Although after coming out of the pit lane both Qin Miao and Hamilton ended up behind Alonso, facing an Alonso who'd already run 20 laps on the medium tire, it really wasn't that hard for Qin Miao and Hamilton to deal with him.
So on lap 25, Qin Miao and Hamilton once again overtook Alonso and returned to their original positions.
After that, Qin Miao and Hamilton basically disappeared from the broadcast; on Qin Miao's side, this fresh set of hard tires could easily go to the end of the race, with plenty of margin to spare.
And it was more or less the same for Hamilton.
However, Qin Miao's cruising speed was clearly faster than Hamilton's, so by the time the race reached lap 33, the gap between them had already been stretched to 5 seconds.
But the gap between Qin Miao and the Sainz ahead was also 5 seconds, while the gap between Sainz and Verstappen in front of him had already reached a terrifying 8 seconds.
