Chapter 7
Spielberg, Austria
Red Bull Ring
Austrian Grand Prix
Our first race of the season is in Spielberg, Austria. Set in the lush, undulating hills of the Styrian Alps, the scenery is so quaint, part of me wouldn’t be surprised if Julie Andrews popped out of nowhere, twirling and singing.
Race morning, Lizzie and I line up third on the starting grid, thanks to a solid performance in Qualifying the day before. Cameron and J. P. Ribeiro from Triton Racing are ahead of me on pole position and in second, respectively. Roz hovers, making last-minute adjustments.
“How you feeling?” she shouts over the thrum of Lizzie’s engine.
“More than ready!” I holler back. My heart is in my throat at the prospect of going wheel-to-wheel with Cameron and the other drivers. It’s my chance—to redeem myself from testing, rack up points, and show the paddock, and myself, what I’m made of.
At the signal that buzzes its way up and down the grid, mechanics and support staff pick up their equipment and step off the track, leaving only the drivers in our cars.
I try to ignore the drone from the grandstand audience that grows louder every second.
Only a fraction of the Austrian Grand Prix’s three hundred thousand pass holders show up for the F3 race—F1 events are the marquee headliner—but it’s still the most eyes I’ve had on me at one time.
The red starting lights blink on one by one. I push all thoughts out of my mind and focus on the impending signal. Time seems to expand itself. Seconds become minutes become hours all while cold sweat drips down the back of my neck, moistening the collar of my fire-resistant undershirt.
Five.
Four.
My right foot feathers the throttle, ready to flatten it at a millisecond’s notice. My heart hammers over the revving of Lizzie’s 380-horsepower engine.
Three.
Two.
One.
A pause, then the entire row of red lights flickers off. Lights out.
I drop the clutch and slam my foot on the accelerator as twenty-nine other drivers do the same. Lizzie roars to life. My body lurches back into my seat and the cockpit temperature rises instantly.
I’m quick off the starting line, faster than J. P. Ribeiro in front. He positions his car to cover me off, but I’ve already accelerated on the opposite side, sailing past.
To my right, Javi Diaz of Piranelli Racing has also had a good start. We enter the first turn side by side. I’m on the outside line, an easy place for someone to run me out wide if I don’t place the car just right—J. P. has recovered from his poor start and is only half a car length behind me.
I wait as long as I can before braking. Even with three-a-day training sessions, my calves burn as I thrust down on the pedal.
Next to me, Javi has braked earlier; Lizzie glides ahead before we hit the apex of the turn.
“Yes!” Roz shrieks so loudly over the radio, I wish I’d turned the volume down beforehand. “P2, Justine, P2!”
My heart pounds with exhilaration, but it’s too early to celebrate.
Next up is a chicane. I lift slightly and apply brakes as I enter from curve to curve. I don’t see, so much as feel, other cars behind me. The nose of one—maybe Javi, maybe J. P.—nearly brushes Lizzie’s rear wing.
“You’re lapping two-tenths faster than Diaz,” Roz reports, her voice breathless. She sounds as elated as I feel.
I focus on picking up time as I run my laps—seconds can mean the difference between first and eleventh place.
Lizzie’s tires hold up despite how warm the temperature is, gripping the paved track firmly as I make my turns.
With every lap, I brake a little later, accelerate a little earlier as fuel burns off.
Javi Diaz in P3 behind me appears fractionally smaller in the side mirror every time I check. I’m dropping him bit by bit.
“How’re the tires feeling? D’you think we could extend this stint?”
Before every race, the tire manufacturer and engineers estimate the number of laps each set of tires can withstand. Their predictions are never 100 percent accurate, landing somewhere in the vicinity of so-so. That’s where driver judgment comes in.
“Or would you rather play it safe and box?”
Ahead, Cameron pulls into the pit lane, leaving me in P1.
I, Justine Kwong, am leading. In my debut race. I hope every team principal scouting drivers for next season is watching.
“Hello—can you hear me? What’ll it be?” Roz comes over the radio again.
I could pit now, return to the race in P8 or P9, and try to drive my way back to first, running the risk of being overcut by Javi Diaz.
Or.
I could stay out and do some overcutting of my own.
My tires feel good; my last turn was my fastest cornering speed yet. With Cameron in the pit, I’ll have clean air in front of me—ideal for putting in strong laps.
I keep the throttle pressed to the floor and whir past the pit entrance. “I want to stay out.”
“All righty, let’s get ’em.”
Lizzie’s steering wheel is vibrating slightly more, but tire grip still feels solid as I wind my way through the next chicane. My heart jumps when I see cars ahead of me again—backmarkers. I’m officially lapping other cars.
The trackside marshals wave giant blue flags—the signal for lapped cars to yield.
The first car in front of me, a Carden, pulls over obediently.
The next car, a Charlemagne driven by Ashveer Kaur, also edges over on the track.
He’s not making it as easy as the Carden, but it’s no problem; the Charlemagne is no match for Lizzie.
I brake as we go into the corner and prepare to skate past.
My butt feels it first.
A slight tremor in my seat, and then Lizzie is skidding too far to the right. Her inside front locks up, sliding across the track despite brakes being fully clamped down.
I turn the steering wheel to course correct, but there’s no grip, and I am spinning.
My vision alternates between the black of the paved track and the beige of the runoff area. The harness saws into my torso like a serrated knife, the area still tender from testing.
By the time Lizzie finally stops pirouetting, other cars are whizzing past, including a post-pit-stop Cameron, now back in first place.
I punch the steering wheel and instantly regret it when my fingers throb in addition to my entire upper body.
“Are you all right?” Roz asks.
“I’m fine,” I mutter. As fine as someone whose fantasies about winning her debut F3 race came tantalizingly close before vanishing in clouds of gravel dust can be.
I reorient Lizzie and drive to the pit lane, all her tires flat-spotted. My crew is already waiting with fresh replacements. The silence from my radio manages to be noisier than the high-pitched whirring of wheel guns.
I exit and come out behind Ashveer Kaur’s Charlemagne, the same car I lapped just before I spun. Shit. That takes me to somewhere between P25 and P30.
I warm up my tires as quickly as I can and begin cutting through the back half of the field. It’s a respectable recovery drive, but there are only five laps left—not enough time to regain my prior lead or even make it into a top-ten-points-scoring position.
The black-and-white-checkered flag comes all too soon.
“P18.” Roz’s voice is as deflated as I feel. “Cameron got first, Pat’s tenth.”
P18 means zero points. From what could have been a hefty twenty-five-point haul in P1. From what could have been an opening race that put me at the top.
Worse, Cameron won the whole thing and even Pat eked out a singular point with tenth, which means I’m the only Orbital driver who has contributed zero to the team championship.
A giant screen in parc fermé broadcasts the championship table—I’m listed at the bottom with the other zeros, right between Ryan Weiss and Alfie Davies, both of whom can barely keep their cars on the road and wouldn’t be driving except for the considerable sponsorships their families bring.
Cameron’s name is at the top, bolded, along with his promotional headshot triumphantly emblazoned in the background.
I’m going to be sick. And it’s not from losing three pounds of water weight from the race.
Roz greets me with a determined hug after I get back to the garage. “Good recovery drive. Really good.”
I let my head drop onto her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I messed that up.”
“It was a fifty-fifty call,” she says. “Easily could’ve gone the other way. We’ll make it up at the next race. I promise.”
The garage around us froths with exuberance.
All the mechanics are high-fiving one another about Cameron’s victory, which puts the team well ahead of our biggest competitors.
I feel like I’ve been stabbed with a cudgel and a Costco-size bag of rock salt has been dumped into the wound—the kind of all-encompassing pain where you’d rather be dead than alive.
I stuff myself into the changing room so no one will invite me to join podium festivities. There’s no way I can handle watching Cameron hoist his first-place trophy and spray the other two finishers with celebratory champagne.
The changing room is tiny and smells like stale sweat that the recent application of Pine Fresh can’t hide.
The walls might as well be made of cardboard.
There’s zero sound insulation and I can hear the team whooping outside like they’re standing right next to me.
The cheers finally grow fainter as everyone makes their way from the garage to the podium.
In the silence left behind, my thoughts reel and ping-pong, crashing off the inside of my skull.
It could have—should have—been my moment to prove the doubters wrong.
Instead, I let my desperation to shut everyone up make me reckless, and now I’m crammed into a broom-closet-size dressing room while the entire paddock celebrates my rival.