The top priority right now is to start closing the time gap to Hamilton on track, then look for a chance to overtake him.
But the rate at which that gap was shrinking was very slow. After all, Old Man's car and Qin Miao's car had identical performance, and the way Qin Miao was closing the gap to Hamilton wasn't that his lap pace was faster, but that his tire wear was lower than Old Man's.
It's worth mentioning that in the last few races, when Qin Miao was looking at the lap time comparison chart between himself and Old Man, he noticed that his lap times and Hamilton's were now about the same.
In other words, even if he didn't have this tire-saving ability, his lap times on track were now on par with Hamilton's.
Maybe over long runs he was still just a tiny bit worse than Hamilton, but in terms of single-lap pace, he and Hamilton were neck and neck now.
But all of that had nothing to do with the current race.
On lap 9, Qin Miao's advantage over Hamilton finally started to show.
