" So fast! That Flower Crown is so fast!"
"Did they upgrade it to a Class A car?!"
"That doesn't seem right. I watched their race in the second round, and it still performed like a normal Class B car. There's no way they upgraded it to Class A overnight. And if they switched cars, the driver wouldn't have time to adjust."
"That's absurd... 7:53, way better than Tsareena's previous time."
The qualifying time of 7:53 was a significant improvement over the previous round's 7:59.
But...
Shen Qi and Lilligant hurriedly drove to the lift, jumped out, and had the Flower Crown raised.
The ten-kilometer off-road qualifying race had caused tremendous wear to the tires and brakes.
The suspension and shock absorbers hadn't been tuned thoroughly enough yesterday, either, and needed further improvement.
With Golurk and Blissey helping with the heavy work, Shen Qi simply fitted brand-new tires and replaced the brake pads, too.
Despite the qualifying race's short distance, the Flower Crown had consumed over 5% of its energy.
Its normal range on full energy was around 400 kilometers. The way they had just driven had directly halved that range.
And that was without fully employing their Mega Evolution and Dynamax tactics.
Fortunately, this wasn't a T2 Expansion Race. Otherwise, the car simply couldn't withstand bizarre courses or extremely long track designs.
By the time Shen Qi and the Pokémon finished rushing through their work, qualifying was over, and more than ten minutes of the half-hour break had passed.
"Cat!"
Hearing Shen Qi call, Meowstic, who had been watching the screen, answered.
'We're in sixth place now!'
"Great job!"
He truly was happy, but the pressure was just as real.
They had improved by over six seconds from the previous round, a tremendous leap, yet their starting position was