Once Around the Track (25 page)

“But what does it do?”

“Improves the tires’ grip on the track. Makes for better control. If Badger can adjust to the feel of it. Not all drivers can. Like everything else, tire-soaking has a downside. Basically the stuff eats the tires. They don’t last as long. But they’re good for qualifying on. Should improve his time by a few tenths of a second, if we’re lucky.”

Taran blinked. “So…we’re going to paint this stuff on the tires—like nail polish?”

“No, tire soak goes in from the inside out. We’re going to put it
in
the tires for qualifying.”

“How long does the soaking process take?”

“Couple of hours, I guess.”

Taran shook her head. “Wait. That won’t work. NASCAR requires teams to buy a new set of tires from them to qualify on, right? And they don’t release that set until a few hours before qualifying. Usually there’s just enough time to bolt them on and get into the two-hour tech line. So let’s say that we get our qualifying tires about three to four hours before we get our turn to qualify. Then we’re not in the shop. We’re at the track with officials all over the place, so how are we going to soak tires without getting caught and ending up in big trouble?”

Julie grinned. “I thought of that, so I asked around. We’re going to do what the big teams do.”

Taran thought of asking which big teams she was referring to, but Julie probably wouldn’t tell her, anyhow. “Okay,” she said. “And what do the big teams do to keep from getting caught?”

“What do we do after we get the qualifying tires from NASCAR?”

“Well…we let the air out.”

“Right. Goodyear mounts the tires with regular air, and after we get them, we deflate the tires and refill them with nitrogen, because tires run better on nitrogen than on plain air.”

“Well, that’s not illegal…. Is it?”

“No, everybody does it. But some of them also do something else. They have a small, portable nitrogen tank at the track to refill the tires, only that tank is halfful of
tire soak.
So as we refill the tires, we will be spraying soak inside the tire through the valve stem.”

“What if you get caught?”

“Just don’t let anybody from outside the team try to pick up the nitrogen pump. It’ll weigh so much that they’re bound to figure out that something is wrong.”

“How did you know about this?”

Julie shrugged. “My dad was a race car driver, remember? He never made it to the big time, but he was serious about it, and I learned all the tricks tagging along after him. Back when I was a kid, the tire guy used to rub soak on the surface of the tire with a glove attached to a tube going to a bag of soak under his armpit.” She sighed and fluffed her hair. “I’m glad those days are over. The nitrogen tank method is more reliable and less easily detected.”

“And about a million times less gross,” muttered Taran. “Are we going to have to do this on race day, too?”

“We can’t,” said Julie. “The thing about tire soak is that it deteriorates the tires. That’s how it works. It degrades the rubber so that the tire sticks a little better to the surface of the track. That’s fine for the two laps it takes for qualifying, but if you tried it in a three-hour race, the tires would disintegrate on the track. You could end up in the wall, or in a wreck, or just having to make green flag pit stops to replace them. But for a couple of qualifying laps here, that extra traction might be good for a couple of tenths of a second.”

Taran nodded. She knew that sometimes three-tenths of a second was the difference between first place and fifteenth, so even the smallest advantage to gain the smallest unit of time mattered to a race team. She could see the advantage of that. “But what if they catch us?”

Julie shrugged. “Slap on the wrist, more or less,” she said. “A fine. Whoever was caught doing the soaking gets booted from the track, maybe suspended for a few races. The trick is not to get caught, Taran.”

“But it’s cheating.”

“I prefer to call it creative engineering. Everybody does it, Taran. And even if they didn’t, it isn’t as if we are on a level playing field here competitively, is it? The well-funded multicar teams get to test all their cars at a track and pool their results. We only get one shot. What’s fair about that? Or say some car has a ten-million-dollar sponsor and one of the independent owner–driver guys has to take up a collection to buy enough tires to race. How can that be equal opportunity? Money buys speed. At least tire-soaking is relatively cheap.”

Despite their efforts, Badger didn’t get the pole, but he did qualify sixth, much to the delight of the team. When the race began, the 86 team’s tires were all nitrogen-filled regulation tires. The only nonstandard modification was a bit of magic dirt that Taran rubbed on the hood of the car. Now it was all up to Badger’s driving skills.

When the number 86 appeared in lights on the pole that served as a vertical “scoreboard,” the pit crew alternately hugged each other and screamed for Badger.

“It’s the sacred dust from Chimayo!” screamed Taran. “I knew it would work eventually.”

Less than a minute later, Badger’s voice came over the headset. “This damn car is shaking like a sparrow in a snake pit.”

“I hear you, Badger.” Tuggle’s voice was calm, as always. “Could it be a valve spring?”

A few more seconds passed in a tense cacophony of noise that registered as silence with everyone on the 86 team, because all that mattered right then was Badger’s voice. Finally, he came back on, “Still shuddering, Tuggle. Hesitating.”

“Try the ignition box.”

After another interminable pause, Badger said, “That’s it. Damn thing’s gone bad. I’m flipping to the second one. Still shaking. The second box is bad, too, or else the switch is shorted out. It’s totally dead.”

There was a short silence while everyone thought things they couldn’t say out loud with spectators’ scanners tuned in. An ignition problem would trigger a misfire, causing the engine to begin losing cylinders. A car running on seven cylinders instead of eight would soon fall behind the rest of the pack. Even worse, the longer the motor was allowed to run on fewer than eight cylinders, the greater the chance that it would grenade the engine. If they couldn’t fix it, they could be looking at a last-place finish.

Badger again: “It’s skipping and popping. Sounds like hell. Missing.”

Tuggle swore under her breath, then in an icy calm, she said, “Turn off the brake blowers.”

“I’m dicing for the lead, dammit!”

“Well, you won’t get it,” muttered Tuggle. “You wanna bring it in now?”

He didn’t have time to answer. In a matter of seconds the 86 began to lose its momentum. The loss of power caused his speed to decrease, and now instead of leaping ahead of the cars following him, Badger was fast becoming an obstacle in their path. Somebody didn’t figure that out in time to swerve completely out of his way, and the resulting contact meant that they caught a caution. The collision was a minor one. Since Bristol was a short, high-banked track, where the average speed was ninety miles per hour, wrecks were not the terrifying prospect they had been at Daytona. This was the NASCAR equivalent of a fender bender, and given the 86’s mechanical problems, the resulting caution was a blessing.

“Bring it in, boy,” said Tuggle, but Badger hadn’t needed to be told. He was on his way.

Taran was mentally composing a demand-for-refund letter to a Navajo shaman when Tuggle’s voice crackled over her headset. “Stiles! You’re the one with the electronics background, aren’t you?’

Taran turned to face Tuggle and nodded slowly, wondering why that had come up.

“Good. When Badger comes in for the pit stop, I need you to get into the car and fix that ignition problem.”

“Can’t he switch to the other ignition box? Oh, he already tried that, didn’t he?”

“He did.”

“Could be a short under the dash,” said Taran, picturing circuitry in her head. “No. Unlikely. I’ll bet the switches are bad. I could try changing the boxes manually. Be faster.”

“Right. Good thing you know your stuff. And that you’re little. So get in there and fix the problem when he pits.”

Taran blinked.
“In thirteen seconds?”

Tuggle grunted. “Unless you can do it quicker.”

Taran said nothing more, but her mind was still going faster than the cars. In milliseconds she thought:
But how do I get into the car? Oh. Same way Badger gets in. Only through the passenger’s side window.
Around her the cars still roared. The crowd still screamed. The voices in her headset chattered on. But to Taran the world had just switched over to
slow motion
and
mute.
For another couple of seconds she stared open-mouthed at the swirl of cars streaming past, lost in thought.

Tuggle’s voice roused her from reverie again. “Stiles, remember that a caution lap here at Bristol takes less than a minute, and a green lap is about fifteen seconds. Don’t cost us this race.”

Oh, good. No pressure.

The 86 engine sputtered as it came down pit road. Tuggle radioed Badger, “Turn the switches off when you come in, Badger. Taran can’t change those boxes with the current on or it’ll shock the crap out of her.”

“Right,” said Badger. “Hurry it up, though, y’all.”

“We can’t give you gas this time because Taran is the catch can.” Everybody knew that they couldn’t send a shop dog out to take her place, because that would mean more than seven people over the wall.

Badger cut the engine as soon as he halted in the pit stall. One of the team mechanics leaned over the wall and handed Taran a new red ignition box, which was about the size and shape of a brick. Dodging the jackman, fresh tires, and the tire changers themselves, she sprinted for the passenger-side window and dived in, landing with a thump straight on the floor—no passenger seat in a stock car, of course, just the driver’s custom-fitted seat within the roll cage, and an empty space to his right. Badger’s helmeted head turned to look at her as she fell, and she saw his eyes widen in surprise. Taran held up the new ignition box, and he nodded and looked away, as if he had forgotten she was there, so she set to work.

In her headset she heard the voice of the team spotter, “Pace car in one.” It was Tony Lafon. The sound of his voice calmed her down.

Since the engine wasn’t running during this pit stop, Taran was more conscious of the sounds of the rest of the team at work. Thirteen seconds to fix the ignition problem, and she had to do it accompanied by the high-pitched scream of the air guns zipping off the lug nuts, and the
thump thump thump
of the jack raising the car, pitching her at such a steep angle that she almost lost her balance. Badger reached out and put his hand on her shoulder to keep her from falling. She willed herself not to process that sensation.
Wham!
The jack was lowered, and the tire changers headed for the other side of the car to repeat the procedure.

“Pace car in two,”
said Tony’s voice in her headset.

There wasn’t anything particularly hard about fixing the ignition box problem, except, that is, if you were expected to do it in an idling car whose interior temperature was upward of 100 degrees. In a thirteen-second pit stop. Taran tried to ignore the roar of the other cars’ engines and the shuddering as they sped past. She had to focus all her attention on the job. Because ignition boxes are bolted in with zeus fasteners, it would take too long to replace one by securing a new box to the dash, but fortunately, she didn’t have to. All she had to do was take the plug out of the old one, put it in the one she brought in with her, and see if the engine fired this time.

It did.

Problem fixed. The roaring and shaking of the idling engine flustered her for a moment, but she took a deep breath, steadied herself against the dash, and tried to shut out everything except the task at hand.

“Pace car in three.”

Running out of time.

Now all she had to do was secure the new box inside the car somewhere, by no means an elegant solution, but given the time factor, it was their best shot. She had thought about trying to tape the replacement box onto the two malfunctioning units mounted on the dash, but in the end it seemed simpler—and faster—just to zip-tie the new box onto the roll cage and get out of the car.

“Middle of three…”
Tony’s voice was taut with urgency.

Her hands were shaking, but she nearly had it. She was running out of time, though. Badger tapped on the dash and pointed forward. Taran barely glanced up, but she nodded vigorously, hoping that he understood her to mean,
“I’m working as fast as I can.”

Tony was shouting now.
“Pace car in four! Come on! Gotta go! Gotta go!”

Another voice in her head. “Let him go, dammit!” That was Tuggle, and with that tone of voice she could have parted the Red Sea.

“But, Tuggle…”

“Everybody back! Badger, go!”

Badger hit the throttle and scratched off as the shouting in their heads continued. Tuggle. “Gotta beat the pace car. Speed down pit road.
Do it!”

The penalty for speeding on pit road is to go to the tail end of the longest line, but Tuggle must have figured that the penalty was better than going a lap down.

When the car took off, Taran was flung backward against the roll cage, scrabbling for balance, and resisting the urge to grab at Badger to keep herself from falling. At the pit speed of around thirty miles per hour, and then seconds later at nearly three times that, they burst onto the track.

From her vantage point on the floor, now facing backward, all Taran could see was the interior of the car and Badger himself, but for once he was not a comforting presence. Barricaded in his roll cage, wearing the full face helmet and the thick gloves, Badger looked like an alien in a science fiction movie. The banking of the Bristol track was nearly thirty-six degrees—horrendously steep—which meant that if she hadn’t hung on to the bars of the roll cage, she would have been bouncing all over the car—or falling on Badger—which was somehow not as appealing at ninety miles per hour as she had once envisioned.