‘I don’t feel like it.’
‘Drink it, Mins. It’ll help.’
I take a small sip to appease her without taking my eyes off the TV.
She shoves the bowl of fruit pastilles in my face. ‘Eat.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘It’ll help.’
I quickly roll my eyes and take a handful, and sit with them clamped in my fist. It’s not long before they morph into a ball of gloop in my sticky palm.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ Mum says breezily, like Jack’s swimming with dolphins and not gambling with his life on Étienne’s tail. ‘Étienne’s very penalty-prone here since tracklimits don’t seem to mean much to him. Plus there’s a lot on the line and he often shows his youth when it comes to his driving style, so he’ll probably push the car beyond its capabilities like he did in Monza and Spa, and the last third of the race will crumble.’
I tear my eyes from the screen and gawk at her.
‘What? I was in this world for fifteen years. You think I didn’t learn a thing or two about racing?’ She shovels cashews in her mouth.
‘What about Tom?’
She chews thoughtfully. ‘He’s never adapted to this car like he did with the last iteration. He’s more hesitant, and he lacks the ruthlessness he used to have. If it comes to a close battle today, Jack would manage to overtake.’
I don’t want to ask about Jack’s weaknesses. Maybe I do. No. Yes. No. I turn back to the race and deposit my fruit pastille gunge onto the table. Coco gives it an interested sniff and I shoo her away.
Lap fourteen, and they’re still in the same formation. Damn I hate this circuit, it’s so difficult to overtake. At least Jack’s not in danger of being passed – Tiago’s 3.37 seconds behind him. That’s something. We spend a maddeningly long time watching the mid-pack battles. Am I supposed toguesswhat Jack’s doing?
I jolt when Étienne pits at lap twenty-four and pray under my breath that he’s delayed. Nothing major, a jammed jack or similar. It’s not very friendly behaviour but he doesn’t have to know. To my shock, the front right and rear tyres all prove tricky, amounting to an extraordinarily slow pit stop that sees him resurface at P11.
‘YES!’ Mum yells.
I shoot her a quizzical look.
‘What?’ she says, picking up her blanket from where she’d flung it on a sleeping Noodle. ‘I don’t want to see Martinelli win. Christophe’s an arse.’
Could she be…warmingto Jack? No time to think about that now because he’s pitting. I force myself to keep watching and breathing as he halts perfectly inside the box. The crew unscrew the tyres and reattach fresh mediums with swift exactitude. He rejoins the race in P3 behind Tiago.
‘Excellent pit stop,’ I murmur as 2.2 seconds appears on the screen.Phew.
‘Superb,’ Mum affirms, pouring herself a fresh glass.
He wastes no time overtaking Tiago in a move the commentator jarringly describes as ‘fruity’. He’s five seconds behind Tom. Overtaking would be a tough ask, unless Tom has a sloppy second stop, but Martinelli won’t make the same mistake twice.
The next thirty laps pass in an aggravating swirl of stress and frustration, with the cameras focusing almost entirely on the mid-field. My nails are stubs by the time Jack crosses the finish line in P2, but it doesn’t matter because he’s done it. He’s bloody won the World Championship.
Mum and I leap up and hug excitedly to barking from all six dogs while Jack does his victory lap. The constructors’ title fight will run on to Abu Dhabi with the margin between Pagari and Martinelli still stressfully slim. But that doesn’t matter today because all his hard work has paid off and he’s so amazing and why am I crying?
‘Oh Mins, let it out,’ says Mum, smoothing my hair.
‘I’ve been s-so s-strong.’
‘Yes you have. Now drink a marg.’ She bends down to top up my barely-touched glass.
‘I don’t know h-how to f-feel.’
‘You’re not supposed to.’
I go through a mound of tissues and nibble on some grapes, telling myself sugar will help. It still looks stifling in Qatar. When the cameras pan to the Pagari garage, the pit crew are all sopping, their uniforms vacuum-packed to their bodies. Kurt flashes on screen, struggling to get out of his car due to heat exposure. Apparently Ross has been rushed to the medical centre with dehydration. It’s like the old Malaysia races from years ago.
