It just wasn’t hope.
“The car’s nervous through the fast sections,” he told the media afterward, voice carefully neutral. “We’re fundamentally down on power or drag compared to rivals, and no amount of tweaking is going to erase that gap.”
As I was packing up to leave the media center, a British tabloid headline flashed across one of the screens:
HIRSCH DISTRACTED BY OFF-TRACK DRAMA?
I looked at Mason Banning.
He didn’t look surprised. “They smell blood every weekend,” he said. “Doesn’t have to be real. Just has to sell.”
I nodded like that settled it. It didn’t. The headline followed me out of the room.
The qualifying rounds on Saturday stripped away the excuses. Practice was theory; Saturday was proof. Jonathan threaded the car through Spa with surgical precision, every braking point exact, every exit perfect. For a moment, halfway down Kemmel, I let myself believe he might be able to bend physics to his will.
He couldn’t.
The timing screen locked him into fifth. Same number as Friday, heavier now. This wasn’t setup noise or experimentation. This was the car’s limit, drawn in bright white digits.
Around me, the media room shifted tone. Respect replaced speculation. Fifth was no longer a surprise; it was expectation. I felt the story harden in real time — Hirsch maximizes, Meridian plateaus. A narrative settling into place that no amount of brilliance could outrun.
I filed my qualifying report after copying Thea first, per the guardrails.
SUBJECT:Spa qualifying report — pre-publication review
Three minutes later:Good. Fair analysis. File it.
I sent it to the main desk and sat back, the familiar knot tightening in my stomach. Jonathan had driven perfectly. Perfect still wasn’t enough.
My phone lit up.
JONATHAN:Dinner tonight? Need to get out of my head.
I hesitated, already calculating optics.
WALDO:Yes. 8 PM? That place near the hotel?
JONATHAN:Perfect.
Screenshot. Forward.
Disclosure: Text messages with J. Hirsch regarding performance. Saturday 5:23 PM. Dinner with J. Hirsch 8 PM Public restaurant.
Received.
Across the room, two photographers were already scrubbing through their shots from qualifying, zooming in on expressions, on body language, on anything that could be turned into a story. One of them glanced up as I stood. The look lingered half a second too long.
For the first time all weekend, I felt watched.
31
CHASING GHOSTS
The restaurant wassmall and warm, tucked into a side street in Francorchamps village. We chose a corner table. Visible enough to be innocent, hidden enough to feel deliberate.
Jonathan ordered club soda and barely touched it.
“Sorry,” he said for the third time, glancing at his phone. Another message from Shep. Simulations. Tire models. Answers neither of them liked.
