Glad you’re okay. - Henry #2
He screams as loud as he can inside the helmet before he takes it off. There’s a camera crew right in front of him, ready to pounce the second he shows any emotion.
The newest Red Boar driver: a disappointment before he begins.
Fritz can’t even blame the car. He hates to admit it, but he might not be ready to drive just yet.
There’s a pundit alongside the camera crew following him through the garage, but he grabs the nearest friendly mechanic for a distraction.
“Rough go ovit,” Albert says, patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll jus’ do be’er tomorrow.”
“Of course,” Fritz says, though he doesn’t believe it. “Can you please just talk for a bit before I have to face the camera?”
“I don’ envy that part ovit.”
“How is your wife?”
Albert talks until he gives Fritz the signal that the camera crew is distracted with someone else. Fritz takes the opportunity to sneak out of the garage, across pit lane, and to the wall.
“What happened out there?” Henry asks without prompting. How did he even see him approach?
“It is not the car’s fault. It was my foot.”
Henry sends a panicked glance down to his racing boot and back up. “You didn’t hurt it again, did you? Do you need medical?”
“No, not medical.” Fritz rocks up to the balls of his feet and back down. “It feels like I do not have my strength back yet.”
“Your times were off from free practice.”
“I know.”
“By up to two seconds in one stint.”
“I know.”
“And your foot got worse between this morning and now?” Henry studies him seriously, as if he’s trying to catch him in a lie. “You need to tell me—tell someone—if we’re putting you in a dangerous position to race tomorrow.”
Fritz shifts uncomfortably. “There is nothing to tell. My foot could not take the strain.”
“But this morning it could?”
“Correct.”
“Did anything else change between free practice and qualifying?”
Fritz looks away. A car exits the pit lane and he watches it leave. A flash in his peripheral, and he cringes as another car follows the first out.
The same thing happened out on the track. He only had three chances to put in a good lap, but every time he passed a car on their slow lap, as soon as they faded to his peripheral, he let up on the accelerator and braced for impact.
“You would not ask me if you did not already know.”
“I wasn’t the one who caught it.” Henry pulls up an acceleration graphic and plays it next to the on-board footage. “Our team flagged it pretty quickly, but we have to assume, with all eyes on you, that most of the grid will know by tomorrow.”
Fritz tries to brace himself. “What can I do about it?”
“Well, we can't unpack a PTSD reaction overnight, unfortunately.” Henry turns his stool towards Fritz, perching his elbow on the desk, his cheek against his fist. “Best thing I can think to do is wave shit in your peripheral until it doesn’t bother you anymore.”
“Dieter will just love that.”
“It probably wouldn’t help unless you’re in a driving environment. But, obviously, driving around the city and trying to startle you isn’t the safest idea—especially since we’re trying to avoid another car accident.”
“Do we have a simulator?”
“Not here, not that I know of.” Henry thinks and then whips his chair back until he faces the other direction. “Hey, do we have any simulators in the fan zone?”
“You cannot be serious.” Fritz is willing to do a lot, but he’s not willing to hang out in the fan zone all night. He’d be a sitting target.
“There’s a few,” William’s race engineer says. Fritz wouldn’t have thought the man had been listening to their conversation, since William’s car is on the track for Q2. Did all race engineers have freaky hearing?
“Right. Okay.” Henry digs out his phone, but he turns back to face Fritz. “I’m going to make some calls right now and try to get one of the simulators moved to your hotel room for the night. Can you ask Dieter to help you?”
It sounds insane, but it’s better than being trapped in the fan zone. “How fast can they set it up?”
“Hopefully pretty quick.” Henry scrolls through his contacts until he finds who he’s looking for. “It’ll be better to move it while the fans and reporters are distracted with qualifying.”
Fritz shouldn’t be surprised to see a full sim racer in his hotel room, but he definitely startles a bit.
After justifying his qualifying result to every single reporter in the paddock, he’s already had a long enough day. He's not looking forward to homework.
“Thought you’d have a bigger room,” Dieter says, parking his rolling bag in the short hallway.
Why were people always disappointed in his hotel rooms? “I am still a VFIbr employee.”
“That’s something to look forward to for next year.”
It takes a moment for them to figure out how to power on the machine, but once they do, it prompts them to download the team app and make an account.
Favorite driver? Himself.
Purchase merch? No, thank you.
Take a quiz? Please, just let him get on the sim.
Once Fritz is finally in line for the sim, it makes him wait two minutes to see if anyone else will join.
There are no other sim machines connected. Nobody else can join.
Fritz looks at Dieter, exasperated.
“Get desensitized quickly and we won’t have to wait.”
The game allows for three laps at a time, which should be enough to use as a baseline, but Dieter insists that he should run two rounds, just in case.
While waiting for the third round to load, Fritz whips out his phone, takes a picture of the loading screen, and sends it to Henry.
I will not have time to sleep at this rate.
He’s surprised when he gets an immediate reply.
Who did you pick as your favorite driver?
Guess.
Me too.
Fritz’s heart does not flutter. Not even a little.
I picked William.
Me too.
Fritz laughs and tosses his phone away as the game starts up again. He’s lured into a false sense of security by the first two runs and doesn’t expect Dieter’s hand to fly past his face.
“Fuck!” Fritz exclaims, driving the digital car straight into a barrier. He feels immediately stupid for it, since this is the whole reason why they’re doing this.
“That was pretty bad.”
“Yeah, whatever.” It’s fine. He still has two more laps to make it up.
Another hand and Fritz freezes again, but at least he doesn’t crash. Still, the game has sound and the sudden cut off of the accelerator is loud in the otherwise silent room.
Fritz clenches his jaw and keeps his head down. He tries to finish the next lap in record time to make up for it.
Dieter jots down the average time that the game provides. Despite the congratulatory screen and the text that says he’s just as good as a real Formation 1 driver, Fritz knows his lap times aren’t going to cut it for tomorrow.
He checks his phone during the two minutes, opening his missed messages from Henry.
Mind if I join?
I can bring my charts, so you have something to do in between laps.
We can also go over a backup plan, in case desensitization doesn’t work.
Sleep is also important.
Fritz can’t imagine having more work to do when he’s already so exhausted, but having Henry there could help pass the time.
Room 1847
“Hey, my race engineer is on his way,” Fritz warns as the countdown dips below ten seconds. “Can you open the door when he gets here?”
“You invited him to your hotel room?” Dieter asks with a leer, right as the game starts again.
“Shut up, I am driving.”
Henry arrives during the second lap, and Fritz strains his ears to hear them talk over the sound of his fake car.
“How’s he doing?”
“We did a few laps without interruption for a baseline, but he hasn’t been close to that since.”
“One second is close to that!” Fritz yells as he guides the fake car through the turns.
“Not close enough for a Form 1 driver,” Dieter shoots back.
Tell that to the victory screen that pops up at the end of each round. A hand appears on his left side, and Fritz yelps, grumbling when the accelerator sound dips again.
“Yeah, that could be a problem.” Henry perches on the bed and digs his laptop out of his side bag.
Fritz huffs. “It is more realistic now, with your disappointed voice in my ear.”
“I thought the problem was strictly with the right-hand side, but clearly, stimuli in either peripheral invokes the same response.”
Dieter perks up, “Yeah, he lets up with either side.”
“I would like to remind you both that Form 1 cars have mirrors. This surprise hand waving thing is not actually helping.”
“It’s not that we expect someone to wave at you during a race,” Henry explains in his best parenting voice. He’s so infuriating sometimes. “Letting off the gas when you see someone is the problem. If you let everyone pass just because they’re next to you, you won’t last very long in Formation 1.”
It’s a frustratingly good point.
Fritz finishes the last lap of the round and successfully keeps his foot down when Dieter waves an arm next to him. Unfortunately it’s still not enough to bring up the average, which means another round.
“Come here.” Henry pats the space next to him, inviting Fritz up to his own bed.
Fritz unfolds his legs from the machine and perches on the mattress with caution. What a time to remember they’ve never been on a bed together.
“Have you seen your point of view from the crash?” Henry asks.
“No, just some clips from the side.” It was hard to avoid them, with Formation 1 posting about it a million times like it was the most exciting event of the season. “But I lived it, so—”
“Well, let's watch it together. I have the video feed from your helmet—it might be enlightening.”
The three men crowd around his laptop as Henry presses play. Helmet footage is Fritz’s least favorite footage, the video’s always choppy and—fuck, he’s in the air.
“Jesus,” Dieter breathes. “I didn’t even see the other car.”
Fritz didn’t either.
“Here it is.” Henry backs up the video and pauses, circling a dark shape with his finger. He plays through the footage frame by frame, but the other car barely exists, even in the breakdown.
“Do you recognize this?” Henry asks Fritz directly.