“I was born ready.” I check my mirrors again. Gabe and Billy are right behind me, along with Samantha Stevenson, who drives for Lighthouse Racing.
“How’s Yanni?” I ask.
“He’s okay,” Ben assures me. “They got him out without a problem. His brakes overheated, cooking the seals in the calipers.”
I could care less about the fucking car. I’m just glad Yanni made it out before the whole damn thing was fully engulfed.
“Focus on your race,” Ben says, repeating his earlier advice. Or is it an order? With him, it’s hard to tell. He’s got one tone of voice when he’s on the headset—cool, calm, and with absolute authority. Not that it’s stopped me from questioning him. Still, it’s a vast improvement from Marcel’s wild mood swings. “And push. You got this, Grady. Just three more laps and you’re on the board.”
He’s right, I should have this. The fresh tires should be giving me an advantage since I was the only one to pit before the safety car. But they’re not. No matter how hard I push, no matter how hard I hit my brake points or how smooth my steering is, I’m overtaken, first by Billy, then by Sam, and I cross the line barely ahead of Gabe in P11.
No points for me today. Again.
The mood in the pit is somber as I pull in. At least René finished in P7, so the team wasn’t completely shut out. But it’s not the result any of us was hoping for. For a team that’s supposed to be on the rise, things are looking pretty grim for us right now.
Especially for me. It may be my highest finish yet, but seven races into the season and zero points to my credit is way below expectations for the son of the great Archie Lewis.
As I’m sure I’ll hear from the man himself when he calls to read me the laundry list of mistakes that led to my shitty result.
I get out of the car and lean against it, exhausted.
“Tough luck, kid,” René says as he passes me on his way to get weighed in. We have to step on the scale immediately after every race to make sure we haven’t lost too much weight. Drivers can lose between four to six pounds per race, most of it in sweat thanks to the furnace-like temperatures inside our cars. Sometimes even more on tracks like Singapore or Malaysia, where the climate is hotter.
“Yeah,” I mutter, taking off my helmet and tucking it under my arm as I trail after him. I’m not sure whether he’s being sincere or sarcastic. I’m never sure of much with him. We’re not particularly close. We race for the same team, share data and a pit box, and that’s about it. I get the feeling he resents me because of who I am. Or, more accurately, who my father is. Or maybe it’s because I’m at the start of my career—fingers crossed—when, at almost forty, he’s on his way out the door.
Or both. Probably both.
There’s a handful of drivers gathered around the scale by the time René and I get there. I wait my turn to be weighed, shoving my helmet back on my head to deter conversation. I get a couple of looks from my fellow drivers, who are used to Mr. Sunshine, but they don’t press me for an explanation for my change in behavior. I need my helmet with me, since the rules require us to be weighed in full gear. Hopefully they just figure I got tired of holding it.
When the race official calls my name, I step on the scale and wait for him to deliver the verdict.
“Sixty-eight kilograms.” He punches the numbers into his laptop. “That’s 150 pounds for you Americans.”
I do some mental calculations. My prerace weight was 153 pounds, which means I sweated off three pounds in the two hours or so that I was behind the wheel. Not enough to put me under the car-and-driver 789-kilogram weight minimum, which would have saddled me with a race penalty or maybe even meant my disqualification.
Thank fuck for small favors. Not that it matters much. It’s not like I have any points to lose.
I stalk to our garage, resisting the urge to repeat my tantrum after Spa and throw my helmet against the wall. Instead, I carefully and deliberately place it on a wire rack along with my gloves, balaclava, and the HANS device that protects my head and neck. Then I turn to Ben, who’s deep in discussion with one of the engineers.
“Your office,” I snap. “Now.”
If he resents me giving the orders to him instead of vice versa, he doesn’t show it. He just nods to the engineer and gestures for me to lead the way to Recharge Garage.
“I assume this is about the decision to box on lap 67,” he says when his office door closes behind us.
“You’re damn right it is.”
I pace from one side of the room to the other, too much nervous energy to sit. A problem he clearly doesn’t share since he lowers himself into his chair and props his feet up on the desk like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
“That stop was textbook. It didn’t lose you position. You were two seconds ahead of Raj when you came out of pit row.”
“I know that.”
“It’s settled then.” He leans back in his chair and crosses his ankles.
“What’s settled?” I fume, still pacing.
He pulls a pen out of the pocket of his green and gold LaRue polo shirt and twirls it between his fingers. “Boxing didn’t put you out of the points.”
