Driven by Passion, page 2
Victor walked past him, heading into the small tunnel, and Lucien jogged to catch up. “I think I’m looking at these engine failures the wrong way.”
“Yeah?”
“I keep thinking it’s something I did wrong, but how can it be?”
“If it’s an engine issue, surely that’s the manufacturer’s problem.” Like many teams, Gamble Racing bought their engine from one of the big manufacturers.
“Yes and no. Obviously I’ve run all the data with them.”
“And?”
“They couldn’t find anything either. That engine is in four of the ten teams and no one else had any issues.” Victor’s breath curled in the breeze, little trails of fog swirling around him. “I made some mods to the engine throughout the season.”
“You think it’s the mods you did?”
“What else could it be? No one else had any problems with the same engine.”
Lucien agreed. They walked into the braking zone before turns five and six; part of the wildest part of this track. Apparently when Socrates had built the track, there was a soft patch of ground at the end of the cliff, presumably from where all the water ran off and collected. So Socrates, being who he was, had built a tight circular turn that led to a ramp that took the track over itself, then up onto the cliff. They’d put a gravel trap at the end of turn five for driver safety.
“The first half of the season was good. Our goal was to be a solid mid-field team and get points. The car had some drivability issues but—”
“It was quick.” Lucien wished he’d been able to drive it. It wouldn’t have suited his late-braking style because it was too twitchy, but just to be able to go that fast on the limit would be... well, like flying.
“Ondrej picked up points in the first race of the season. We met the goal almost immediately.”
“I never doubted you. Back in the day, you were the brains of our S3 team.”
Victor nodded once. “Thank you. I was surprised to get the call from Mike Patel though.”
“Not from Socrates? I always assumed he head-hunted you.” Gamble Racing’s owner, Socrates Drayton had retired from S1 after his big crash in the 1990s, and together with his husband, Mike Patel, they’d built Gamble Racing. He’d built a diverse team and now with the lead S1 driver, Ondrej, coming out, Gamble Racing had both himself and Ondrej as the only two openly queer drivers in the Series leagues. There were others—statistically there had to be—and it was good to see the majority of fans accepting both himself and Ondrej. Most fans only cared about the racing; almost none of the driver’s personal lives were ever discussed by fans. His fan boost stats certainly showed that fans thought he was worth voting for.
“No, his loyalty was to Reginald. They’d been an engineer/driver team for so many decades, and Socrates is an incredibly loyal person.”
“Are you saying that the team went around Socrates to get rid of Reginald and his slow cars to get you?” Lucien had always assumed it’d been above board, because Socrates had been the one to suggest he move from S1 to SE. When his S1 contract ended, he’d leaped at the chance to get away from his father’s dream and build something for himself, so taking on Socrates’ offer had been perfect for him.
“No. Socrates made the final decision. I was his choice, eventually.”
“What does that mean?” Lucien pulled his jacket tighter around his chest as they rounded turn six and started the rise, up the ramp bridge to the top of the cliff. At this point, the cliff was only three metres high although the ramp had a sharp elevation that went over the lower part of the track. This whole section of the test track was so perfectly Socrates; outrageous and clever and unique. It also helped test cars for tracks like Spa, COTA, and Monaco that had sharp elevations changes.
“Paulo Sanchez came with a huge sponsorship deal, and those types of deals always come with conditions. One condition was that Socrates sack Reginald and get new chief engineer. I’m not sure how my name ended up on that list; the rumour is that I was the fifth choice.”
“Fifth is ten points.”
Victor snorted a laugh. “Midfield engineer for a midfield team.”
“Stop that. You are going to win a constructor’s championship one day.”
“I hope so.”
Lucien nudged his friend with his elbow. “Think about it. You had virtually no time to design a car for the new season, and you produced one that was fast enough to take the team from dead last into the mid-field.”
“True.”
“You like to win as much as I do.” Lucien said. It was a statement he’d often said to Victor.
“Of course. I didn’t become a race car engineer for the travel or the long stressful hours. I want the challenge of winning.”
“How competitive of you.” Lucien teased, loving the way Victor tried to underplay his achievements, and yet how his eyes glowed with pride in himself.
“Says you.”
“Takes one to know one.”
Victor threw his head back and laughed. “Are we children now?”
“Yes. Giant man children who can’t control themselves.”
“Or figure out why the fuck my engines kept blowing up.”
Lucien nodded. “That’s why we are walking. So perhaps stop asking me all these pesky questions about me and talk about your damned petrol engines.”
“Don’t tell me. Now you finished third on the Series E championship, you are a convert?”
“Electric vehicles are the future.” Lucien walked wider on the track, setting himself up for the next turn. From the top of the cliff, the track lost elevation quickly, following along the ridge of the cliff down into the very tight turn nine at the end of the cliff. The braking in this section was tricky.
Chapter 2
Victor had always envied the way Lucien was so secure in his identity as a gay man. Obviously, Lucien would never give someone like Victor a second glance; Victor was nothing like the exuberant party boys that Lucien favoured. He’d seen Lucien’s social media, and the stream of beautiful, very fit, men on there. He was content to be Lucien’s friend and hopefully grab some of that self-confidence in his bisexual identity for himself.
“How can electric vehicles be the future when your sport doesn’t allow innovation?” Victor teased.
“An excellent question. And one that’s not completely true; only the batteries are the same across every car. And the battery technology has improved every year, with almost a 20% increase in power and durability in the last three seasons.” Lucien paced down the hill, staring at the next turn, as if he were visualising how to drive it.
“Well?”
“I can see what you are doing.” Lucien glanced over his shoulder. When they’d first met, it was obvious that Lucien needed a friend, someone to keep him from going completely off the rails. To hear Lucien’s story wasn’t a surprise. His father had always been hovering around the garage back in S3, an ignorant bully of a man with an ugly expression on a face that ought to be handsome but was marred by his sneer. The week when he’d died had been a strange one. Victor remembered the relief at not having him around pitlane anymore, nothing more. It was logical that Lucien had improved so quickly after that. Why hadn’t Victor ever tied those two events together? He ought to have noticed.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Stop stalling. We came out here to walk and to solve your engine puzzle.”
“What do you want to know? Your season was finished by the time we started having issues. You were with the team for most of those shitty days.”
“Start at the beginning. Pretend I know nothing. Better yet, let me drive the car around this track.” The way Lucien’s face lit up was everything as he stopped in the middle of the track, turning to face Victor. “It’s last season’s car now. The no-practice rules don’t apply anymore.”
It wasn’t the silliest idea. “You just want a taste of how fast it was.”
“Yes.” Lucien’s grin reminded Victor of the way his nephew’s face looked on Christmas morning.
“No. It’s not safe to send you out on this track in a car with an unreliable engine.”
Lucien raised one eyebrow. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”
“Do you actually want to help me with this puzzle, or do you just want to drive fast?”
“Both.” Every driver on the various racing series had one thing in common. Beautiful intense eyes, and Lucien was no different. Medium brown coloured with flecks of amber, it was the way Lucien focused his gaze on something that differentiated him from non-drivers. He looked at Victor—at everyone—as if he was the only person in the world; the same way he looked over at a racetrack, with a brilliant intensity as he absorbed all the information at speed.
“I’ll see what I can do.” Victor began to plan how to get enough mechanics together to put one of last season’s cars back together, just for Lucien to drive in the guise of testing what had gone wrong.
“Until then, talk to me. Stop avoiding the issue.”
“I’m not avoiding it.”
Lucien leaped towards Victor and grabbed his shoulders. Warmth rushed down Victor’s spine and he reminded himself that Lucien didn’t mean anything by it. It was friendship, nothing else.
“Are you sure about that?”
“No. Of course I’m avoiding it. I’ve been obsessing over this problem for months already. What use can more talking do?”
Lucien shrugged one shoulder. “Talking to my therapist has helped me a ton. Why not talk to a friend about a problem?” The casual way he spoke about therapy would make Victor’s Ma smile. It was so unexpected for who Lucien had been when they’d first met, and yes, Victor had talked to his mum about Lucien back then. She’d reminded him that people had their own journeys, they made their own choices, and Lucien would need to decide for himself if he wanted to heal himself. She’d love to see the changes in him now.
“It’s very technical.”
“Are you saying that I’m just a driver and I wouldn’t know enough?” Lucien released Victor and resumed walking.
“No. It’s just...” Victor clicked his tongue. “Is it arrogant to say that if I can’t figure this out, then no one can?”
“Yes.” Lucien laughed. “But also ... true. Look, I didn’t ask you here for a walk so I could solve this problem. I know you can do it. You just need a change of scene and to talk through the issues. Tell me about it and you’ll solve it yourself.”
“Fine.”
“You built a fast car. Then what happened.”
“At Austin, Ondrej’s exhaust began to smoke at lap ten.”
“So early in the race?”
“Yes. We couldn’t find anything on the data, and he drove the car slowly back to pitlane. When he arrived, there was still nothing on the engine data and then it just stopped smoking. We checked everything. He wanted to continue and there was no reason not to, so we sent him back out in last place.”
“Hard work from there.”
Victor shrugged. “Jaxxon wanted to have a crack. He said you never know what will happen in racing.”
“It’s true, which is why Jaxxon is a brilliant race engineer. And?”
“Ondrej drove well enough and finished in sixteenth. We examined the whole car and aside from some smoke damage in the exhaust itself, we found nothing.”
“Maybe some debris got in there and caught fire, then burned itself out?”
Victor breathed out, his breath smoking in the cold air. “If it was just that one time, then yeah, I’d agree with you.”
“Was that the race that Paulo DNF’d as well? What happened?”
“You weren’t there?” Victor was so caught up in the drama that he’d forgotten which races Lucien attended as the number three driver for the team. With Series E finishing in August, surely Lucien had been the back-up driver?
“No. Alex did Austin, Mexico, and Brazil because his wife has family in that part of the world.”
“Right. Of course. Paulo’s brakes caught fire on lap five and we retired the car.”
“So earlier than Ondrej’s problem?”
“Yes. But that’s not related because we figured that one out. One of the mechanics had installed them incorrectly with the wrong type of casing. It melted and caused the issue.”
Lucien lengthened his stride and Victor pushed himself to keep up. Damned drivers were so fit. “Just a shitty coincidence, then?”
“Definitely not the same engine issue that we had again and again.”
“Didn’t Ondrej DNF in Mexico?”
Victor growled. “Unrelated. He had a puncture caused by a shard of carbon fibre. We figured he must’ve run it over on the track. Just bad luck.”
“That’s a lot of bad luck in two races.”
“I know.” Victor ground his teeth together. “Look, I’ve already tortured myself over this. I can’t figure how a brake issue, caused by a mechanic, and a random puncture have anything to do with the engine failures.”
“You are the expert.” Lucien’s easy phrasing didn’t help when Victor felt like anything but an expert right now.
Victor rubbed his hands together. “This is pointless. It’s fucking cold and it’s not helping.”
“Come on. We are half-way around the track, heading into turn nine. You’ve got to be careful going into this one because of the downhill elevation change; it’s almost like Eu Rouge in reverse without the s-bend.”
“So nothing like Eu Rouge then. Aren’t you supposed to be an expert?” Victor enjoyed teasing Lucien, whose smile was so much nicer than his scowl.
“I’ll show you one day. We could take Socrates’ 1982 Le Mans car for a spin.”
“Sure.” One of the perks of this job was getting driven around by the world’s best drivers in amazing cars. Victor had access to drive them all too; Socrates let anyone in the team take any of his car collection for a ride on the test track; but Victor would never drive as fast or as competently as a proper driver. “Why have you never done that before?”
“Offered to take you for a spin?”
“Yeah?”
“We’ve been busy. This is literally our first winter break together since we both joined Gamble Racing.” Lucien had been here a lot longer than Victor. Lucien’s two seasons in S1 for Gamble Racing had happened while Victor was still in his old job at their old team; dreaming of an S1 gig.
“How have you been busy? Your season ends in August.” Victor knew the answer, but teased Lucien anyway. He loved seeing the way Lucien reacted, then forced himself to stop reacting. The control he showed was like nothing Victor had seen, and it really highlighted how he could be so successful as a driver. Before, back in S3, Lucien hadn’t had that control and without it, he was never going to go any further up the driving ranks.
“I suppose you think you are funny or something. I was the third driver for most of the races, which meant I still had to train and be ready in case something happened. Being on constant standby is a different sort of stress...”
“To driving?”
“Yes. Obviously, I’d come off a good season at Series E—”
“Third.” Victor’s obvious comment disappeared into the woods lining the track. The dense trees muffled the sound of any car as they sped along the test track. Due to the lack of access caused by the woods, the track was wider than a normal track, allowing other cars to quickly get to the scene of an accident if a test driver crashed. Solar powered cameras were mounted regularly along the track, so the entire 3.8km could be monitored from inside the engineering workshop.
Lucien jogged ahead and stopped in the middle of the track. “You’ve done it again.”
“What?”
“Turned the discussion into being about me, instead of your problem. I’m wondering if you even want to solve this thing...” Lucien winked, then turned around and kept walking along the straight towards the chicane of turns ten and eleven.
“Damn you. Yes. I want to solve this. Why the fuck are my cars failing?”
Lucien glanced over his shoulder. “Then walk and talk.” He waved his arm and Victor quickened his stride to catch up. The casual way Lucien assumed Victor would figure this out reinforced their unlikely friendship.
“If I don’t figure this out...” Victor paused. Could he voice his greatest concern? “Well, you know what this sport is like.”
“Has there been any hint that Gamble Racing might sack you?”
“No.”
Lucien sighed. “You’d be the last to know if they were, so ignore my question. What is the risk?”
“Of being sacked? Look at the evidence. I’m young. Too young for a chief engineer. My car is fast but hard to drive. We’ve had far too many problems this season.”
“Define too many.” Lucien, somehow, knew the right question to ask.
“The team... My cars had eight DNFs this season. That’s 17% of the opportunity to race. That’s one every six starts and far too many missed points. By any measure, it’s not good enough.” Victor knew all the numbers and none of them were good. Lucien nodded but didn’t say anything. Good. Victor didn’t need a platitude; he knew how much of a disaster this was and no amount of pretty words would help.
“The season before, there were only three DNFs. Seven percent of all race starts. That’s where it should be.”
“Two of those were mine.” Lucien gave Victor that sly over the shoulder glance again. On anyone else, Victor might have assumed Lucien was flirting, but it was nothing like that. Lucien was like that with everyone. It wasn’t personal, no matter how much Victor might want it to be. Lucian laughed, a soft chuckle that floated past Victor’s skin like the steam from a laksa on a cold day. “Although, honestly, I don’t think you should use my last season in S1 as any sort of benchmark. Ondrej only scored one solitary point. My best finish was thirteenth. It was a shitshow in a slow car.”
