but Verstappen should have received a title from the Dutch royal family—either Knight or Baron."
Qin Miao joked, "So does that mean from now on Verstappen’s offspring can inherit his title? Then it gets passed down, and they become one of those long‑standing, pure‑blood Dutch noble families?"
Leclerc shook his head: "That depends on what exact title Verstappen’s getting. If it’s only Knight, then the title is his alone and can’t be inherited. But if it’s Baron, then it’s like you said."
At this moment, the waiter brought over the dishes Leclerc had ordered.
In front of Qin Miao was pasta with lasagna; Leclerc had a black coffee with grilled sausages.
As he twirled the pasta in front of him, Qin Miao commented, "Actually, in our country, only pets care about bloodlines..."
Leclerc: ...
Leclerc was struck dumb for quite a while by that line. Only after a beat did he say faintly, "You’d better not let that sentence reach the ears of the Monaco royal family. I remember they all quite like you, especially Prince William.
If they find out, you might not be able to stay in Monaco anymore."
"If they find out, I don’t care what the reason is—I’m just going to assume you ratted me out," Qin Miao said.
Leclerc: ???
Qin Miao spread his hands: "Because you’re the only one I’ve said this to."
"You can’t do that! After all these years we’ve known each other!"
You could tell Leclerc was really displeased now.
Qin Miao was just messing with him, so he waved it off and said, "I’m kidding, don’t take it seriously."
Leclerc still felt a chill down his spine: "What if you blurt it out yourself someday?"
"Then I’m still coming for you!"
Leclerc gave him an internationally recognized friendly gesture.
After the jokes, the two went back to normal and started talking about all the driver moves in the paddock for next season.
Among them, McLaren Team had just recently confirmed their driver line‑up for next season: F2’s genius driver Piastri.
Qin Miao wasn’t exactly familiar with the guy. After all, when Qin Miao was dominating F2, Piastri was still running in F3.
But given how Qin Miao had ruled F2, even if Piastri had raced in the same season as him, he’d only have been stuck behind Qin Miao, solidly outpaced.
They chatted about a few other things, and the meal was more or less done.
This little get‑together ended there.
But before leaving, Qin Miao patted Leclerc on the shoulder and said, "If it really doesn’t work out, just switch teams. Ferrari might be a very promising team, but unless they fix their habit of doing dumb shit all the time, you might be stuck doing time there for a while yet."
Leclerc gave a bitter smile: "You think I don’t want to? But right now there’s no other team that wants me. And even if I jump ship, I can’t possibly get the same status and tactical priority I have at Ferrari. Most importantly, even if I don’t get great results at Ferrari, the attention I get is no less than this season’s drivers’ champion."
Qin Miao sucked in a breath: "When you put it that way, it actually kind of makes sense."
Leclerc waved his hand: "The reason you never realized this is because you don’t think in that direction at all. You just want to happily drive race cars and get other people’s praise and attention. Compared to a lot of us, you care way less about money.
So I’ll just suffer a bit. I’m still young; I can afford to wait.
Besides, we’ve brought new upgrades this weekend. The car doesn’t have to be slower than Red Bull’s."
"Oh? I’m all ears. What exactly did you upgrade?"
"We optimized the—" Leclerc was just about to blurt it out when he suddenly remembered this bastard Qin Miao was a Mercedes driver. If he said it, it’d be straight‑up leaking secrets and he’d have to pay for it: "The fuck, get lost!"
Qin Miao got up with a laugh, saying regretfully, "Shame, didn’t think you’d actually catch yourself. But whatever, Mercedes’ upgrades look pretty good this week too. Just wait to get blown away by us on track."
Leclerc, who’d looked furious a second ago, immediately switched attitude when he heard that, stood up too, and asked curiously, "So what exactly did you guys improve? Come on, tell me."
This time it was Qin Miao’s turn to flip Leclerc the bird.
After having a pre‑race meal with his friend, it was quickly Thursday.
This week in the paddock, Qin Miao really felt the "enthusiasm" of the Dutch fans on site.
On Thursday, when he entered the paddock for promo activities, the Dutch fans waiting by the roadside didn’t throw trash at Qin Miao’s car or anything, but when he rolled down his window to greet the crowd, pretty much every local Dutch fan without exception started piling on the pressure.
"Go home, Chinese. You’re not taking any wins away from here."
"Just stare at MAX’s rear wing to the chequered flag, yellow‑skinned monkey."
On top of that, some of them were flipping him off, or pulling their eyes into slits to mock "slanty eyes."
...
In short, all kinds of crap were being hurled at Qin Miao—racism, attacks on his ethnicity, and people blowing up some harmless comments he’d made about Vettel to use against him.
Any single one of those on its own wouldn’t have bothered Qin Miao at all, but when everything piled together and crashed over him like a tsunami, it still stirred up no small waves in his heart.
At last season’s Dutch Grand Prix, Qin Miao was also Verstappen’s rival, and he was greeted by the "enthusiasm" of Dutch fans too. He even took the win in the race there.
But back then, Dutch Verstappen fans all thought Hamilton was Max’s biggest threat that weekend, so most of the live crowd’s firepower was aimed at Hamilton.
This season though, Qin Miao is leading the standings. Even though Red Bull showed the kind of pace at last week’s Belgian Grand Prix that drove their fans wild with joy, they still turned their guns on Qin Miao.
If you claim that last season, when Qin Miao repeatedly kept Verstappen locked behind him, the shock he gave these Dutch fans has nothing to do with this, nobody’s going to believe that.
So all the fire from the Dutch crowd on site has shifted onto Qin Miao alone.
