She nodded.
I wasn’t sure what I expected—panic, nerves, a disclaimer—but she gave me nothing. Just cool, level quiet. Then she reached into her handbag and took out a thick manilla folder. No frills. No words. She placed it on the bench between us.
“I’ve been collecting these for a while,” she said, voice low but firm. She had an accent I couldn’t quite place, German, or Swiss maybe. “Now I’m giving them to you.”
I opened the folder slowly. The first few pages were diagnostic logs—lines of mapping data, dates, session timestamps.
“Are these the download logs?” I asked, my pulse racing.
“Yes. You’ll be able to spot a pattern. Within an hour of qualifying, when they collect data from the car, which they’re allowed to do, they also install the race software, which they are most definitely not. It’s discreet, but it’s a distinct pattern. Those are the complete records for the last three seasons.”
“Thank you, this is exactly what I need.” I grinned, disbelief and the rush of having the proof in my hands making me almost giddy.
“There’s more,” she said, her voice soft, her gaze still fixed on the rippling water.
I flicked through the pages, dozens of them, until the format changed.
“What’s this?” I asked, my finger resting on the next set of pages.
“Scrutineering sign-off logs,” Sabine replied. “Not for the entire paddock. Just Obsidian. Just car number one.”
Aleks’s car.
I flicked through them, each page a record of checks, signatures, timestamps. The same scribbled names over and over. All unfamiliar to me, but one kept repeating.
Klaus Hartmann.
He’d signed off Aleks’s car in Bahrain. Then Monaco. Then Austria. Then Monza. Again and again. Out of twenty-four races last season, his name appeared on twenty. This season, he’d signed off every single one so far.
“Klaus Hartmann,” I read aloud.
She nodded slightly. “He’s officially assigned to Zone C, but he’s been conveniently reassigned or ‘borrowed’ by Obsidian more times than the rules technically allow.”
“And no one’s flagged that?”
“No one vants to flag zat.”
Sabine sounded bitter now, her accent flattening under pressure. For the first time, she looked at me properly.
“There are people trying to clean things up. But it’s slow. Political. Dangerous. A lot of careers tied to Obsidian’s dominance. Including some in the FIA.”
I turned the page, scanning another list of weekend rotations. More of the same. Hartmann again.
“Is he the one manipulating the map?”
“He signs the car off. That doesn’t mean he’s doing the programming. But… if you’re looking for someone who lets things slide, he’s the one holding the pen.”
“Do you have anything on him?”
Sabine shook her head. “No proof. Just patterns. He keeps his nose clean, doesn’t gamble, doesn’t drink. But he’s been working in motorsport for almost thirty years. He’s too careful. Which is why you’re more useful than I am right now.”
I snapped the folder closed and placed it in my lap, gripping it tighter than I meant to.
“This is big,” I whispered. “Why are you helping me?” I asked, finally meeting her eyes.
Sabine’s expression didn’t flicker. But her voice softened just a fraction.
“Because someone should.”
