“Oh shit… no crying,” I plead. “You know it breaks my heart when you’re for-realsies upset. I’m sorry I got bitchy.” I give her a hug. “I’m sure Jules is fine, and I’m glad he called you so you could keep him on track.”
She takes a coffee shop napkin from the messenger bag she uses to haul my crap around, and it makes me feel awful, reflecting that she’s carrying Julian, carryingme, carrying everyone but herself. She pats her cheeks with the creased paper napkin, trying not to fuck up her makeup.
“At least he doesn’t have enough to overdose, right?” she asks anxiously.
“Definitely not. He’s got maybe a dozen pills left? His tolerance is huge, so that’s nothing.” I put a comforting arm around Priya and start us on a slow walk toward the waiting reporters. “Buck up, pumpkin. We can’t have the press seeing you all sad panda.”
I don’t tell her the concern that’s really gnawing at me: Jules might hit the streets looking formore.
Hog-tying my fears and kicking them into a room I haven’t opened much since childhood—a room where Julian and I are still carefree kids, flipping each other low-stakes shit and watchingThe Young Onestogether—I put on my press face and throw both hands into the air.
“Hey, cats and kittens!” I call out to the waiting group. “Let’s talk Jump Start.”
Grand prix circuits that use public roads typically have shitty track surface, but Albert Park is pretty smooth. It’s a fast,friendly track. Not to brag or anything (okay, 100 percent to brag) but I’m known not only for being a risk-taking, late-braking driver but also for having great tyre management. So I’m feeling euphoric about my prospects here.
The first two free practice sessions validate my confidence. During the meeting later, I float a few bold race-day strategies based on my observations, and when Erich is (predictably) a douchenozzle about it, I’m gratified that Phaedra, Imani, golden boy Basil Rowley,andmy teammate Cosmin all back me up. I think it’s the first moment when I really feel like Emerald is home.
On Saturday in FP3, we make our eleventh-hour adjustments, dialing everything in tight for the quali sessions that follow. I sail through Q1, then squeak by Q2 by seven thousandths of a fucking second. In Q3, my closest rival is Owen Byrne from Team Easton, and he cocks it up at turn 9. We end up qualifying neck and neck with me in fifth and Owen in sixth. Then… a stroke of luck when Anders Olsson, who’s fourth on the grid, gets a three-place penalty for impeding. Suddenly Owen and I are bumped up.
I’m flying high and can’t wait for the race tomorrow.
Some of the best racing advice I’ve gotten has been from my mom and dad, and it wasn’t evenaboutracing. My dad, for instance, has always said, “Don’t stand in the way of someone who’s determined to shoot himself in the nuts.” It’s his way of pointing out that with rivals—in sports, business, life in general—sometimes all you have to do is stand back and let the other guy be his own worst enemy. And my mother, working in the male-dominated field of physics, advised that Ishouldn’t be above taking advantage of the fact that “women scare the hell out of men.” She said that although women exist under the curse of a fear of being hurt physically by men,theirbig fear is being humiliated by us.
“When you’re pursuing the same goal as a man,” she told me, “know that they’re easily rattled into mistakes by the anxiety of potentially being ‘shown up by a girl.’Use it.”
The complete package, for a top driver, is a combination of technical skill, conditioning, focus, observantness, adaptability, and creative problem-solving. It’s surprisingly mental.
In my first two races this season, I either fucked up or carelessly got tangled in other drivers’ fuckups. Today at the Australian GP… no mistakes, no mercy.
I’m so focused at the start of the race that I feel like an arrowhead—organic, cold, smooth, sharp enough to cut in all the right places. The first eight laps are golden. I don’t lose position, but Owen Byrne drops back one, overtaken by Akio Ono.
I’m pushing my soft tyres as long as I can before I have to pit so I can keep my lead on Byrne and Ono. Meanwhile, Imani tells me that Byrne has been fighting so recklessly to regain the place he lost—which he does, but at a steep cost—that he’s hammered his mediums. There’s a chance he’ll have to box on the earlier side of the 14 to 20 lap range.
When I’m called to box on lap 13, I insist I should wait. I can feel the degradation big time by lap 14. Then Byrne dives into the pit early. His undercut could’ve blown up in my face if not for a fortuitous occurrence: a tangle between Ortiz and a rookie driver from a back-field team results in a yellow flag.My pit crew have been waiting, so they’re on point when I come in, and I claim the advantage of the faster pit stop inherent to yellow flag conditions.Fuck yes.
Imani is normally matter-of-fact over the radio, but she sounds downright celebratory about the way I get a leg up on Byrne. I can’t resist a cheeky comment: “Tell him I’m coming for his girlfriend next.” (His partner, Brooklyn Katz, is hot as hell. I kinda have a harmless little crush on her.)
For most of the race I’m hunting the frontrunners, looking for any opportunity to advance. But in the final six laps, I switch to playing for Emerald and not just myself. Cosmin’s hold on P2 is heavily threatened by Drew Powell, ahead of me in third. I take my mom’s advice and rattle Powell, all over his fucking gearbox, toying with him and forcing him to focus on fighting me off rather than overtaking Cosmin.
Fourth place is still delicious—I’ll take the 12 points. With Cosmin’s P2, it gives Emerald 30 total. For the first time this season, I feel like I’ve earned my keep. The post-race press briefing is a mob scene, reporters all over me. I’m hyperaware that everything I say isa quote(and could possibly become a meme). That’s sports in the era of social media.
Phaedra is inspiring, talking up the fact that this is the first time in history that points have been earned by the combination of a woman driver with a woman race engineer, on a team with a woman owner/team principal.
Byrne hears about my “coming for your girlfriend” sass and offers charismatic return fire, saying I couldn’t handle Brook if I tried, and the press of course eats it up. Everyone loves a rivalry, and the fact that it includes something sexy is a bonus.
Gorgeous day all around.
The icing on the day’s cake is the floral arrangement in my suite when I finally get back, exhausted, near midnight: a riot of jagged purple thistle, black roses, some plant that looks kinda like alien eyeballs, and…well well well, stalks of good ol’Salvia officinalis.
I open the tiny card speared on a spike of thistle:
You’re a force of fucking nature, Salvi. Congrats on a stunning race. Don’t break my haggard excuse for a heart by denying me your company in Ravenna.
~Cheers, your Sandy
He also sent Priya an orchid, which she told me with a grumpy smile is “kind of an inside joke,” and… I’m glad they have one. He’s really trying to win her over, and it’s sweet.
As intense at the grand prix was, I think my pulse is drumming harder now as I hold the card against my lips.
