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Chapter Ten

Shantal

I arrive at Heidelberg Hybridge Ring the next morning at seven a.m. for the first track walk of the new facility. In tow, I’ve got my things for the rest of the week. The hotel is not, according to Afshin Demir, as convenient as having the team in one place, hence living quarters. So naturally, he’s indicated we try to stay at said living quarters during the week. I’m not complaining – each room is huge and beyond comfortable.

I find this when I scan into my room first thing after getting inside. The living quarters building is ultra-secure: fingerprint to get in, ID to unlock your room. It’s just two floors with ten rooms total. We’ve got the five on the upper floor, because of the views.

The promise delivers. My suite’s sitting-area window opens straight out towards Sugarloaf Mountain, the big rock-like slab surrounded by greenery that we drove past. Yes, sitting area . I have well-cushioned leather couches, a TV, and a kitchen space with appliances and an island in an adjoining wing. My bathroom and bedroom are connected, just down a short hall. You can tell it’s designed for athletes: the shower has these acupunctural pressure jets, and you can adjust the mattress all kinds of ways for customized support. The physio side of me says it’s smart, but the business side only sees the expense.

I just have time to drop off my bags and change before heading down. At Crystal Palace, as a training specialist on the coaching staff, we had red and blue team windbreakers designating our roles, intended to be worn with as many layers as possible. I remember wearing leggings under my sweats to combat the chill. But Brazil is baking. Rather than layers, I’ve got running shorts and a bright white team livery T-shirt matching the rest of our drivers and staff.

‘Morning,’ I greet the trainers with a yawn when I arrive in the garage for the track tour. They murmur echoed good mornings all around with bleary eyes. We nurse iced coffees that are already beginning to melt in the scorching heat. Someone mentions that the cars are still somewhere in Germany being worked on for the great reveal come February, which is slightly disappointing, at least to me. Testing will be the first time I’ve seen F1 level cars live and, unfamiliar as I am with the sport, I’ve got plenty of questions.

‘Do they just adapt to the new car, then, when winter testing comes round?’ I ask Henri’s trainer, Jack. Jack Lyons is world renowned, I’ve learned (from googling, something I clearly should have done long ago). Before he became Henri’s physio, Henri weighed maybe sixty kilos, struggling to hold his head up against Gs. He’s nearly seventy kilos now, with the F2 G record under his belt.

Jack nods firmly. ‘New car’s always a bit of a challenge, but they’ll be great.’

‘Is there a reason they don’t, I don’t know, turn down the power and crank it up as they get used to the car or something?’ I carry on around a sip of coffee. ‘So that when they max out, the team can obtain a pretty true baseline safely?’

‘Clever,’ says Louie Alvarez, Miguel’s trainer. ‘But would the guys see it that way? I mean, deprivation of speed can be offensive to these sensitive egos.’

I smile tightly. ‘This is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. Wouldn’t they accept the fact that we prize survival over speed?’

‘Welcome to Formula 1, my friend.’ Louie just shakes his head. ‘It’s speed over survival here. You either go fast, or you lose your seat.’

‘These are for you.’

The last thing I expect when the drivers arrive is for Darien to approach me with a ridiculous gift bag.

He just stares at me expectantly, tugging at the arm of his white hoodie, a bold choice in this kind of stifling climate. Rather than world-class race-car driver vibes, he’s giving off small-child energy. What on earth has he brought me?

I take the bag and look inside.

It is a pair of the ugliest slippers I’ve ever seen. They are a criminally radioactive green, made of some sort of silicone material, with a slightly misshapen bedazzled thong to them. Alphabet beads glued to the strap spell out SHNTAL.

‘You don’t have to give me … these.’

‘You said you don’t have flip-flops.’ Darien gives me a weird look, like I’ve entered London during rainy season without a coat. ‘Everyone here has flip-flops, remember? You can’t be walking around the compound in those sneakers.’

‘Hokas,’ I reply slightly snippily. ‘I am fond of my Hokas, Darien. You might know. All the Americans wear them.’

‘But here, we flip-flop.’

‘You brought me flip-flops,’ I proclaim in disbelief.

‘Okay, Queen of England.’ Darien gives the slippers a little nudge. ‘Take them.’

‘You’ve misspelled my name.’

‘The first “A” fell off. Sorry.’

I raise an eyebrow, but I gingerly pick up the slippers as if they are as poisonous as their colour. Dare I wear these in public? The odds of them falling apart beneath my feet seem dangerously high.

‘How did you …’ I trail off, allowing him to infer the rest of my question.

‘Five-Minute Crafts,’ he says as if this should explain everything. ‘Henri helped. Miguel said he was too old for this bullshit. Then he glued on the letters anyway.’

‘Indeed.’ I try to picture Miguel squinting to attach small beads to my brand-new flip-flops. ‘What’d you glue these together with?’

‘Wear them and find out.’

I nod drily. Interesting. If these were created with a five-minute tutorial, the odds of them lasting the walk across the training facility itself are quite slim, but I can’t be so rude about it. Maybe Darien is an inveterate liar, but he has also made me a pair of shoes. There is something strangely endearing about the effort.

‘It’s a peace offering, Shantal.’ He crosses his arms. ‘It’s peaceful. I’m not trying to sabotage your feet.’

‘I mean …’ I pick them up and glance at the soles. They don’t look like they’ll hold up too well given all the walking I do in a typical day. ‘Maybe not intentionally,’ I acknowledge.

With a dismissive eye roll, Darien turns to the space in the currently empty garage marked with bright yellow paint, signifying the parking spot for the as-yet-incomplete Heidelberg car. ‘So. What’s the plan? Will we give the car aero rakes in February? Flow-vis paint?’

Maybe I’m beginning to lose some of my edge towards Darien/André after he read my mind clean yesterday at the beach, but the judgement in his voice brings out the snark in mine. It doesn’t help that I have a bare-minimum understanding of all the technical jargon he’s just spewed. ‘Sure, we’ll do all of that. But for the time being, we won’t just be testing the car,’ I tell him. ‘That’s the simplest part. We’ll be testing the three of you as well. Pulling old numbers to try and adapt to the new stuff. And the sims have little sensors that will give us precise data—’

‘Sorry. Testing us? ’ Darien’s eyebrows fly up his forehead far too extravagantly. ‘You don’t trust us?’

‘Well, it’s going to be a new car. The sim is the closest we have in the meantime. We have to get data to tailor your season practice plans to what we have available in the system. After all, there will only be a month between testing and the first race.’

‘I’m a Formula 1 driver.’

‘And I’m now partially responsible if we have incidents during the season. Keep in mind. Bringing me here isn’t just Demir playing games. Maybe I’m only running the simulators, but everything in that building is Conquest tech. Hell, parts of your car are going to be Conquest’s now, too. Not to mention the duress you’re under to produce results. I’ve got information from the company. I know what’s on the line for you, and for us. I know about Redenc?o. I’m going to do this right. We’re your new sponsor, Darien. We go down with you. If we have an incident—’

‘I won’t have an incident.’

With each retort, we get in each other’s faces just a bit more, and as I shoot back, ‘Anyone can have an incident,’ I find myself having to look up to Darien, mere inches from me now.

He stays there, an almost amused look on his face as his dark eyes glint with an unspoken response I can’t identify. I refuse to lose this one. I’m not about to have the whole team see me as a pushover.

‘Okay.’ Darien sighs with a doctored smile that looks more infuriated than anything else, running a hand through his curls. ‘We’ll do things your way.’

I nod. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re a menace to society, you know that?’ he quips, one last attempt to get a hit in.

‘That’s what I’m being paid to be.’ I throw him a smirk. ‘I’m glad it’s working.’

We get the entire bunch of us on the track, beginning at the starting line. I give my team tee a little shake to dispel the sweat that seems to be following me around in this place, either because of heat, nerves or both. This is my first time watching any kind of motorsport track session so closely. I’ve already exceeded my quota of dumb questions for the day, so I’m praying I’ll be able to understand whatever foreign motorsport language they throw around as we walk the Ring.

Being our primary drivers, it’s Darien and Miguel who are up at the front of the pack when we start the tour. They start to exchange talk about things like corners and torque and drag with their trainers and engineers, Henri and his team echoing the sentiments I’m hearing. Team principal Demir is not here today, but Jack loops me in plenty since Henri, like me, requires a bit of extra explanation, having just entered Formula 1.

‘Straights are, obviously, portions of the track that go straight like that,’ says Jack, gesturing to the main grid area that we’ve just walked down. ‘Turns can come in a few varieties. Single corners, there’s only one apex, or point of the turn, to hit. F1 cars don’t aim to go around the turn, they go through. Like someone’s drawn a line tangent to the curve. Chicanes, you get a series of those turns, so you’ve almost got to try your best to draw a line that touches the apex of every turn, with a modicum of yanking around. So Turn One, that’s just your first corner, right-handed corner. Goes into a curve, and then up ahead,’ he points towards a section of track just beyond us that wiggles like a child’s unsteady attempt at a line, ‘that’s the chicane. Then past that, there’s a sharp corner, I’m guessing Turn Four. And further down, maybe a couple of easier curves. Those are still considered turns.’

‘So what happens to the driver on those turns? To the car?’ I down the last of my long-held coffee.

‘The harder the turn, the worse the Gs,’ a new voice joins us. I realize it’s Darien, grinning cheekily as he falls back to give us his unsolicited input. ‘Entry and exit of any corner, it’s basically this heavy decel that presses your whole body, pulls at your head so hard you think it’s gonna leave your neck. Every corner is different. Just depends on how the car responds.’

‘And, of course, on human error,’ Celina pipes up, shooting me a wink when Darien harrumphs at the mere notion. I grin, because anyone who can get Darien to squirm is automatically at the top of my list of allies here.

‘Not if you practise well enough!’ he insists, although we all know it’s in vain since everyone in our group is chuckling at this point, including Darien himself. I find it astonishing how easily he drops the grudge to let out a laugh. There’s something so straightforward about it. I wonder if the man has a single enemy in the world.

For a moment, his eyes catch mine watching him, and my stomach instantly drops. I look away as fast as I can, sucking in a sharp breath, training my eyes on Miguel’s back in front of me instead.