Chapter 140 Callum #3
Then there was the suspension. I narrowed my eyes at the replay, watching her car bounce again through Turn 5, the chassis unsettled even though her entry was clean.
That kind of rebound wasn’t just uncomfortable.
It was flat out dangerous. Every impact went straight through her spine, and suddenly I was thinking of Monaco again.
Her confession, quiet and almost embarrassed when she told me she’d been in pain for weeks.
I really had thought it was just the grind. But now I wasn’t so sure.
My stomach twisted as she came into the long left-hander in Sector 2.
The rear snapped out. It wasn’t enough to spin, just enough to force her to react quickly to catch it.
Again. Over and over. Each correction was quick and precise, but there was no reason she should’ve been fighting instability like that. Not unless the setup was compromised.
“Strange,” I muttered under my breath, desperately trying to understand the car.
The engineer beside me–the one I spoke to earlier–glanced up. “What’s strange?”
I leaned closer, lowering my voice. “Look at her balance trace. The weight transfer’s off. It’s extremely front-heavy into corners, the rear is unstable on the exits. You’d never run both those extremes together. It’s contradictory.”
He frowned, studying the screen as Aurélie flew through another lap. “Yeah… that’s unusual. Could be driver preference?”
“No,” I said immediately. My gut knew it, same as it had known when I defended that chicane in Montreal and wound up in the wall.
“That’s not preference. That’s pain or even a fucking injury waiting to happen.
You see how she’s muscling the wheel out of every corner?
She’s driving a setup that’s actively fighting her.
You, as an engineer, would never send a driver out with that kind of set up, right? ”
“Never.” He slowly shook his head, his skepticism giving way to unease. “So you’re saying…” His throat bobbed as he leaned closer to the tablet.
I dropped my voice further, my jaw tight. “I’m saying either someone doesn’t know how to set up her car, or someone doesn’t want to.”
The words hung between us, heavy and ominous.
A lump formed in my throat as I turned back to the screen.
She was still out there, still fighting, still making it look easy.
But all I could see now was every ounce of strain bleeding into her body.
And the longer I watched, the clearer it became: if this kept up, it wasn’t just her times they’d be destroying.
It was her.
“Morel’s on a push lap,” someone called out a bit later, and my attention shifted to the screen tracking him. His style was unmistakable—aggressive, almost reckless, and it showed in his telemetry. He attacked the corners with wild abandon, his brake trace sharp and his throttle inputs erratic.
“He’s going to overcook those tires,” I said, watching the live feed as Morel exited Turn 6 with a snap of oversteer. The rear stepped out, and he caught it, but it cost him valuable time.
“His aggression doesn’t match the car,” I added, shaking my head. “He’s treating it like a frontrunner, but it’s not stable enough for that.”
“Morel’s always been like that,” Marco’s voice cut in as he returned to the garage. He pulled off his helmet, his hair damp with sweat. “All gas, no brakes. Fun to watch, but he’s not winning any championships like that.”
“Maybe,” I said, my eyes drifting back to Aurélie’s feed. She was wrapping up her run, her pace consistent even as the tires began to degrade. “But consistency wins over aggression every time. That’s why she’s a threat to him.”
Marco followed my gaze, his expression softening as he watched the Luminis car come into the pits. “You’re proud of her, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer immediately. I was proud, but it was more than that.
Watching her push that car to its limits reminded me of my early days in F1, fighting for every tenth of a second in a midfield car that didn’t want to cooperate.
It was a grind, physically and mentally. That kind of driving took a toll.
My fingers twitched against the headset. I could go to her garage right now. Watch her review the data, tease her about her braking, brush my knuckles against the inside of her wrist just to feel her warmth for a second longer.
Instead, I stayed seated. Acting on impulse right now would send me straight into freefall.
“Yeah,” I said finally, my voice quieter. “She’s got what it takes.”
Marco grinned, but it wasn’t cocky this time.
It was proud, like he knew she was one of his, too.
“Damn right she does. Morel and his bitch boys hate her because she scares the shit out of them. After what she pulled in that FIA meeting?” He whistled low.
“She’s not just surviving here, Fraser. She’s rewriting the rules, and she has all the leverage to do it. ”
Pride swelled in my chest, but something darker tugged at me–fear. Because the longer I watched her, the more I realized how much she was wrestling with that car. And if I could see it, others would too. Or worse, they wouldn’t, and she’d be left to pay the price for someone else’s sabotage.
A sharp ache flared in my ribs, sudden and biting. I pressed a palm there, trying to breathe through it, but the unease only deepened. My heart was hammering, my throat tight.
Fuck it.
The session was ending. Cars streamed back into the pit lane and engineers rushed to greet their drivers. Marco was still talking, but I was already pulling the headset off, dropping it onto the desk. My legs carried me forward before my mind caught up.
I couldn’t just stand here on the outside, watching her drive herself into the ground in a car that didn’t want to carry her. Not when I suspected why.
The sabotage didn’t stop at me. It started with me.
I wouldn’t become a spectator just because I wasn’t in the car.
For the first time in my career, it wasn’t about lap times or points or contracts.
I had to see her. I had to tell her.