Pole Position

by Karen Botha

  As well as me moving to the head position, Greg has come in to take over my old job and is already a breath of fresh air. He’s made some impressive changes. Combined with Elliott’s sixth sense about a car’s performance from how it handles, Greg’s expertise has helped that finely tuned machine move on tenfold from where it was six months ago.

  In addition, we’ve brought in the specialists I planned when I outlined our new team structure. Everyone is doing an amazing job of building out our intelligence, and I’ve never been more thankful for a strong team beneath me, as it’s allowing me to further develop my own skills. I just need to believe that now, today, as I sit on the pit wall for the first time.

  Actually, I’m not sitting. I’m hovering, gulping down air and trying to hide it from any stray cameras, or worse, the competition.

  I focus on the positives.

  Particularly exciting is that Trevor has moved over from our old team as the new chief engineer, and Luke is a new strategist. My confidence wavers a little, because while I’ve spent so much time with Trevor recently, I’d be willing to bet I know him almost as much as Elliott, Luke is a different story. He will only come into his element on race day when the pressure is well and truly on. Today’s practice session is his warm up, as well as mine.

  He isn’t nervous though, he sits on the pitwall with his headphones over his short dark hair, totally focused. The only tell-tale sign that this is his first outing with us is when he rubs the dark skin on his forehead with his palm. He only does that once.

  I’m impressed, because he has a tough call today. Luke will decide how many pit stops we make. He'll determine which tires Elliott needs to take to each race weekend and whether we’re running him on the same program as Keegan, our other driver.

  We've also employed a new test driver, which has caused a fantastic media storm. Lauren is the only woman currently competing on the track, but she’s also super smart and has an innate knack of tying what happens in live testing up with the simulated behavior back at the factory.

  No, I push all of these uncertainties out of my mind and focus.

  We’re ready as a team and I am also ready to race. I know in my head that everything is in place. It’s been a mammoth journey, but we’ve prepared well.

  But, knowing that, and feeling it in the pit of my churning stomach, are two totally different issues.

  I ignore the fixed stool that is marked as mine; instead, I position my headset and I stand. And then I pace. I can’t focus on the screen full of figures, which although I now understand, I can make no sense of. It dances in front of my eyes, a sea of moving green fonts against the depths of the midnight black backdrop.

  I listen as Greg speaks to Elliott. I hear the laughter in their voices as Greg buckles him up.

  “You’re taking a step down to do that, aren’t you?” Elliott teases, laughter rippling through his voice.

  “Nah. This is the most important job there is. With Kyle on the pit wall, I’m going to be doing this every time you go out now. It only takes a few seconds, and I want you on that track feeling safe.”

  And that’s what all this is about, feeling like the love of my life is in control, allowing me to be able to dominate a racing season again. Our car is amazing. What we don’t yet know is how it compares to the rest of the pack. And today, we’ll find out.

  Elliott

  This is the worst part of any beginning of season, when you’re almost there, when it’s almost time to take the car out onto the track, and you’re strapped in, waiting for the interminable minutes and seconds to click over and hit the go-time.

  My excitement builds. I’m not even nervous. I thought I might be, but perhaps it’s the adrenaline. I’m just fired up and ready to get out and hit the gas pedal and see what not only me, but the team is capable of.

  I could hear the radio chatter and it was psyching me up, but now with less than five minutes to go, I’ve asked for it to be turned off so that all I can hear is Kyle’s radio. And he is dead silent. I can’t afford myself to think about how he’s feeling now, so I’ve closed my mind off to that, and instead am concentrated on the familiar process the mechanics take to prepare themselves to get me onto the track.

  They all stand and take their positions next to the car. Greg takes a few steps backwards so that he can see into the pit lane to check that when they release me, it will be safe. I focus on the comfort of his warm features and trust in his proven abilities.

  As the clock signals twenty seconds to go, my heart rate increases. If it were possible to sweat any more than I am already under my fire overalls and gloves, then I start to. The mechanics remove the sleeves that keep my tires warm, and Greg takes one final look over his shoulder. As soon as we’re legally allowed, he signals me to drive forward, and I’m off.

  My racing career starts fresh.

  The track temperature is higher than we expected, so I’m running on two different sets of tires to see how the heat eats away at the alternate rubber compounds. They will also affect the speed that I can attack the corners.

  I keep within the speed limit of the pit lane, crawling past the teams who finished at the top of the table last season. The engine is roaring, but it’s the sound of my heart thumping in my rib cage that reverberates in my skull.

  I cross the line signaling the speed restriction’s end, and I slam my foot to the floor, feeling the engine rattle through my legs and into my butt. I am alive. All the history of the last few years is now past, and I’m Elliott Judd, championship winning driver again.

  Until I arrive at the first corner. This is a game of chicken I’m playing against myself. I wait, wait, wait before I slam down the gears and jam on the breaks. The tires don’t grip as well as I’d like and I shoot off skidding around, the back of the car out at a right angle. It’s fun, but slow.

  I make a mental note, chalk it up for the next lap and move on, while committing my boot to the base of the car and shifting race settings to adjust my balance. This time, I wait, wait, wait, and although it’s a different corner, the handling settings I’ve reconfigured allow me and my lady to to take the turn with ease.

  The session goes on like that, me changing settings according to what I feel and what the data is telling the team. I follow instructions from them, and they follow mine, and between us we try to establish how to effect the best from the car.

  “Box, Box.” Kyle instructs, telling me I need to retire into the pits. The mechanics will practice some pit stops and then I’ll come out with different tires on, and we’ll go through the whole process again.

  Back out on the track that first corner has me over again. I do exactly as I did last time. These tires should give me more grip, meaning that my back end shouldn’t swing out so much, and I should be able to put my foot on the gas sooner, giving me an overall faster lap time.

  Except it doesn’t.

  So, again I’m waiting, waiting, waiting, my focus on nothing other than counting down until it’s time; I punch the brakes with all my force, driving my leg against the resistance of the metal pedal. The car slides with such aggression that it snaps the steering wheel from my hand.

  “Fuck!” I shout down the headset.

  The car slows, but she’s all over the track. I clench my jaw, biting down on my teeth and gripping the controls until my knuckles must be blue. The track blurs as I cartwheel. I struggle to focus on a point of reference to work out where I am so as soon as I stop spinning I’ll know where to redirect the car.

  I don’t see Brad careening up my inside. I’m too busy trying to handle my beast. But, I do feel the car slip out again as he catches my slip stream and rides over my inside.

  Kyle

  “No!” I hold my hands to my mouth and watch the screen bug-eyed. Elliott careens from one side of the track to the other, and Brad, who had been too close behind Elliott, rides over his back tire, levering him until Elliott drives over Brad’s car. Both racers steam off the track, each rampaging into opposite ends
of the same barrier, and that’s where they sit. Stunned.

  My focus is on Elliott. He isn’t moving.

  He’s sitting in the cockpit, and he’s motionless.

  Not moving at all. Not an inch.

  “Elliott, you OK?” Trevor comes over the radio next to me when I remain mute.

  No response, and I watch in slow motion as the marshals approach him. They’re running, but it takes them ages. When they arrive, they’re speaking to him, asking the same as Trevor. We can hear them so his headset is working. He’s just not answering us.

  Elliott doesn’t even shake his head. And I just sit, as I watch this all play out.

  “El?” Trevor tries again.

  The marshals are speaking to him, but not only is the radio silent, he’s still not moving. He’s not shaking his head; his hands aren’t removing the wheel so he can get out of the car. He’s just sitting there waiting for the car to catch fire.

  A marshal reads my mind and makes a check of the vehicle, brandishing his fire extinguisher, and still Elliott sits.

  I hear someone over the radio, bringing in Keegan. “Box, box Keegan.” It’s a useless statement; debris is scattered all over the track, and it’s been closed until they can remove that and the wreckage of the two cars.

  And I don’t know what to do.

  The protocol is that I stay put and I run the team, which consists of way more than Elliott, who is just one small cog. Except that never in my mind did it occur to me that this could happen. I haven’t planned for this. All I want is to be next to him, to make sure he’s OK and to hear his voice.

  But, he’s around at the other side of the track and if I leave here, I won’t see his progress play out. I’ll be in the dark for longer than I need. He’ll move in a second, I’m sure.

  Brad is already out of his car and is hopping over the barrier to jump on the back of a moped to return to the pits.

  But, Elliott is still lifeless.

  “He’s probably just knocked out, Kyle. Don’t worry.” Trevor reads my mind, confirming the meaning of the figures displayed on the screen in front of us. “He shouldn’t be injured from that impact.”

  The medic’s car arrives, and I have flashbacks to his previous accident, the one that wrote him out of the sport, and the life he knew for years. But, this is different. When they get to him, they actually drag the shoulder support off the car, and the marshals start to haul him free.

  “Huh?” Trevor mutters. Everyone else is as silent as me.

  “Elliott, are you OK?” I scream into the fucking microphone as one marshal grabs him under each shoulder and walks him to the medic’s car.

  Finally he speaks. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  The bank of specialists cheer, the garage behind us cheers, and I sit fighting the quivering of my bottom lip as relief waves through me. The last thing I want is some intrusive camera catching that and broadcasting my emotion all over the fucking world.

  Elliott

  I’m dazed. It’s like my body has locked up and time has stopped and I’m trapped in a cage, unable to move. The sounds go on around me. I can tell that the noise is overpowering, but I don’t hear it, except for an echo somewhere off in the distance.

  People are touching me, checking whether I’m OK, but I’m unable to communicate with them. I don’t even really see them. They’re just an annoyance, like a fly buzzing around.

  What I am unaware of is what’s happened. I don’t know where I am or why I’m here. And I’m unable to ask. My brain has shut down, and it’s only when I’m in the back of the medic car that I start to wake from my trance.

  Slowly a recognition that something isn’t right manages to fight through the fog, and the commotion going on around me seeps into my consciousness like a camera lens refocusing.

  I turn my head and squint at the medic. I know him, but I can’t remember his name, and I’m not sure how I got to be sitting here, with him checking my vitals.

  “It’s OK, Elliott. You had a crash. It wasn’t anything bad. You don’t need to worry.”

  “What about the car?” I ask. My head aches as I struggle to remember what’s happened.

  “It needs some work, but it’s nothing your boys can’t handle.”

  “Kyle is going to kill me. Where is it?” I try to stand, needing to assess the damage with a sudden and burning urge.

  “Sit down, we can have a look in a second, OK?” He presses me back into the seat.

  But, I don’t want to sit here, waiting while he checks me over. I need to get back into the car and finish this practice. How will the team be able to work effectively if I only make it out for half the available laps?

  “I need to go. I’m fine.” This time, I push up off the seat and force my body past his. There are two cars, both planted in a barrier. For a second I can’t work out which is mine. One looks familiar, but the other, that’s mine. I need to get to it and so I focus on where I’m headed, like a drunk teenager arriving home late at night.

  The car is a mess. It’s a total write-off. Kyle is going to be busy with that all through the night to get me ready to qualify tomorrow. I bend, studying the undercarriage.

  “Come with us.” It’s that doctor again, manhandling me.

  “No, I’m fine.” I shrug him off, intent on studying the smashed-in undercarriage. And that’s when I notice that the number isn’t mine. The doc is still babbling on in the background, but that number, it’s not right. That’s Brad’s racing number.

  I stand up and turn around. He’s nowhere to be seen. But, my gaze drops on the other car, the one that was also familiar and that also crunched into the barrier. And that one is painted with number 66; my number.

  Kyle

  Elliott’s staggering over to Brad’s car, and he’s having a good look at it. I watch as he bends onto one knee and studies.

  He doesn’t look right. I don’t think anyone else will be able to tell, but to me, he’s shook up. His face has an expression like none I’ve ever seen before; he’s spaced out. Even when he was in the hospital after his legs smashed he didn’t wear that expression.

  What eats at me even more is that the medic isn’t happy with his solo expedition and is trying his best to force him back in his car. His one man mission is failing though, not because Elliott is angry, but because he doesn’t appear to be registering that the doctor is even there, let alone that he’s been asked to perform in a certain manner.

  I watch, the trepidation building because I know from the data that the impact wasn’t of sufficient force to create such a severe concussion. So, what’s going on?

  My concerns are pushed to one side as a safety official grabs my arm, signaling that I should move away from the pit wall. “We need to talk. Now.”

  Taking one last look at Elliott, I snap out of my own bubble and follow the back of the guy who is now quickly walking away. He stops when we’ve passed through our garage and out the back, to the side of the press pen.

  “What?” I snap. We didn’t do anything wrong here. It was a racing incident, so we won’t be in any hot water about safety. And if we were that would have been broadcast over the team radio, anyway.

  “Look!” He points. “You need to figure this out.”

  I follow the direction of his outstretched arm, to find Chase pressed against a wall with Jessie desperately trying to unhook someone from his front.

  It takes a second for me to recognize that someone is Axel.

  He’s red faced and screaming. “You set this up. You can’t stand healthy competition. All you’re concerned about is getting one over on Elliott. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  For his part, Chase is not backing down. “I have done nothing of the sort, and you, you little thug, should be ashamed of your behavior. Not that I expect you’ll have much of a PR job left after this little performance.” He finishes with a laugh. Right in Axel’s face, which to be fair is unavoidable, as Axel has him pinned against the wall with only centimeters between their f
aces.

  But, it’s still the wrong move.

  Every warning bell sounds a red alert as I bolt over toward them, but my legs, heavy from shock, don’t move fast enough. I see and hear the thwack as two separate elements, unable to connect them. But, that does nothing to diminish my understanding that Axel just did what we all have wanted to, and haven’t. He punched Chase directly on the chin.

  “I heard you speaking to Brad before practice started. You thought you were alone with him, but I heard every word you said.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re deranged.”

  Axel moves even closer and spits his words in Chase’s face. “You said, don’t give Elliott and inch on the track. Well, looks like Brad followed your advice to the letter. It’s so obvious,” he screams. “Even Elliott thought you’d cheated. Did you see him checking out your car for foul play?”

  They’ve somehow managed to end up on the floor, and they’re rolling around like two children play fighting. Except this is so not play fighting. It’s one of the most serious PR crises we could deal with. Caused by our incumbent PR guru, and mediated, not very well, by our outgoing press relations expert. Soon to be joined by our Team Principal.

  Matters are made worse because said Team Principal is also the secret step-father to the PR expert currently spread-eagle and connecting another fist, this time with Chase’s left eye socket. He’s supposed to be keeping a low profile because he wants time to build a relationship outside of the public glare. Try explaining that all away when we’re asked, understandably, why he’s still in his position at the end of today.

  All this runs through my head, in a comedic way, despite the obvious drama of the situation. My ability to see the wry humor does not stop me from grabbing at Axel’s collar and lifting him off his feet. The benefit of him being Elliott’s son is that he has his lighter build, so there is a good second where he’s left, feet dangling, as I separate him from Chase in time to stop his third blow from connecting with some other part of Chase’s anatomy.