Last Man Standing

Chapter 15

"I'll fix this," Mick whispered in her ear. "I shouldn't have mouthed his name to you. I think you would have gotten one look."

"I think so too." Marylinde chuckled. "I have gotten this question a million times over the past couple of weeks, so yeah."

"Sorry," Mick said again before they both focussed on the briefing. It would be important, after all, it was the briefing before the race.

Xxx

"Okay Mary, stay focussed, all we need from you is a clean start so you can get your head down to catch Ilott and Armstrong ahead."

"Copy." Marylinde repositioned her hands on the steering wheel and held down the clutch. One light went on. The second followed. So did the third, fourth and fifth. Now it was about to go down. The instant the lights went all off, Marylinde let go of her clutch and launched off her line. She was faster than both the cars up ahead, and through the middle, she dived past Callum.

One down, one to go.

Through the first corners, she was right on Marcus' tail until she could finally make a move. Marcus let a small gap into the eleventh corner and she could squeeze her car on the inside. She let her car run a little wide, leaving Marcus very little space so he would have to compromise his exit, leaving her the speed up the small straight following turn twelve.

"Very well done Mary, now keep your head down and try to preserve your tires, our target might just move a little further ahead, seeing you are now in clean air, but we'll see how things go." Marylinde confirmed the message. Tire management was one of the things you needed to learn once making the move up from formula three as it wasn't one of the things you needed to do but had to in formula two.

And this was her second race, she didn't know the ins and outs yet, but she needed to nail it and she needed to do it immediately. She tried to find her rhythm, taking the most preserving lines through the corners without compromising her lap times too much. Luckily, Marcus and Callum were battling for position and had three cars following suit, including Mick who would increase the pressure on them.

Marylinde tried her best, but her tires were about to give out three laps before the initial pit stop.

"Guys, the tires are done, I don't know how much longer we can stay out."

"You are losing about three tenths a lap right now, any way you can better your lap times?"

"Without sending them fully off the cliff or myself off the track, no." It remained silent.

"Okay, so box next lap, skip the pit stop now. Next lap we are going to box." Marylinde knew it wasn't ideal, especially not since they had been trying to push the pit stop further ahead. Also with looking at the lap times, it wasn't ideal. She had been driving slower than she had wanted in order to preserve her tires, maybe she would have come just as far with the tires when driving on the edge and the gap would have been larger between her and now Callum who had overtaken Marcus.

With a couple of snaps of oversteer, Marylinde found herself driving around the Vietnamese track one last time before pitting for the hard tires.

"Guys, anything you can say on the tire preservation and how to improve it?"

"Unfortunately not," Marylinde swore.

"You're still on the radio."

"Damnit, it won't disconnect in that case."

"Just try pressing the button again, it might just be a little stuck." Marylinde did so and asked whether they could hear her. She did not need the extra distraction.