Chasing Lights

Chapter 40: Reminisce

I'd been in this industry all my life, and yet the technology behind it never ceased to amaze me. Engineers and mechanics knew more about the car than the driver themself, microchips collecting all their data and displaying it right onto their screens. It was wizardry.

"It's driveable," Phoenix finally said, and my heart soared. "Much better than last week. The rear is still sensitive, but not nearly as bad..."

I almost dropped to my knees from the news. It wasn't what I'd wished for, but it was progress.

"The guy's never sugarcoated things." Jin's voice made me turn around, realizing he must've joined us without me noticing. "So hard to get a compliment out of him, too," he quipped with a smirk, tapping his hand against my nervous ones behind my back.

I untangled my fiddling fingers and moved them to the front, shooting him an appreciative but thin smile. "Yeah. It's not what I wanted."

"You gotta take it." He shrugged, glancing away from the screens and to the track, where Phoenix just sped past the start and finish line. "Rome wasn't built in a day, after all."

"This isn't Rome we're building, though. It's a car."

"A car that fights with everything it has to throw our drivers into the gravel." The smirk on his lips had a mocking edge to it, and I couldn't help but reciprocate the notion. This car really did not want us to succeed.

"I bet building Rome was easier than this."

Jin nodded, a low chuckle vibrating in his chest. "I bet it was, Flo. I bet it was."

***

By the time Qualifying rolled around, the car was ready for greatness. The three practice sessions helped implement changes and system upgrades that would improve performance, and during the last twenty minutes of our last session, both Phoenix and Felipe drove brilliant lap times.

"Come on... Come on!" I bounced my leg off the ground while Felipe and Phoenix drove their last Qualifying rounds. They'd both made it into Q3, meaning they were fighting for their spot in the top ten. Considering last week's disaster, this should've been a success for me.

But something stopped me from celebrating. There was a feeling deep inside my gut that told me this wasn't enough, that both cars could do way better than scraping to get past Q2.

The clock ran to 00:00, meaning the drivers could only finish their laps now.

Felipe came in first, positioning himself as P2. With five more cars to set their lap times, this was only a preliminary position, but the worst that could happen was P7. That's good. Good enough for this weekend, at least.

Rafi came in right after Felipe, and, as expected, stole his spot by putting himself into second place, pushing Felipe down to third.

A golden car was the next one over the finish line, and only when the computer told me that said car just took the first place, did I realize who it was.

Connor Williams. And he just secured pole position.

What the fuck?

But there was no time to wonder, because while Felipe got pushed back into fifth position from other cars finishing their times, Phoenix was flying through his lap, setting purple sector after purple sector, meaning he was faster than anyone else on track. Being the last car, he sped through the last corner, taking it just a smidge too wide and causing his time to turn yellow — meaning he was slower than anyone else on track in this sector — before he sped past the finish line.

My eyes went to the top-three lineup.

P1 - WIL

P2 - NYX