The Leadup
FAKE NEWS! The media start scurrilous rumours about a rift between Martino Pozzi of Silva and Kirkus after race 5 in the Ardennes. While it is true that we will be crushing his team mercilessly under our wheels and turning their dreams of glory to ashes in their mouths, it’s nothing personal. We plan to do that to everyone.
Who pays a quarter of a million for a day spa treatment? Or worse, gets someone else to pay it for them? I’ll give you one guess.
It’s not Freddie, who is so busy churning out parts that he looks like a Meccano factory. And telling Kirkus that he ought to sack the mechanics, which Kirkus responds to in his usual warm and fatherly way. If your father happens to be Don Corleone in a particularly foul mood.
Ebony Tyler seems confused about the number zero, and runs the very real risk of Kirkus making a series of TM1 Nybbles on mathematical theories.
Kirkus reveals that “Yes, Virginia, there really IS a Scuderia Quantistica web site.” (But if you’re here, you already know that.)
We need to look at two sponsor deals and are reminded painfully that more stars do not mean a better sponsor.
Before The Lights
Her lips parted as her breath, slightly heavier than usual, departed her body. Warm, wet breath. Her heart beat slightly, just slightly faster, and she thought that she could feel her own pulse, but perhaps she was just imagining it. She knew that she was being watched, but that no longer bothered her. Let them watch. Let them admire. They were relatively harmless.
“By t’skull of Brian Boru, it’s bloody rainin’ again”, she muttered under her breath as she slammed her visor down. “Every bloody time we come t’Munich in August, it bloody rains!”
She could see Gomes a couple of cars ahead of her and smiled slightly. Gomes, she knew, would be feeling even more apprehensive about the rain than she was, given its potential to wreak havoc on his hairdo.
She thought about her team. There was Kirkus in the pit lane, eyes locked on the telemetry readouts from her and Gomes’ cars. She hoped that he’d keep an eye on the tyre temps this time. Max wasn’t there; he rarely was when they came to Munich. Right now he would be lying next to a wood fire in a traditional Bavarian beer hall, surrounded by empty beer steins and empty plates which once held schnitzels and strudel. He would be upside down and snoring.
Gary was looking around the pit crew, offering a word of encouragement here and there, and kicking Tayaji in the butt every time he sat down.
Rachel chewed nervously on her thumbnail, and kept looking at the pit board. Without a forecasting centre, Kirkus would have to be working out the pits on the fly. She preferred the certainty of a dry race. Actually she’d prefer it if Kirkus would shell out for a forecasting centre. However he explained the financial realities of that at the last staff meeting which, like most staff meetings, were like getting a dressing down from Don Corleone.
Freddie wasn’t here, Sara knew. He was back at the Design Centre in Rome. Sure, she wanted her new suspension, but she felt a twinge of uncertainty about whether a human being was designed to spend 8 months inside a building without ever seeing the sun the way Freddie had. Kirkus had promised to build a level 2 centre next year. She hoped that it at least had a skylight.
Of course, that assumed that any of them were still working at Scuderia Quantistica next year to see it. Their contracts expired at the end of the year and Kirkus had not spoken to any of them about it yet. When they asked Max, he’d just go and get his rubber ball and drop it at their feet for them to throw for him. The huddled conversations in a corner between Kirkus, Max and Silvia probably meant something… but what?
She’d have to survive the race first. “Bloody rain…” she repeated, as the support crews started to move away from the cars.
