Julien’s finger stutters, stopping momentarily before continuing its line.
Close, but not quite right.
It’s okay—Julien can wait until Rafael is confident enough to drop the extra words.
EPILOGUE 1
THE BRAZILIAN GRAND PRIX
When the rainstarts up again, Julien is hovering over Davide’s shoulder at pit wall. The canopy isn’t built for extra people, so Julien presses closer and tries to avoid the water soaking the back of his shirt.
Thankfully, the race has side-stepped the expected Brazilian downpour, but it hasn’t stopped the sky from spitting on them the entire weekend.
The band that hovers over the track on the radar isn’t a violent color, but it’s all-encompassing and slow-moving.
Most of the drivers haven’t pitted yet, but they’re squarely within the expected window for mediums. The entire pit lane crew turns their eyes skyward, towards the large, nearly-white cloud that covers the circuit.
It’s only sprinkling, but a centimeter of water could be the difference between slicks and inters.
Davide radios in with, “It looks like the rain will stay like this, steady to the end.”
“Affirm,”is Rafael’s static-filled reply.“Still with Plan A?”
“Affirm.”
As the strategists discuss whether the time loss is too much to sacrifice for the grip of inters, Julien watches a nearbypuddle gather water. This isn’t like practice where moisture hit the ground and immediately wicked up into the balmy air—it’s sticking.
“They need inters.”
“What?” Davide asks, pulling back one of the ears of his headphones.
“The standing water is too much for slicks. They’re gonna slide off the track.”
“It’sbarelysprinkling out there.”
“That’s fine for visibility, but we’ll see a real problem with grip in five or six laps.”
Davide doesn’t look convinced, but he dutifully relays the information to the strategists. After the team takes one final look between ground and sky, they ultimately decide to leave the choice up to the drivers.
“Would you prefer slicks or inters?”
Rafael responds,“It’s not bad out here—I can keep with slicks.”
But that’s because he doesn’t know that water is collecting this time. Julien waves at Davide and points to himself.
“It’s Julien’s opinion that you should switch to inters.”
Julien gives him a thumbs up. Nothing against the strategists who do this for a living, but he’s the only one on the wall who knows what it’s like to be out on track while rain is collecting.
There’s a long pause before Rafael replies,“Alright. Let’s do inters.”
Fuck, that feels good. For better or for worse, Julien’s expertise has contributed to changing the outcome of the race.
Hopefully it’s for the better.
Julien hops over to Thomas’s side and relays the same information to Hector.
“Julien thinks you should consider inters.”
