Quick (20 page)

The Frenchman moves to the door. ‘I’ll be in the next room working when you’re ready to join me.’ He steps out.

‘Yeah yeah, whatever, you sour old trout.’ Billy says it under his breath as he studies the words on the curved screen again. ‘Pull to start.’ He scans the cockpit, searches for what needs to be pulled— then realises what it is. He takes the steering wheel in hand, it feels loose, like it’s barely connected to the column, then pulls back on the gearbox paddles located behind it.

An electronic beep chirps from a speaker that is, he is certain, located within the faux air intake just above his head. A list appears on the screen. Sepang Race One is at the top, followed by Race Two down to Race Five. He guesses the various races correspond to different weather conditions, all of which will greatly affect the way the simulator performs. Race One looks to be sunny and dry. He guesses Race Two might have a little rain with conditions becoming progressively worse until Race Five’s torrential downpour. He pulls back on the paddles again.

Race One blinks, the menu disappears and the howl of a turbocharged Renault V6 fills the cockpit from the speaker behind him. The platform momentarily shudders then rises with a whine of servos and actuators as the steering wheel comes alive in his hands with weight and resistance. Billy grins. ‘Well okay then.’

At the top of the screen a series of five start lights appear. One turns red, then a second. He quickly pulls the safety belts over his shoulders, secures them in place at a central lock that lies tight against his stomach, then paddles the gearbox down to first, the number one visible on a display at the top of the steering wheel. If he was going to do a genuine race start he would need to operate the hand clutch to get off the line cleanly while feeding in revs, but it’s a complicated dance that even the great drivers screw up so he ignores it and waits to start it like a normal car.

Three lights. Four lights, five lights wink on—then they all blink off.

He presses the accelerator and the car pulls away cleanly, the screen showing a surprising amount of the track detail in high definition animation, everything from tyre marks on the bitumen to the towering grandstands, from the blazing sun above to the thin wisps of cloud it illuminates.

The steering wheel is heavy in his hands, fights against him with force feedback. The platform that the cockpit sits on bobbles and gyrates and twists in perfect harmony with the track and input from the steering wheel and pedals. He can feel every white line and camber change and imperfection through the seat of his pants. It’s quite something, like an Xbox on human growth hormones.

He feeds in more power and sends the vehicle down the track, paddles up to second, third, fourth, fifth, then hard on the brakes as he makes the right-hander at the end of the straight —

Ohmigod.
No ‘light dab and then turn into the corner’ like the Gullwing. He presses hard on the pedal with his left foot but there is almost no travel and it doesn’t seem to slow the vehicle
at all.

Jeezus.

The end of the pit straight comes up fast. He’s going to end up in the kitty litter like poor old Kevin Webster. He paddles down to first gear and knocks off a chunk of speed but the vehicle is still travelling too quickly to make the turn. He presses down on the brake pedal again, really jams his foot into it until his thigh muscles vibrate from the strain. The car slows. Barely.

The gravel at the end of the straight approaches fast. He turns hard and just manages to get the car around the corner but still drops both right-side wheels off the track. The cockpit shudders so violently that his teeth chatter, the platform’s hydraulic rams performing a perfect imitation of a car without suspension driving over a ripple strip at high speed. He pulls the vehicle off the digital gravel and pushes it towards the middle of the track.

Man that hurt.

Pain shoots down both legs. He takes a breath, pushes it from his mind, accelerates again, then stamps on the brake pedal to get a feel for it. He realises he needs to press almost twice as hard as he did in a V8 Supercar. He tootles around for the rest of the lap then decides he’ll do one flyer before he completely pisses off the Frenchman, or someone discovers what he’s doing and tells him to get out of the very expensive machine.

He turns onto the pit straight and unleashes the full potential of the vehicle, the throaty rasp of the power plant making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, even though it’s only a recording. The wraparound screen gives him a good sense of speed but what it’s missing are the two elements that define driving an open-wheel racing car: g-forces and the blast of air.

The whole way around the lap he’s not actually thinking about how he’s driving but is preoccupied by the sharp pain in his legs from pressing that bloody brake pedal. It is possibly the most unpleasant experience he has ever had in a motor vehicle, or motor vehicle simulator, apart from his accident at Bathurst and an awkward moment with Marianna Southern the day he received his driver’s licence and tried to steal a kiss in his VW Beetle but somehow ended up missing her lips and chipping a tooth on the steering wheel. He just focuses on putting as much force through the pedal as he can so he doesn’t experience another bone-jarring trip through the kitty litter. He can’t imagine how those F1 guys do this lap after lap for two hours.

He crosses the finish line and couldn’t be happier to turn the machine off and get the hell out of it. He’s so far from being race fit it’s embarrassing. He’s only twenty-five but as he climbs out of the cockpit he feels the way his grandpa looked—during the open-casket viewing. Billy’s right leg is numb with pins and needles and a sharp cramp grips the arch of his left foot. He tries to stretch it out but that doesn’t work, so he walks it off instead and limps down the stairs to the ground level. That wasn’t anywhere near as much fun as he expected. He makes his way to the open door and hears someone moving along the hallway. That’ll be Claude, annoyed he’s taking so long. He steps into the walkway to head off the Frenchman.

‘Are you lost?’ It’s Dieter.

‘Oh, no. No.’ Billy smiles. It usually helps to flash the pearly whites when he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The old German doesn’t seem to be upset he was in the simulator room, though Billy doesn’t really know him so the smiley expression he’s currently displaying could mean anything, which includes being a prelude to his infamously volcanic anger.

Dieter nods at the room. ‘What were you doing in there?’

‘Took the simulator for a spin.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I’m sure it’s off limits, but I couldn’t help myself. Do you bring it to every race?’

Dieter nods. ‘Absolutely. Every race.’

‘Kind of a big and heavy thing to lug around the world, isn’t it?’

‘I spent well over two hundred million euros attempting to win the world championship last year. I will do anything, including pay a couple of thousand euros extra on freight, if it means I can give the drivers even a thousandth of a second advantage with that simulator.’

Dieter doesn’t seem to be upset about him using it at all. Billy’s more relieved than he expected.

‘So, how did you find the brake pedal?’

Billy’s eyes light up. ‘
Ohmigodfather.
You really need to jump on it to wipe off any speed.’

‘I don’t know, I’ve never tried it.’

‘Really? But you own it. Why not?’

Dieter’s expression darkens as his voice hardens: ‘Because that simulator is one of a kind that cost over a million dollars to develop and build and is only to be used by the professional drivers employed by this team, not the team owner, or an undercover police officer who once had some minor success as a junior.’

Okay, so
there’s
the anger.

‘Now instead of wasting time on my simulator wouldn’t your efforts be better spent doing the job you were sent here for?’

Billy nods, feels like he’s just been disciplined by the headmaster. ‘Yes they would, I mean
it
would. Sorry, I’m getting my tenses mixed up because you make me nervous.’

Dieter regards him for a long moment. Billy realises this would be a good time to make his exit. ‘Well that’s me then.’ He heads for the door. ‘Sorry.’

~ * ~

‘Don’t let it happen again.’ Dieter watches him go, then smiles to himself. There’s something about the kid he quite likes, a boldness, coupled with a quick, dry wit, qualities he has seen in many of the Australians he met over the years, ex-Red Bull driver Mark Webber specifically. There was something in how the antipodeans didn’t take life too seriously that was quite appealing when you were, for the most part, surrounded by Europeans who took life much too seriously.

The German moves to the far wall and opens a false panel to expose a stack of three computer servers that control the simulator’s various systems. To the left of the servers is a shelf with a small screen and keyboard. He works the keyboard and the screen blinks to life. He had lied to Billy about not using the simulator. Dieter wasn’t going to pay for all this stuff and not take it for a spin occasionally. That meant he knew how to operate it and how to access, and compare, the data of all the drivers who used it. Every single event that happens on a lap, from the most minuscule steering wheel input to the lightest dab of the brake or accelerator pedal was recorded and logged for review. For example, a driver may do well in a certain corner but lose time in another, because a braking point was too early or the car’s angle of entry incorrect. The data will show this, then allow the driver to compare it to another braking point to see which is faster.

Dieter works the keyboard and accesses the fastest times around this circuit. His team’s number one driver, Christophe Vandelay, has a fastest time of 1:35:716. Kevin Webster’s time is 1:35:814. Dieter’s own fastest lap is 1:39:991, over four seconds slower than both, which, in Formula One terms, may as well have been a decade.

The German plays the keyboard once more and navigates to the simulator’s last session. He wonders if the Australian even completed a lap, and if he did, whether he beat Dieter’s best time. He seemed to have been having a problem with the rock-hard brakes, which take every driver by surprise the first time.

He knew that Billy had once been a promising junior driver but that accident ended his career before he could develop and gain the experience necessary to make the step from the V8 Supercar world of Australia to the European open-wheel categories, the ones drivers must conquer if they are to make it to Formula One. That jump is never easy but Dieter had thought the Australian might have been quick enough to do it. Of course the road to Formula One was littered with the shattered dreams of countless young men who were unable to make it, for whatever reason: lack of money, lack of killer instinct, lack of family support, lack of skill. He remembered one young Finnish driver who was blisteringly quick in wet and slippery conditions, as the roads in his native country so often were, but when it was dry, which was the majority of the time during an F1 season, he was dead slow. There was another kid who showed great promise, came over to Europe from his native New Zealand to race in Formula Three but was so homesick after a month that he left late one evening without telling anyone, never to return.

‘So how did you go, Mr Hotchkiss? Am I faster than you or what?’ The one thing that truly excites Dieter is competition, be it the big picture stuff set on the world stage, such as his tussle with Red Bull for a share of the energy drink market, or the little stuff, like trying to match one of his drivers in the simulator. It’s what keeps him motivated.

The last session flashes up on the screen. Dieter leans forward to check the times of each flying lap but then quickly realises the Australian only completed one.

‘Good god.’ Dieter blinks hard to make sure his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him. He studies the number, then looks up at the television in the corner of the room that silently shows the last lap of the race. The Iron Rhino drivers are a distant tenth, Vandelay earning one point, and dead last, a first lap exit for Webster earning him nothing but a great deal of embarrassment. Dieter looks back at the computer screen and Billy’s time, deep in thought. This changes everything.

~ * ~

11

The Emirates A380 economy class is very comfortable. It even has free wi-fi internet. In fact, it just might be the most comfortable jet Claude’s ever flown in, and he’s flown in quite a few during his twenty-five-year career.

Claude reclines his seat as the Airbus super jumbo slices across the wild blue yonder on its way to Dubai, location of the next Grand Prix. Usually the Dubai race fell later in the year but it had been shuffled forward to accommodate a couple of newer events in the schedule. The flight is packed with Formula One team personnel, most of whom are dead to the world after a race weekend where sleep is a luxury. He can overhear two people sitting in the seats behind him, complaining about the one-week turnaround between races. As soon as they arrive in Dubai they will be flat chat until this time next week.

During his day shadowing Kurt, the Frenchman talked to a number of people and subtly photographed as much as he could, hoping something would reveal itself. He thought of it as a way to look at the situation from a new perspective. He is, right now, flipping through the three hundred or so photos he took on his iPhone, hoping something will reveal itself. Nothing has, so far.