Baku

Drive To Survive

 

 

Chapter Theme:

KALEO - Way Down We Go


 

The next two weeks are mostly texts and occasional afternoons. Everything moves so fast that she only gets chance to see Irene on three separate days, and then it’s flights away to Azerbaijan ready for everything to begin all over again. Irene weighs on her mind. The impending prospect of another race weighs on it more. She checks into her hotel with Wendy and Joy and the rest of the team and goes immediately down to scout out the bar and the little café ready for later. Irene’s in a different hotel with the guys from Ferrari and Cook-Honda. Seulgi drops off her things in her room and grabs herself a coffee and sits with Wendy and Joy watching the day outside. The track is half a mile away in the centre of the city and from there in the third-floor café she watches the way the sun catches the shine of the windows in a milkwhite sheen.

‘Earth to Seulgi,’ says Joy from across the table.

‘Sorry. Was elsewhere.’

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing. I’m just tired.’

‘How are you feeling for tomorrow?’

‘Everyone asks me that. Everyone always asks me that.’

‘Well.’ Joy sips her coffee. ‘There’s not much else to say. I mean, what else do you want me to talk about?’

‘I don’t know. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. Just…you know.’

‘Congrats for Spain, by the way. Can’t remember if I said it or not.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘Well,’ Joy says. ‘Congrats. It was a good race. Maybe not from me, but you did alright.’

‘Alright.’

‘This is where it starts to get serious. Can you feel it yet?’

‘I could feel it in Bahrain. Before that, even.’

Joy laughs. It’s a reserved and mature laugh, full of teeth and grinning. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘That’s a good thing. There are no team orders or anything, but I can feel it coming. That’s what they said in testing, right? I wasn’t paying attention.’

Seulgi looks at Wendy. ‘Yeah,’ Wendy says. ‘Just like last year.’

‘Can you tell us any more than that?’

‘No.’

‘Please?’

Wendy thinks about it for a minute, hands playing with her coffeecup, the steam wafting about thinly. Then she says, ‘They said it’ll be decided by the season break, or just after. So, by Italy. Whoever’s in the lead then is the one the team are going to be behind. Whichever one of you it is.’

‘Just like last year.’

‘Yeah. Just like last year.’

‘I like your hair, by the way.’

‘Thanks. You only just noticed it?’

‘Kinda. I don’t pay much attention.’

‘To me?’

‘To anything, really. Seulgi.’

‘What?’ Seulgi says.

‘You okay with losing by Italy?’

Seulgi has to laugh at the absurdity of it. In the points she’s only a couple behind Joy, but there are nineteen races to go and all of it can change. She says, ‘There’s a long way to go. A lot can change between now and then, you know.’

‘You feeling good for this weekend?’

‘Yeah,’ she lies. ‘Feeling great.’

‘I like Baku. I’m good around here, I think.’

Seulgi only nods and drinks her coffee. It’s too hot and too bitter and the heat burns the roof of but her mind is elsewhere, off with Irene again, wondering what she’s doing, wondering whether she can excuse herself for a minute and ring her and ask her if they can meet, just for an hour or two before they get ready for practice in the morning. Wondering what she might say. Perhaps: I need to talk to you. Perhaps nothing at all, just watching her and enjoying the time spent together, the calm before the storm.

‘Seulgi.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Are you okay?’

She smiles at Wendy, then at Joy. ‘Tired,’ she mutters. ‘A little tired. And excited.’

‘Are you still thinking about her? And it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who?’ Joy says. ‘Oh, Irene?’

Seulgi shrugs.

‘What are you thinking about? Unless it’s personal, in which case, ignore me. Actually, you should probably just ignore me anyway.’

‘I don’t even know how to explain it anyway. I couldn’t even try.’

‘She’s right,’ Wendy says. ‘I still don’t know what she means.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You fancy another coffee?’

‘No,’ Seulgi says. She checks the time but needn’t have bothered. The last of the light has long since departed. ‘I think I should get to bed,’ she says. ‘Get a good night’s sleep. Think I’ll need it.’

‘Roll on tomorrow.’

‘Exactly.’

When she’s almost out of earshot she turns and looks back at them, still sat at the table, laughing over something she can’t properly hear. She thinks for a moment about how much she’d like something like that with Irene, but with the added comfortability of intimacy. But that is a pipedream, a long-distant future. For now it’s just the race, the championship, and everything it brings with it.

 

 

In the first session of practice she sets the best time of any car. Three minutes later she betters it again on the soft tires. Baku has never been her favourite circuit – the corners are too tight, the straight too long, the walls always too near. And the uphill castle section at turns eight and nine is perhaps her least favourite of any turn on the calendar, countless bad memories of crashing in sims and games and never quite making it perfectly. Turn too early and you hit the wall on the left. Brake just a fraction too late and it’s into the far wall and then that’s it. Session over. It’s Monaco without the glitz and glam, no fancy restaurants or rooftop parties in the sun, no Chateau at the Hermitage, no hallway memories of their first kiss. But all that seems to disappear when she beats her best lap for a second time.

‘This is good,’ Wendy says on the radio. ‘We’re getting good data. Keep it up for now. This is good for the race.’

‘How is everyone else doing?’

‘Focus on your own session.’

‘Wendy.’

Silence a minute. Then: ‘They’re all on different strategies. Nobody’s testing the same thing.’

‘Well?’

‘The Samsungs are on the mediums. Jennie’s doing a long run on the hards, presumably to test them out for Sunday.’

‘Anybody on the softs?’

‘A few. And nobody close to you, so don’t worry about it. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’

When she pulls into the garage at the end of the session she’s still top of the timeboards by a good distance. She pulls off her helmet and runs a hand through her sweaty hair and winces at the newfound daylight outside. It smells, strangely, of kebabs and air freshener. ‘How was that?’ she says.

‘About as good as we expected. Looked like you were pushing it for a few laps out there.’

‘I was. I wanted to get a feel for it properly. I’ve never been good around here.’

‘Well, you looked okay to me.’

‘Guess I did. It’s a knife’s edge. Sometimes I’m great, sometimes I’m awful and I crash. I can never just be average around this circuit. Don’t know why.’

‘Just be excellent tomorrow. And on Sunday. That’s all we’re asking for. That’s not too much, is it?’

‘We’ll see,’ Seulgi says, looking about. She hangs out at the back of the garage for the two hours before the next practice session, sipping water through a straw and cooling herself and closing her eyes and listening to the general hum of motion around her. The garage and the cars down at the end of the pitlane, the crowd in the grandstands outside, the city faintly beyond the circuit limits. Everything is contained in its own miniature world, a place away from the rest of civilisation and she at its very centre. Thinking of Irene. Tracing the lines of her face, her hair. Her incredible eyes. Missing her a lot more than she thinks is healthy. When she fastens herself into the seat for the second practice session of the day the sun is at its hottest and the afternoon has taken on a chalkwhite glow that is almost blinding.

Wendy taps on the side of the halo and gives her a thumbs up. ‘Radio check,’ she says.

‘Confirmed.’

‘Go out there and do what we talked about. And Seulgi.’

‘What?’

‘Enjoy yourself. Let loose.’

She gives a shaky thumbs up back. Out on her first lap it all hits her again, the adrenaline of what she’s about to do, the sun bearing down on her, the fans in the stands like small paper men and women. Along the far side of the straight after turn two she catches sight of a huge orange and white banner with the words KANG SEULGI: DYNAMITE printed on it in black font and a stitched picture of her beside it. They’re all out to support either her or Irene or the Ferraris, and mostly it's for her. The banners continue. They say SEULGI and CHAMPION and GO APEX and various other slogans that encourage her to go faster. And so she obliges them.

She barrels down the straight after turns eighteen and nineteen and activates DRS and holds her breath. It’s just practice but it feels different – everything has changed, the atmosphere has shifted somewhat. The looming presence of Bahrain is like a spectre. She shifts down into third gear for turn one and second gear for the left-hander at turn two and down the back straight. The DYNAMITE banner melts beyond her vision at three hundred kilometres per hour. Turns five and six aren’t perfect but turn seven is, and she brakes perfectly for the uphill castle section and catches the inside kerb with enough speed to propel her up and out of the kink at a proper pace.

‘Did you see that?’ she mutters to no one. Not even Wendy can hear her. The next five laps are the same. On lap six she slips at turn seven but regains control and smooths out through Castle and corrects herself. The car feels better with each passing lap. Three more laps, then another three. Soon she’s the last car on track. The fans give her one more standing ovation as she pulls into the pitlane to call it a day. Wendy’s already smiling when she hauls herself out of the seat and dusts herself down.

‘What?’ she says.

‘You’d think you’d just won the race or something. Listen to them.’

She takes a minute to see them out there, waving, cheering, banners fluttering in the wind. ‘I don’t understand,’ she says.

‘Understand what?’

‘Why do they love me so much?’

‘Is that a serious question?’

‘Yeah. Kind of.’

‘You’re fun to watch. Your style, I mean. It’s so different.’

‘Is it really that different, though?’

Wendy nods. ‘Compared to Irene,’ she says. ‘Surely you’ve noticed.’

‘Not really. I don’t pay attention to that.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I leave that stuff for the analysts. I just drive how I feel like driving, for better or for worse.’

Wendy only laughs. ‘I can’t believe you sometimes,’ she says. ‘You know, one day I’ll show you what I mean. But I can’t be bothered right now.’

Seulgi taps her foot impatiently. Across the garage Joy’s stood talking to her engineer about something to do with the car. ‘Hey,’ Seulgi says, ‘I’m going to head back to the hotel already. I need to find someone.’

‘Irene?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I’m not going to stop you. Good luck, with whatever it is you’re doing.’

‘I’m only going to talk to her.’

‘Well then. Good luck.’

‘Thanks,’ Seulgi says. She says goodbye to the rest of the garage and packs her bag and jumps into the first cab back to the hotel. Half an hour later when she’s freshened up she decides the best thing to do is to not text Irene at all. Instead she turns up outside her hotel room door and knocks twice and waits with her heart pumping a little harder than usual in her chest. The silence is terrible. Locked in this hourglass of time that seems to continue forever. The sound of footsteps behind the door, the lock clicking, the doorhandle turning. Irene looks at her in confusion.

‘Surprise,’ Seulgi says awkwardly to a familiar silence. Irene just looks at her. She thinks perhaps texting would have been a good idea, but then Irene breaks into a smile and pulls her into the room and kisses her with the sort of fervor she’s missed quite an awful lot. It tastes of strawberries and lipstick and she smells incredible and Seulgi has to catch her breath and stop herself from laughing but it’s almost impossible.

‘I’ve missed you,’ Irene says, an equally familiar greeting.

‘I should’ve text. Sorry.’

‘Sorry I didn’t say anything to you last night. I feel like I’ve been ignoring you a bit.’

Seulgi shrugs. There isn’t much to say to that. Irene offers her a coffee and she sits crosslegged on the bed sipping it slowly from a ceramic mug with Sebastian Vettel’s face on it, and perhaps there’s something comical or ironic in that, but if so she doesn’t bother thinking about it. Irene sits with her back to the headboard, legs outstretched, coffee of her own. In the narrow shafts of windowlight she looks almost ethereal. Like something fathomed from a dream of Seulgi’s, and sometimes she’s almost positive that thought is perhaps the reality of it. That she might one day wake up and none of this would have ever been real at all.

Irene pushes herself up and smiles softly. ‘What are you thinking about?’ she says.

‘Not much.’

‘That’s a lie.’

‘Maybe a little.’

She expects Irene to say something but she doesn’t. She just sits there, patient and quiet, encouraging Seulgi to speak if she wants to and equally understanding if she decides to remain silent. It takes a long time to work up the courage to admit anything at all. Staring down into the dark of the coffee, bitter and black and hot in her hands. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, voice barely her own. ‘I don’t know how to put it into words.’

‘Is it about racing? Or about us?’

‘Both. Together. That’s why it’s so hard to explain it.’

‘You can try. If you want, I mean.’

‘I do. I do want to. I just don’t know how.’

Irene remains as quiet as ever, allowing her the room to speak on her own terms. She sips the coffee with a wince. Finally she says, ‘I don’t like the way we’ve got to pretend we’re almost strangers all the time. It’s not just on the race weekends. It’s when we’re flying back to Korea, or when we’re in Korea, or wherever else. I know why. I do. But I don’t like it all the same. I wish it didn’t have to be like this. Sorry. I sound like an idiot.’

‘No you don’t. Not at all. I know what you mean. I wish it were different too, all the time. Wish we could spend more time together. But this is what it is in this line of work. There’s no way to change that, short of retiring. And I’m not going to do that.’

‘Neither am I,’ Seulgi says. ‘Not for a long time.’

‘So we’ve got to compromise. Make the most of what we’ve got and what we’ve been given. It’s either that or give it all up, and I can’t do that. I don’t want to even think about it. I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

‘And I want to try and work through it.’

Seulgi just sits there, coffee slowly going cold. ‘Every time without fail,’ she mumbles.

‘What?’

‘You always say the right thing to make me feel better. You should be a motivational speaker when you retire. You’re pretty amazing at it.’

‘Guess I’ve just had a lot of practice motivating myself in the mirror.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah,’ Irene says. ‘Sorry again about not seeing you much this week. I’ve just had a lot on my mind.’

‘About the race?’

‘Kind of,’ Irene says, shifting a slight. It’s vague and there’s something hidden a little but Seulgi barely notices it. She’s still gazing down at the dark of the coffee moiling in the cup. Irene shifts her feet again and rubs her eyes and says, ‘You did well today. Better than everyone else.’

‘It’s just practice.’

‘Still. It’s a good sign for the weekend.’

‘I hate this circuit. Well, not all of it. Just Castle.’

‘Me too,’ Irene says with a laugh. ‘Just awful. The amount of times I’ve felt like I was going to crash going through there.’

‘Yeah. How’s Yeri, by the way? After last week?’

‘She’s good. Doing good.’

‘Not shaken up or anything?’

Irene shakes her head. ‘That’s the best thing about her,’ she says. ‘Or at least, one of the best things. She might not have the racecraft or the consistency yet, but she’s got the fire, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s got this crazy ability to just shrug everything off and get back into the saddle, so to speak. Same thing after America last year. It was totally eating away at her for, like, three days after that huge accident, and then by the next weekend she’d completely put it behind her. And she went out there and got a podium. I don’t know how she does it. Even I get nervous sometimes, but she’s fearless.’

‘Wish I could be the same.’

‘You’ll get there.’ A small and gentle smile. ‘I know you will. After what I saw in testing—’

‘But that was just testing. This is different.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘What?’

‘Stop it.’

Seulgi smiles at that. It’s less of a command and more a quick quip. ‘Stop what?’ she says.

‘This oscillation between having complete belief in yourself and telling yourself you’re useless as a driver.’

‘I wish I could. I thought I’d be able to after testing, and after everything I learnt last season. But it turns out all it takes is one bad race.’

‘It wasn’t even your fault.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Sure it does. Of course it does.’

‘No,’ Seulgi says. ‘That’s the worst part about it. Maybe it matters in reality – in the real world – but not in my head. The worst part about the mind is how it can take that reality and distort and twist it until it’s unrecognisable. Until you’re left with something that’s dumb and irrational, and do you know what? The absolute worst part is that I know it, too. I know it’s stupid and self-defeating and only annoys everyone around me, but I can’t fix it. I can’t just wake up and tell myself it’s all going to be okay and that’s that. Like I said, this is the real world, where it all matters. And the real world doesn’t work like that.’

Irene merely smiles, lips sealed, eyes closed for a moment.

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says shyly, ‘I know. I’ve had a lot of time to mull it over. That’s what I came up with.’

‘It makes a lot of sense. Explains a lot. Just know that I’m always here for you, whatever happens. Whatever you need to say.’

‘I know. Thank you. What time is it?’

Irene checks her wristwatch. ‘Half nine,’ she says. ‘Do you need to get back?’

She turns toward the far window. Thin bursts of auburn light wander like fireworks through the night sky. ‘No,’ she says, setting her cup neatly on the floor and snuggling up close enough to Irene to smell her perfume. ‘I can stay a while longer.’

 

 

Her mind wanders, but her night with Irene has eased it a little and for that she’s thankful. So much so that when she accelerates out of the garage the next morning for the final practice session she’s playing it back in her head and blushing a slight and she almost overshoots the braking point for turn one and has to shift through third gear. She does three laps. They’re not as good as yesterday but it’s the soft tires and within two more laps she feels much more accustomed to them. The difference in grip will never not be startling to her. She shifts down at the kink at turn ten and hammers down the winding straight to the tightness of turn fifteen and eases down in second gear and flattens out along the bottom. Then it’s the main straight again. The blur of banners and cheering fans and one of the dark green Chamisuls going slow off the racing line and the wind against her helmet. Even in the heat it keeps her hands cold and numb.

‘Good lap,’ Wendy says, and says no more. She knows it is. The confidence imbued in her is newfound and likely not permanent but she lives in the moment, one lap at a time. Turns three and four are tight and smooth and so is the run down to the right-hander at turn seven. ‘Come on,’ she mutters to herself. It’s two seconds later she makes her first real error of the weekend, but one momentary lapse is all it takes. She brakes three metres too early and turns the car in for the castle section before it’s time to do so. Yesterday on the medium tires it would’ve been a perfect line, but on the grippier softs all she can do is press the brake pedal to the floor of the car and brace herself and watch the inside barrier come far too close at fifty kilometres per hour. Then it’s the crumple of the nose cone and the front wing and her left wheel shattered against the railing and her car coming to a sudden and painful halt that has her head spinning.

‘Seulgi,’ she hears in the static. ‘Seulgi, talk to me. You good?’

‘.’

‘Seulgi?’

A second to savour the silence before it all sets in. The yellow safety lights flash just behind her. The Chamisul slows and weaves around the carbon shrapnel on the track and up through Castle and disappears. All Seulgi can do it watch it go. ‘,’ she spits. ‘You ing idiot, Seulgi. You stupid idiot.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m so stupid. So unbelievably stupid.’

‘Seulgi.’

She sighs. The marshal behind the barrier across the narrow portion of track waves to indicate she’s safe to climb out and totter off toward the safety gate. ‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘The car’s done, though. , I’m sorry, Wendy. Really sorry.’

‘What happened?’

‘I lost it going through Castle. Sorry.’

To that there’s no reply. The long path back to the garage on foot feels like the walk of shame. Even with the crowd cheering her on and telling her it’s okay she turns her face down and out of the sun and is glad for her helmet, because while she’s not crying she isn’t far away. Wendy’s face when she arrives in the garage is a visage of genuine concern that says what she cannot. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks. ‘Not hurt?’

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘You’re gonna have to go to hospital.’

‘I know. Policy and stuff. But I’m fine. Don’t worry. Sorry. I’m really sorry.’

‘Don’t sweat it. It’s just practice. Better to get it out of your system now rather than in qualifying or the race.’

‘Will the car be good for qualifying?’

‘Yeah,’ Wendy says. ‘Looks like minor damage from the data.’

Seulgi just stands there, helmet in her hands, hair streaked across her face like brown ink. There’s a numbness in her heart that feels very alien to her and she doesn’t like it at all. ‘I’m sorry,’ is all she can say again.

‘It’s okay. Go get yourself checked out. Get some rest before qualifying.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says softly. ‘I’ll go do that.’

 

 

The strangeness of it only becomes fully apparent in the third and final round of qualifying three hours later. Even in the heat she feels cool and calm and confident. As if the morning had not happened at all. Perhaps it’s Irene or perhaps some minute other thing, but the inexplicable nature of it is what alarms Seulgi the most. Every lap on a knife’s edge between crashing and driving like her life depends on it.

‘Here goes,’ Wendy says, and it’s all the motivation she needs. Turn one in third gear, turn two in second, down the straight and past the APEX banners, past the banner with her face stitched on it. Then it’s six and seven. At Castle she holds her breath and feels her heart stop and she smooths the inside line absolutely perfect and powers out of the upward kink and onto the straight as if she had never crashed at all. The car feels amazing. She feels even better. She’s smiling before she’s even crossed the line, innately aware in the way drivers so often are that she’s put in a killer lap before the times are even on the board.

‘How was that?’ she says, and then says it twice more for good measure. She can practically see Wendy’s smile already when she cuts in to say, ‘Pole position, Seulgi. Good work.’

‘Yes! I knew it. That’s how we do it. Just like that.’

‘Amazing work. I knew you had it in you.’

She waves out to the sea of white and orange with a beaming smile behind her helmet. In the garage she climbs out and pulls Wendy in for a great hug and then Joy once she sees that it’s a front-row lockout, the first of the season.

‘I knew it,’ Wendy says. ‘What an amazing lap. Pole by two tenths.’

She takes another glance at the board. Irene’s in third with Jennie alongside her, Yeri down in fifth. ‘I thought the Samsungs would do better around here,’ she says.

‘So did we. Maybe it was car troubles. They’ve got the speed. Or maybe it was losing time in sector two. Whatever. Who cares? Congrats!’

Seulgi looks at the board one more time. Her name in bold, top of it all. Thinking: I could get used to this. I really could.

 

 

The first thing Irene does is draw her in for a hug and kiss her for a long time. Standing there in the hallway alone and empty, dappled light along the corridor. Seulgi closing her eyes and thinking: What if there are cameras? There will be cameras. I know it.

Irene pulls away and smiles and says, ‘I’m so proud of you. I knew you could do it.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You just had to believe in yourself.’

‘Yeah. Something like that.’

‘What’s wrong?’

She wants to say it again. To just let it all out. To say: Why can you kiss me like this and then ignore me the rest of the week? But the answer is obvious and the question itself – posed or otherwise – childish and simplistic and not at all representative of the reality of their situation. So she opts instead to remain silent, working up a smile and taking Irene’s hands and saying, ‘Tomorrow should be fun. What happened today, though? We thought you’d have pole.’

‘Nothing much,’ Irene says, unlocking her hotel room door. ‘We just had some setup troubles, is all. And we couldn’t nail sector two.’

‘That’s what Wendy guessed.’

‘Can’t give anything else away, though. You know that.’

‘Of course.’ She stands in the doorway with foot up against the door and her hands fiddling in her front of her. Irene looks at her from the small en-suite kitchen and sets her knife and apple down on the worktop. ‘What’s up?’ she says. ‘Something’s on your mind.’

There it is again. The concern. The desire to learn everything about Seulgi and to comfort her if at all necessary. For that she’s very grateful. But the courage to say anything at all eludes her as it almost always has. The truth is their talks have weighed on her both positive and negative, because everything Irene says is right and everything she’s feeling is perhaps not, but emotions are the hardest thing to overcome. Sometimes they can only be endured – a compromise must be made. She shrugs with as much nonchalance as she can muster.

‘I think I’m just tired. It took a lot out of me today.’

‘You want something to eat?’ Irene says.

‘No, I’m good.’

Irene stops, knife in hand again. It’s evident even to Seulgi that she’s aware there is something amiss, something she’s neglecting to say. She smiles in wordless understanding. ‘If you ever want to talk,’ she says, ‘I’ll listen. Whatever it is. Even if you feel like you’re repeating yourself.’

‘I know. Thank you.’

 

 

The fugue state she’s in lasts until she’s on the starting grid after the formation lap and the lights are about to come on. It’s then and only then she pinches herself and looks around and sees the banners flying high with her face on them and realises what she’s about to do. The comedy of that is inherent. As is Wendy when she says, ‘Nice day today.’

‘It’s a bit warm.’

‘Yeah, I bet. Okay, so here’s how it’s occurring.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Everyone back to twelfth is on the softs, likely all two-stoppers like us. The two Chamisuls are starting on the mediums, then we’ve got a car on hards in fifteenth. Behind that it’s all softs again. Keep your tires in good condition, drive a smart race, don’t get too impatient, don’t worry about their straight-line speed. You’ve got this.’

‘I know,’ Seulgi says. ‘I know I do.’

Three lights on already. By the time they’re away she’s not thinking about anything but the complex of turns at Castle. She’s still in the lead three laps later, going through Castle again along a perfect inner line. A glance in her mirror tells her that Joy’s down to third and Irene is less than two seconds behind and keeping a consistent pace. By lap eleven and following her first pitstop she’s no closer. Just there, two seconds back, pacing herself. ‘Wendy,’ she says.

‘Yeah. Gap to Irene is two and a half seconds.’

‘She’s dictating pace.’

‘I know.’

‘Better than I did in Bahrain.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘She’s smarter than I am.’

‘Focus on your own race,’ Wendy says. It’s good advice. The howl of cheering along the back straight gives her the confidence to test the tires again. She pulls out a four-second gap on Irene and the car feels alive and her head is no longer spinning but it’s not quite good enough. Lap fifteen and Irene is right there again, back within two seconds, hunting her to the brink. ‘I know what she’s doing,’ she mutters across the radio.

‘Focus on what you’re doing, not her.’

‘She’s pacing me. Feeling me out.’

‘Seulgi, focus.’

‘She’s so much better on her tires than I am. So much smoother. This isn’t going to work, Wendy. She’ll have me after I pit again. Maybe even before, with the undercut.’

‘Seulgi,’ Wendy says again, already too late. Her psyche is toppled, her confidence gone. She almost misses the braking point at turn six and again at seven, and at the left-hander at Castle she does miss it completely, just as she did in practice, an almost identical slipup. There’s no time to react. In only a moment she locks up the brakes in a cloud of smoke and skitters into the near barricade and feels the front of the wing explode immediately. The shunt is immense. It pushes her across the track and around in a spin fast enough to force her eyes closed. The crowd groan, perhaps disappointment or perhaps just surprise. When she opens her eyes she sees the rest of the train of cars disappear around the corner at Castle and drive on past.

‘Seulgi,’ she hears.

‘Yeah, I’m alright.’

‘Are you hurt?’

She looks at the car. ‘Only my ego,’ she says.

‘What happened?’

A long pause, trying to formulate a proper response. What is there to say that doesn’t ruin her self-worth? ‘Same as practice,’ she ekes out. ‘The exact same place. Same accident. Jesus Christ, I’m so ing stupid. How can I get pole and then crash? What’s wrong with me, Wendy?’

‘Just as long as you’re okay. Turn off the car. P1 for four seconds, then P-zero.’

‘Yeah, I know. .’

The last thing she willingly notices before climbing into the support car and being driven to the hospital for a second time in as many days is the look on the faces of the fans in the stands, the maelstrom of it all – fear, excitement, elation, hurt, disappointment. She turns her helmet in her hands, the visor scuffed and swamped in dust, the orange number 13 still bright as ever. DYNAMITE, it says. She thinks about that for a very long time.

 

 

Irene never has to say a word. She opens the door and takes one look at the state of Seulgi and lets her into the room and closes it gently. It takes a lot of energy for Seulgi to sit herself down on the edge of the bed. Everything feels colder, more distant. For a long time the silence in the room feels almost oppressive. It’s only when Irene wraps an arm around her and pulls her close that she allows herself to break down.

‘It’s okay,’ Irene whispers.

‘I’m a up.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘It’s the same as last year. I thought I’d gotten over this. Thought I’d fixed it all.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘I can’t do this.’

‘Yes you can,’ Irene says. ‘Yes you can.’

When she’s finished crying she wipes her eyes and looks up at Irene, smiling gently, brushing her hair out of her face. ‘It’s not about getting knocked down,’ Irene says.

‘It’s about getting back up?’

‘No. It’s about realising that you’re down in the first place. About being able to recognise the slump you’re in and understanding that it’s fleeting. It’s ephemeral. It doesn’t last and it won’t. Having that clarity of vision is what allows you to keep moving forward at all. It’s not the getting back up that helps you. It’s the self-reflection. It’s knowing that you can be better, and you will be. I know you will be.’

Seulgi only looks at her. Nothing smart or proper comes to her. So instead she kisses Irene and cups her face and tells her she loves her.

‘I love you too,’ Irene says. ‘And I know you’ve got it in you to win. I’ve seen it before. Nothing lasts forever.’

It isn’t until Seulgi’s on the plane back to Korea that the true gravity of that begins to settle in.

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TEZMiSo
3 more chapters to go! :)

Comments

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Apcxjsv
#1
Chapter 21: New F1 fan, good job author-nim
Oct_13_wen_03 35 streak #2
Chapter 21: 🤍🤍🤍
railtracer08
357 streak #3
Chapter 21: This was brilliant and im sad to see it end. These characters really grew on me throughout both series 💕 the wenjoy interaction is too cute lol
railtracer08
357 streak #4
Chapter 8: There's just something....sad about that last part 😔
Yeo_hong_hwa #5
Chapter 15: Ngl as good as Seulgi is, I was desperately rooting for 5 time world champion Irene. What a shame
TypewriterLuvie
#6
Chapter 21: by far, one of the greatest sequels and greatest works <3
thank you for sharing this with us readers !!
hi_uuji
#7
Chapter 21: I'm still glued to F1 stuff since reading this story. F1 got me addicted. It's not literally that I'm now racing or anything, but I'm enjoying the adrenaline rush of it. I'm amazed at the way you describe things that happened because I really felt like traveling the world and being a VIP Grand Prix spectator. In essence, this is a very good and satisfying story for me! Glad to find this!
hi_uuji
#8
Chapter 15: End of this chapther felt like yerim deep talking with both of her parents 😀
hi_uuji
#9
Chapter 3: It felt like rollercoaster all the time
Baelrene
#10
Chapter 1: i just realised this chapter basically predicted the bahrain ‘22 gp with mvp’s car giving up on almost the final lap lol