Page 11 of Kiss & Collide (Racing Hearts #2)

A s Chase sat in the car, waiting for the go from his team, he did his best to clear his head. There would be no room for nerves or distractions out there.

His head mechanic waved him out of the garage.

Time to go now . He navigated carefully around the messy turn in the pit lane and out onto the track.

Here we go—keep the speed down until he was ready to start his hot lap, then drop the hammer as he made the entry to Turn Nine.

Hell yes. He belted through Turn Ten with just a millimeter of tire keeping his lap legal, then he hit the DRS and started his hot lap.

Nothing about this track was easy. The engineers always wanted him to monitor a laundry list of information, but Chase was better off when he thought less .

Tires and aerodynamics and strategy might keep him up at night, but once he was behind the wheel, he left all that in the garage.

He trusted himself, his intuition, his focus.

He just knew when he could take a turn slightly faster than reason said he should.

The roar of the engine filled his ears through Turns Four and Five. God , he loved this. Turn Six, and he was a few tenths of a second up on his expected time.

Up ahead, he saw Liam, cooling down on an in-lap. The fucker was absolutely ruining his entry to Turn Nine. Liam was right in the middle of his racing line—Chase should have been laser focused on the apex of the curve he needed to hit; instead, he was watching Liam, waiting for him to move over .

Chase surged forward, and Liam finally moved aside—but it was too late.

He’d hit the apex a bit too slow, turned out of it a bit too late.

He knew that asshole had purposely waited to the last second before sidling out of the way. But it was over now and he was through Turn Nine. As he barreled across the start/finish line, he looked down to see the dreaded red figures, half a tenth slower than his predicted lap time. Fuck.

He keyed the radio to talk to Emil, his race engineer.

“Would have done better except for that traffic blocking me into Turn Nine.”

“Copy,” Emil said. “I saw that. It’s still not bad. Just a bit more than a tenth off Dieter. We’ll discuss it in the pit.”

Now he was pissed. He’d had Dieter dead to rights on that lap until Liam decided to fuck around.

They wheeled him into the garage to make adjustments for his second run. Chase scanned the telemetry Emil had just put up on his onboard screen.

“Liam was impeding, Emil,” he growled. “How was that not a penalty?”

Emil sighed wearily. “Welcome to the big leagues, Chase. It’s a game all drivers play. Learn to beat it or you will suffer.”

“Seriously, Emil?”

“Now you know it’s coming. Avoid it next time.”

The mechanics dropped his car from the jacks and he fired up the power unit.

The radio crackled into life as he blended onto the track. “Okay, you’ve got traffic behind you.”

“Copy.”

He moved off the racing line as Liam blew past in his out lap.

See, asshole? That’s how it’s done.

Glancing at his mirror again, he spotted another oncoming car—Laurent Demarche for Hansbach. Up ahead, he noticed Liam was square in the middle of the racing line, just like last time.

Liam would have to slow down or swing way to the outside on Turn Three, otherwise he’d get a penalty. Knowing Liam, he was going to do the most dickish thing possible, so Chase decided it might be time to fuck with him just a little bit.

Laurent passed him and Chase slid neatly into his slipstream. Chase accelerated right along with him, inching ahead of Liam as he passed.

Emil’s voice crackled in his ear. “Uh, tire and brake temps looking a bit high.”

Chase chuckled. I bet they are.

“Good job with the positioning though,” Emil continued. “You’re in sync with Demarche and there shouldn’t be any traffic in your way.”

Liam was probably furious right now. Pinnacle , of all the teams, had backed him into a corner. Liam swerved from side to side behind him and then made a run right toward him. Chase nudged his car over to ensure Liam would have to go off track if he tried to pass.

Chase watched him fade and smirked. He was pulling ahead. Good. Turn Nine was approaching and Laurent, in Hansbach’s far superior car, was long gone. That meant there was no traffic ahead of him to get in the way when he started his hot lap.

He mashed the accelerator and—there it was, that mind-blowing feeling of the bottom of the world dropping out as the car shot forward underneath him.

He’d spent plenty of sim time in Formula One cars, but it was nothing compared to the real thing.

Even in Pinnacle’s shit car, this was, by far, the most sublime experience of his racing career.

He plunged through Turn Nine, down the hill, and through Turn Ten, into the start/finish straight to start his hot lap. He hung on to the tricky braking needed for Turn One, giving him some extra speed.

The car was a problem in complex turns, though. Chase kept it steady, but he had to wrestle it into line throughout the Turns Four-Five-Six complex. His tires felt right on the edge.

He was nearly there, but could sense his tires giving out.

Easy, Chase . He lined up the last entry and rolled onto the throttle. There was just enough left on the tires to carry him neatly through Turn Ten and across the start/finish line.

“Nice lap,” Emil said. “You’re currently P twelve and right on the bubble to move through to Q two.”

His dash still looked green as he navigated through his cooldown lap. He was holding his breath as the rest of the times filtered in and drivers moved up and down the qualifying rankings accordingly.

“Brendecke is P thirteen … Nolan is P fourteen …” Emil read off the rankings as they settled into place. “And that’s it. We’re at P fifteen and no one else improving. You’re through to Q two.”

Chase blew out his breath, feeling almost lightheaded. He’d made the cut. Brand-new to F1, and in the worst car on the grid, and he’d made it through to round two. Considering … well, everything … that was nothing short of a miracle.

“Thanks, Emil.” Then, trying to sound as uninterested as possible, he asked, “How did Dieter do?”

“P eighteen,” Emil replied.

Once Chase was done shouting into his helmet, he keyed the mic and with his best attempt at sounding nonchalant replied, “Okay, let’s see what we can do in the next session. Thanks, team.”