Finally, the camera dropped, and Zeke stopped talking. He didn’t approach, but gave me a wave and a cocky wink before he walked away.
The on-track system blared out again. “Please exit the grid. Thank you for your cooperation. All non-essential personnel must now clear the grid.” Teams stayed put for a couple more rituals, but first we had to get the fans off the track.
Mike put his balaclava and helmet on, as we were five minutes from him getting in the car and fifteen minutes from the start of the race. Nerves hit my stomach again. My mouth was dry. I tethered Mike’s helmet to his HANS and held out a hand. He ignored it and pulled me in for a hug. As he stepped back, I could see his eyes crinkle through his open visor, and I guessed there was a smile under his helmet. He leaned close so I could hear his muffled voice. “Have some fun out there, Kate.” He straightened and gave me a thumbs up.
I smiled back, careful not to let my expression waver. I didn’t like the suspicions planted in me by Holly’s news—but I had to ignore them now and think only about the race. “You, too.”
The fans had dispersed, and the track announcer gave a final warning to clear the grid. Seconds later, he ordered drivers into their cars, also the cue for the rest of the team to line up across the track next to the car, facing the front of the grid, where I could now see flags. The Coast Guard Auxiliary Honor Guard was introduced, along with the Reverend Coleman, who led a prayer for a safe conclusion to a great race.
I started to sweat. This was really it. What the whole weekend of activity had been leading up to. What all of my preparation was for. This was my big chance for a permanent ride. Right here. In the next three hours. I locked my knees as they started to shake. I knew these last minutes before the cars rolled off the grid would be the most stressful—except for the ones just before I got in the car to race. I concentrated on even breaths—giving up on slow ones.
The introduction of the national anthem singer was a blur, as was the music. The loud, low flyover of two military jets snapped me out of my daze. I pulled myself together and started to step away from the car, when a hush fell, and the on-track announcer spoke. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, we ask for your patience and your attention. We ask you, please, to join us in a minute of silence as we salute Wade Becker, a long-time driver in, and friend of, the American Le Mans Series, who passed away this weekend. Thank you.”
The track went absolutely, stunningly silent. It was the strangest experience I’d ever had at a racetrack and perhaps the most fitting tribute from a sport that reveled in cacophonous noise. Thousands of people at the track, and tens of thousands more via live television, stood silent for that minute, as Wade had been silenced for all time. Whatever I knew or thought of him, I felt he might have liked it.
“Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.” The announcer came back on as gently as he could, given the decibels the PA put out. “And now, for those famous words.” There was a fumbling sound as the microphone was handed over to a VIP whose voice boomed out: “Drivers, start your engines!”
Thirty-one engines thundered to life, and the cars pulled out, one at a time, following the pace car. I hurried with everyone else over the wall back to the pits, where I scrambled for my earplugs.
Chapter Forty-four
Everyone in our pit crew gathered in front of the television screens to watch the start of the race. Jack, Bruce, and Walter sat on top of the box at the control panel, and fifteen more of us, including Charles Purley, stood around the back of the cart.
Everyone but me was wearing the team’s firesuits: black on the bottom half, yellow on the torso, white sleeves, with embroidered sponsor names and logos everywhere—though my own black-and-white version blended in. We all wore earplugs or the headsets that were a combination of noise blockers and radios. And as one, we crowded around the screens, craning necks to watch the parade of cars on one monitor, then the next, then the next, as they swirled around the track at sixty miles an hour behind the pace car. It was the same scene at every team setup down pit row: some groups gathered around more elaborate displays than ours, some peering into only one or two monitors for a glimpse of their car.
After the first lap, the two extra cars in front of the pace car peeled off into pit lane. These were parade cars, with VIPs and sponsors in them. Though they traveled well in front of the field—a couple hundred yards in front of the racecars—the opportunity to start the race in a pace car was a sought-after perk.
At the end of the second lap, the real pace car also turned into pit lane. The field, which had run the preceding laps in a single line, straggled into pairs as they reached the Main Straight. That’s when the acceleration started, the roaring that upped the volume even higher. Almost before we knew it, thirty-one cars were passing us, the green flag was waving, and a voice from the tower was on the radio saying, “Green, green, green, green!” We were off!
But the tension we all felt wasn’t only for taking the green. It was also for taking the first corner. In every race, the first corner was the most treacherous, for the first racing lap and any restart after a caution. Announcers repeated endlessly the adage, “you can’t win the race on the first corner, but you can lose it,” as drivers unleashed their adrenaline, aggression, and cars on one small stretch of curving road.
Once again, someone lost his race there. One of the smaller prototypes went in too fast, braked too hard, got bumped, or did something else creative. It tapped another prototype, sending both of them spinning onto the grass on the outside of the track. They cleared the racing line quickly and didn’t scatter debris, which was lucky for the cars behind them, including Mike, who avoided trouble and kept pressing forward. All of us in the pit released the breath we’d been holding. It was also lucky both prototypes got back on the track under their own power. That meant no yellow flag was required to rescue them.
I kept one eye on the progress of those prototypes, still watching for a yellow, in case they couldn’t drive fast enough or dragged too much grass or gravel back onto the track. I kept the other on Mike. He’d been careful in the first turn and was lying right on the bumper of the Saleen, which in turn was a couple car lengths behind the Number 63 factory Corvette. Mike was keeping himself in position to pass the Saleen if he found the right opportunity or the Saleen made the slightest mistake.
I transferred my gaze from the TV screens to the straightaway in front of me to see Mike scream by. First lap down! Tension in the pit abated slightly, and over the next few laps crew members drifted away from the monitors to their positions near the fuel pump, the tires, the food. Sometime during lap three, Jack leaned down and handed me a radio and headset. With it on, I’d be able to hear communications with Mike—not that there were many.
For almost all of the first half-hour, I stood watching the monitors. I sipped water and followed Mike around the track, thinking through each shift, brake, and turn with him. I also spoke with a few guests we had in the pits: the tan Leninger’s guy and four of his people, all wearing ill-fitting Sandham Swift firesuits—a requirement during the race—and observing the action with wide eyes. Tom introduced me and fed me questions about driving and race strategy. I didn’t mind shouting some answers over the din of cars, but I tried not to linger. Better to be concentrating on the track.
Nothing eventful happened in the first thirty laps of the race, except that the Number 64 factory Corvette worked its way from the back of the field through the slower GT2 class and began to harass the Viper and the Maserati, running at the back of our own class. Two Porsches from different teams and one of the smaller prototypes had come in to the pit with problems—tire problems on the Porsches and something electrical for the prototype.
Now that the race we’d spent four days preparing for had begun, the crew was less tense. Everyone was alert and ready to jump into action, but there were crew members relaxing in the pits and eating a late lunch, even as they kept
an eye on the car. The contradiction amused me: when the race began, some people relaxed. I wasn’t one of them, with my humming nerves and inability to stand still.
I was nervous about the driving I’d do soon, but also uneasy about what Holly had told me. I knew firsthand how wrong rumors could be, yet there’d been tension in this team that had evaporated with Wade gone. Motives everywhere.
I clapped both hands to the sides of my head and ordered myself to focus on the race. It wasn’t the time to think about Wade. I stepped around the cart with the monitors on it, heading for the cooler of water, and I kicked something small that went skittering under the snack table to my right. I went after it and found a set of rental car keys—labeled for a red Chevy Malibu, Connecticut plate 617 BOY.
Aunt Tee tapped me on the shoulder, pointing at the keys, then me, with a questioning look. I came out of a daze enough to respond. “I found them on the ground.”
She examined them, then nodded. “Jack’s always losing his keys. I’ll take them.” She plucked them from my unresponsive hands.
The ground fell out from under me. Jack? My boss? Was at the track Friday night when Wade was killed? He’d been glad Wade was gone from the team—maybe Holly’s rumor was true, that Jack couldn’t fire Wade. Had he taken matters into his own hands?
A Porsche blasted away from a nearby pit stall, snapping me back to full attention. I couldn’t dwell on this now. I needed to focus on the race. I made my way back to the monitors, concentrated, and found Mike coming down the Diving Turn. We were at twenty-five minutes and thirty-six seconds, all of green-flag running. That’s where it ended.
I looked at the correct monitors in time to see the end of the live incident and the first of many replays. A blue and red Porsche got sideways coming out of the left-hander in the Esses. Its rear end kicked out to the right, pulling the nose farther left than the grip of the tires could save, and started to spin. A silver LMP2, one of the smaller prototypes, was unlucky enough to be next to the Porsche, preparing to pass on the inside of the next turn, a right-hander. The back end of the Porsche punched the LMP2 in the left rear quarter panel and sent it spinning off the track as well. The prototype spun on a path that would have led to a metal guard rail and the creek beyond. But fortunately, it started at about seventy-five miles an hour, scrubbed off a lot of its speed on the surface of the track, and didn’t travel far once it reached the grass. The Porsche went off the paved track almost immediately, carrying a lot more speed onto the gravel shoulder and then the grass, a surface that didn’t do much to slow the car down. It ended up with its nose buried in a tire wall at the foot of a billboard covered in sponsor advertisements. The replays caught a funny sight: the determined scattering of the corner workers stationed between the tire wall and the billboard.
I eyed the clock. Under thirty minutes. In our pre-race meetings, Jack had decreed we wouldn’t stop. The yellow flag was thrown about a minute after the cars came to rest, as the LMP2 drove itself off the grass and back on to the track, trailing a damaged rear deck lid and making for the pits. The Porsche was still nestled in the tires; it would need a tow truck and a rope.
The radio crackled to life: Mike asked if he was coming in, Jack told him to hold on. My heart boomed so loud I had to turn up the volume. I saw Mike go by on the Main Straight behind the pace car with the rest of the field. Once the field was collected and orderly behind the pace car, the pits, which were closed at the start of yellow flag caution periods, would be open for cars to enter.
Jack on the radio: “Mike, pit for driver change.”
No sense asking why plans had changed. Just scrambling to my locker. Tearing the headset off my head, fumbling to unclip the radio from my belt. Shit. Mental checklist time: balaclava, HANS, helmet, gloves. Ready. Three quick steps to the wall, and up, crouching next to the pit crew ready with tires, air hoses, and the fuel pump. Charles Purley next to the dead man switch. Bubs, the driver change helper, next to me, handing me my seat insert. The second the car entered our pit space, we’d all leap off the wall into action.
I coached myself, visualizing the driver change process over and over in the endless sixty seconds before Mike pulled up. I was as ready as I could get.
And then it was happening. Mike stopped our Corvette with a jerk. A second later, the fueler was pumping race gas in. Bubs and I ran around behind the car, and I stood behind the door, waiting for Mike to emerge. The two guys with air guns—one for right side wheels, one for left—crouched with the guns hovering a half-inch from the single, central wheel nut of the front tires. Their partners stood poised with new tires at the ready. They couldn’t touch the car while fuel was going in, per ALMS safety regulations, though we could make the driver change in that time.
One other crew member hovered over the car, also waiting for fueling to end. It was his job to plug in the air hose and deploy the air jacks that lifted the car so the tires could be changed. Fueling took about thirty seconds, and tire changes about twenty more. We’d be nearly done with the driver change by the time they started on the tires. I’d have five to ten seconds between getting set in the car and getting the signal to start the engine and go.
Mike was out. I jolted forward and shoved my insert in place, following it as quickly as possible, banging my helmet against the doorframe as I slid and twisted. I found the right-side belt and flopped it into my lap, then grabbed for the drink tube and stuffed it into the front of my helmet, trying to keep my torso back as far as possible and my hands high. Bubs was reaching in to fasten my belts, and we both rode the car up as the air jacks deployed. Shoulder straps on top of the HANS, check. Fuel done, tires started. Only a few more seconds.
I felt rather than heard the belts click into place, though the shoulder straps were still loose. Bubs moved to the air conditioning tube and the radio cable, on the left doorframe behind my helmet. A pat on the helmet to tell me he was finished, and he was gone, sliding the window net fastened and shutting the door with a thump. I’d already snapped the steering wheel into place, and I tugged down the loose ends of the shoulder straps, tightening them and locking myself in the seat.
The tire changers were on the back wheels now, and the guy in charge of the air jacks watched them carefully. I pushed the clutch pedal in and pushed forward six times on the sequential gear shift, making sure it was in first gear. My finger hovered near the ignition button.
Bruce’s voice on the radio. “Kate, radio check. OK?”
I pushed the radio button on the steering wheel. “I’m set.”
Two seconds later, the car bounced back onto all four new Michelins, as the air jacks were released. Service done!
“Go, go, go!” shouted Bruce.
I pushed the ignition button, and the seven-liter, 650-horsepower, small-block V-8 woke up and bellowed at me.
Chapter Forty-five
I reached the end of pit lane, moving at what felt like a snail’s pace. Passing the pit exit line, I pressed the speed limiter button to turn it off, slammed my foot to the floor, and hurtled onto the track.
Bruce spoke again. “Pace car is on the Back Straight. Clean-up still happening in the Esses. Take it easy and warm up the tires.”
“OK.” I tried to keep my voice steady, but it shook with nerves. Hopefully the team wouldn’t notice. I took as deep a breath as possible.
With the field half a lap ahead of me moving at sixty miles per hour because of the caution, I was free to catch up—and warm up—slowly. Until I caught the pace car, I didn’t have to maintain sixty myself, though I shouldn’t go much faster. For the first lap and a half, I eased through corners on my cold tires, tested my brakes, and reacquainted myself with the course. I reached the back of the line of cars at West Bend on my second lap, and I tucked in behind a prototype to play follow-the-leader.
As we trundled through the Diving Turn, I examined the line of cars. All four classes were jum
bled in no particular order, faster prototypes sometimes behind slower GT cars. When a yellow came out, the pace car got in front of the overall leader and everyone else stayed in line where they were—unless you made a pit stop, and then you re-entered the track and went to the back of the line. Position in that line didn’t mean anything about class placement. What mattered was where the other cars in our class were. I was on my fourth paced lap when Bruce told me pit stops were nearly done, as was the cleanup of the wreck—which I’d seen for myself, circling past it—and that we were P3, or third position in class.
“Don’t worry about that, Kate. You just do your thing.”
“Thanks.”
I swerved back and forth down the Back Straight, warming the tires, as most drivers did for at least a portion of each caution lap. Our tire pressures didn’t vary much—we used nitrogen instead of pressurized air in them for that reason—but the rubber itself gripped the track better when it was warm. I had a new set of rubber, and it was up to me to take care of it. Mike would get another set when he got back in to finish the race.
“They’re saying two more laps to green, Kate.”
“OK.” I swore I heard my heart beating, even over the noise of the Corvette and the other racecars. Almost showtime.
I radioed in. “Bruce, what’s the weather like?” More clouds had rolled in at the start of the race, almost as if they too had been waiting for the green flag to wave.
Dead Man’s Switch Page 23
