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Chapter Thirty-Nine

Darien

M onaco – the jewel in the crown of F1, concealing dangerously sharp turns and narrow tracking – was a race I’d been waiting for during this first half of the season. It tests your mettle to the limit – are you just another kid with fire in his belly, or are you willing to go the extra mile? In an interview after his first win, Miguel called it a siren song: luring you in with its pretty architecture and picturesque streets, and then hitting you with a corner so sharp you can barely see it coming. The quick gear changes and abrupt turns are menacing, but Miguel and I have trained hard to perfect these movements. We leave Monte Carlo with a perfect one-two, and even though I’m P2, I bag an extra point for fastest lap.

Canada, Spain and Hungary, subsequent race weekends, fly by after that, and I bring home one more win and two podiums. It’s looking optimistic heading into the halfway point of the season. Miguel and I are tight up in P1 and P2 for the title, which is great, but there’s still that little voice in the back of my head greedily growling for more – for the WDC. I’m pushing as hard as I can … and I’m trying my best to avoid the growing concern regarding the arm. Celina’s aware that it’s been bothering me in the car, and I’ve been trying to ignore it, but she gave me a dire warning after a particularly chaotic race in Hungary.

‘Darien, you have to understand.’ She looked at me with that disappointed adult look in her eyes that people direct towards misbehaving kids. ‘With every second you race, you’re worsening an injury that never properly got to recover. Just know that the second the pain gets too much for you, I’m pulling you out of the car.’

It doesn’t seem long till we end up in England – Shantal’s home – for the final weekend before summer break, and a walk around the track bright and early on a Thursday morning. Silverstone, unlike Monaco, is all about speed. As one of the fastest current circuits, it can be both exciting and disastrous to race around, but I’d prefer to keep it exciting. React and act at the same time. I can do this.

‘Isn’t this the only race you’d ever watched before you came our way?’ Miguel teases an excited Shantal as she walks between us. The default walk is made a bit more special by the fact that today, Shantal has asked to join us. We couldn’t say no, and I couldn’t resist a chance to do something special for her while she’s at her home race.

Shantal’s hand brushes mine softly, her fingers intertwining themselves in mine. It happens so naturally; I don’t even realize it until she squeezes my hand with a smile. ‘Yeah, just Silverstone.’

‘Oh, you’ve not seen any of the Triple Crown races ?’ Miguel makes a dramatically appalled face, pausing to turn to Shantal. ‘I mean – I take it back, you did see Monaco this year. That’s one of three jewels in the Triple Crown. Puts you in the history books for good.’

‘Okay, so maybe I’m uninformed on the sport,’ admits Shantal, ‘but I’ve tried to do research. The Triple Crown: that’s the Indy 500, Le Mans and Monaco – correct? You win it, you join the ranks of legends.’

‘You pass on that one.’ I tip my head in a challenge. ‘Okay, so what about Silverstone? How come drivers love it here?’

‘Just look at how the track lets you really push the car.’ She grins. ‘High speed, high intensity, everything multiple times faster than half the other tracks on the schedule. Absolute insanity, of course, but exactly your thing.’

‘You’ve come to know me too well.’

The trainers give us directions on the turns, Louie addressing Miguel while Celina gets on my case. I remember all the aggressive muscle-control exercises the trainers had us doing for those first couple weeks, the adaptive simulation program we’ve been doing before each race, the resultant tick-up in our times so far. I’m hoping it’ll work its magic on one of the tracks where quick reaction matters most; you only have so much time to respond to threats when you’re moving faster than the average race. I’m also hoping that however abrupt these reactions are, my body – my arm – will be able to withstand it. Above all, I need my mind at 100 per cent.

Silverstone is a test of will. On this track, if you’re not willing to pull through on any move you make, you’re screwed. As fun a race as it is, the turns are quick, the Gs brutal. ‘Commit,’ Celina would always tell me when I was starting out in Formula 1 at Heidelberg. ‘If you’re not gonna commit, you fall through, you fall off, and you’re done.’

I’ve had problems at Silverstone before, though. It was all the interviewers could talk about today, and it’s all they talk about every year I’m here.

Vittore, my first Formula 1 team, was a year of my life I’d give much to forget. It was me and a dude six years older than me, Christian Clay. He was the poster child for preferential treatment. An extra tyre-change here, an inversion – swapping cars so he was in front – in his favour there. Our principal, Roche Bernelli, would call me into the office and give me a dressing down for the smallest mistake; Christian would get a light tap on the wrist.

I was pardo – mixed – with pardo parents, so on this grid, with my mom’s honey-coloured skin and my dad’s chaotic 3C curls, I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was pretty sure I was already at a disadvantage, I just hadn’t expected my own team to make it worse.

It was at my first Silverstone Grand Prix that things escalated. I was called in to pit around the same time as my teammate, and when I got in, nothing was ready for me, not a single tyre. Back on the track, I still managed to stay ahead of Clay, but the team order was inevitable. ‘Let him past.’ I did. He got overzealous in the chase and spun out with three laps left.

After that, I seemed to be fair game for Clay in press rounds, who blamed me for whatever might have upset his race. He once complained that he couldn’t make things work in a situation where he had ‘a scrappy kid from the streets’ as a teammate. I didn’t realize how bad the abuse was till I moved on.

I got no offers for the next season because my performances appeared to be so poor, epitomized by the Silverstone incident. If Demir hadn’t called me up on Christmas Eve, telling me he saw promise in my driving, that he wanted me on next season, I would have been out of Formula 1 for good.

I’ve gotten to race two Silverstones since then, and this is the third. It’s my shot at redemption, proof that I can bounce back. A P1 here? I imagine my Tia Manuela and Tio Julio watching, the two people who’d helped me through that terrible year at Vittore.

It’d be unbelievable .

It’s minutes till I get in the car, and I’m not in the same state of mind I usually am. But I don’t hate the change.

If I bag this, I bag it for myself, yeah, but I also bag it for Shantal. Learning about everything she’s been through has only made me more desperate to make this season worth it for her. She’s put so much of herself – what she had left – into this team. It’s time for us to carry our end of the bargain. I can’t fix all the things that happened to her before, but I can try to weave something beautiful into the future.

Now, in the paddock, she runs her thumb across my cheek before getting on her tiptoes the way she always does and planting a kiss there. Her fingers trace the wings inked on my neck and fall away sooner than I’d like them to. ‘Your father is keeping an eye out for you,’ she whispers gently, giving me a slight nudge towards my helmet waiting on its pedestal in our garage. ‘Go fly.’

This is what I’m good at , I remind myself as she waves to me and hops up on her chair on the pit wall.

As I get in the car, as I leave the garage, and then as I’m on the track and the lights flash on, I repeat the mantra in my mind. This is how I grew up racing. High speed, low stress. All instinct.

We’re off down the main straight before I can comprehend it. I kick into the same mode I’ve adopted the past few races, one where I’m just here to drive the only way I know how. I let go of the pressure, and I surge ahead, slipping through a gap between Miguel and Diana to creep ahead of my teammate and towards his fiancée.

Diana puts up one hell of a fight, but this time, I’m ready. My muscles remember every single exercise the trainers drilled into us, those rough turns the sim kept putting me through with its stupid adaptive algorithm, and the next curve is a fight that tips in my favour. I anticipate, brake as late as I can, and zoom over the kerb, surging in front of Diana.

‘Up into the lead,’ Afonso tells me.

I whoop, wrenching the car around yet another nerve-wracking turn just in time to defend my position. If I give Diana a gap, I know damn well she’s going to take it, so I have to deny her the option altogether.

On the track, in that perfect position where I grow my delta with every passing lap, I get so comfortable that I can look around outside and take in the scenery of the iconic Silverstone. Everything else becomes irrelevant. It all fades into the background, which should probably be a red flag, especially on such a dangerous high-speed circuit, but it’s nothing less than beautiful to me, all of it.

The deltas start to widen after the first two laps. I get well out of DRS range for Diana, making it even harder for her to chase me down on a straight. We set our sights on holding the defensive and outpacing Peter, who’s starting to climb the ranks behind us, managing our tyres well enough to catch him tripping. Every bit of strategy is going just the way it should.

I wonder if it’s a sign from Pai, him helping me out in this battle for redemption, not to mention the title. The sun’s out in what’s been one of the rainiest calendar races; conditions are ideal, strategy is taking, and I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

At least for a moment.

It’s twelve laps before I feel my wrist give out. A horrific pain shoots up my arm. I bite my tongue through what feels like a power drill shredding my bones.

I can’t do this right now. I steer to the outside and slow down. My tyres screech sloppily against the kerb. Shit. And then there’s Peter, arcing around me, claiming that lead. It’s like a knife to the gut when I’m already down. It rips away at old scars.

‘Darien, come in,’ Afonso’s voice crackles over the radio. ‘Are you all right?’

I shouldn’t, but I lie. And I do so knowing full well I’ll pay the price at the end of this race.

‘Yeah, man. All good.’

The sort of fight I put up for the rest of the British Grand Prix is one that no one will ever find out about. I chase down Peter relentlessly, even as my body yells at me, telling me this is the last thing I should be doing right now. I try to calm myself, but this isn’t like last time. The consequences I’m suffering won’t have it. My arm explodes in stabbing aches with every turn of the steering wheel, and I push back at the urge to rip my glove off and scream in pain. I finish my race anyway. That was drummed into me at Vittore. Do whatever you need to, but never, never , throw away your race.

At the end of it, I’m in second place, and I can’t feel my entire right arm. All I can feel is the aftermath of the pressure when you’re in the car – the eyes on you, hoping you get through it in one piece, hoping you bring back a trophy.

As I park my car at the P2 board and get out to congratulate Peter and Diana, make my way to the weigh-in station, I wonder that to myself. What would my dad have said if he knew the condition I’d raced in today? It’s a million pins to my heart when I realize I can’t ask that question. The reason I raced in this condition was his absence. I can’t lose my season. I just can’t.