Chapter 7
Chloe
There’s something very wrong with Matt, and I’ve been too wrapped up in my own bitterness toward him to see it.
It was fine, I suppose, when I silently loathed him in the privacy of my own brain, but that loathing has spilled out like a backed-up and overflowing toilet and now everyone has to deal with the shit.
Still. What a petulant motherfu—
“Chloe?” The cocky young strategist who made the wrong tire call from yesterday approaches, his face sour enough to curdle milk.
“Hiya,” I say, as cheerfully as I can.
“We’ve agreed on a one-stop. Soft tires, then hard,” he says, handing me his tablet. The sunken gray eyes and whiff of stale cigarette smoke tell me he was out enjoying the town last night.
I feel the same nagging as yesterday. “Softs? In these conditions? Those tires degrade quickly here, and Matt is not known for his tire management skills.”
“I know. We’ve run all the options,” he says plainly, scratching the back of his head, his eyes anywhere but meeting mine. He doesn’t want to have this conversation with me.
I frown. “Okay. If you’ve run all the options.”
The strategist hesitates. “Yep,” he says, tilting his chin up. I watch him saunter back to the other strategists, and they all quickly fall into some kind of private joke together. I narrow my gaze on him. I’ve not felt ready to let anyone go since taking over, but I am watching.
I look over the line of computers that sit opposite the pit lane facing the track and see Matt fucking Warner standing out at the back of the grid, an ice towel around his neck, headphones on, drinking an electric-green sugary slushy.
Press occasionally move into his orbit and he moves away quickly.
He looks like he wants to retire, honestly. Like he’s done.
The crowd is deafening already. As the music blares from the speakers over the grid, I feel a tap on my shoulder.
“Everything okay with you and your handsome new driver?” It’s Keyla, shouting over the noise, as she pauses her walk across the pit toward McLaren.
“Hiya!” I pull my headphones off. “Mostly . . . why?”
“That’s not convincing. You got a handle on things?”
“Nope,” I say, dropping my voice as much as I can over the noise. “He’s so infuriating, Keyla.”
“Oh no. I know that look. I’ve been that look. You still want to fuck him,” she says, tutting. “You can’t fuck your driver, Chloe.”
“Shut up. I do not,” I shout back, mortified, and hugely grateful that no one is paying attention to us in the pre-race chaos.
“The rumors say otherwise,” she yells back with a knowing stare.
“Rumors?” Oh god. At this point, can anything get worse?
“You can’t go back to that place, Chloe,” she says, wagging a finger at me. “You’ll regret it. If people get wind of it, it’s going to make you look—”
“I know, I know,” I say bitterly. “Pathetic. Tacky. Ridiculous.”
“Your words, not mine,” she says with both hands up. “I’d hate that for you after you’ve worked harder than anyone I know to get here. I also can’t go around beating up every gossiping loser who tries my best friend.”
I laugh and nod at Keyla’s classic ride-or-die attitude, glad to have someone around here who has my back. “Thanks for the straight talk.”
She grins at me. “Good luck tonight, Chloe. I’m rooting for you.” Then she spins back around, her braids swinging as she skips off toward her team.
I glance down at my team, at the glum faces—Noah’s race engineer, technical director, and strategists, and at the far end, an empty seat that Archie will fill soon enough.
His transfer is in the process, even though it’s unprecedented to let go of someone like Archie without a period of time when he cannot work for a competitor.
Rossini were just so keen to move on from Matt, they agreed, which works better for us.
I look back at Matt, watch him fidget for a moment and then examine the tarmac and saunter down the straight, away from the lights and the cameras and the rest of the drivers.
Has he even done warm-ups? Where are his earbuds? He used to love to listen to music, but now he just looks completely adrift. Unfocused. As my eyes trace the lonely figure, I feel my heart clutch a little. Which Matt are we going to see today?
“It’s lights-out in Singapore,” the loudspeaker booms as twenty Formula 1 engines growl and roar into action. I take a deep breath, glancing up at the numbers on the screen in front of me.
This is it. The main race we’ve been waiting for.
Come on, Matt, I find myself whispering. Willing him to find something. Anything.
As the cars hit speed on the straight, he is surprisingly aggressive. I feel a little thrill as I watch his speed dial up even more out of turn one, and he moves quickly past the lagging Haas.
I turn to my team and give a hopeful smile.
“He’s in eighteenth,” says the strategist.
Then there is a tussle into turns three and four, where Matt finds a little space on the bend, cutting underneath a Williams. Up one more place. He’s now trailing Noah.
“Two places in half a lap,” says one of the strategists and then she points at the screen. “He’s on pace with the midfield.”
“Noah next,” I say.
The excitement starts to fizzle, and I suck back a deep, calming breath as he comes up behind his new teammate. The radio crackles.
“Matt’s behind?” Noah says.
“You know what to do,” says his race engineer.
The radio crackles again, and I feel a tug of guilt. But Matt was always going to be the first driver, and if there was a chance to get him into the middle of the field ahead of Noah, we had to take it.
“You got it,” Noah says, utterly compliant. The perfect teammate.
We watch as Noah pulls to the outside of the lane, and all Matt needs to do is slip through and he’ll have gained three places.
Except he doesn’t.
Something happens as he hits the throttle careering into that sixth turn. Matt suddenly slows, losing his line and coming off the track again. The team runs their checks on the car data.
“Suspension’s fine.”
“Tires are good.”
“He looks stressed again,” someone says, pointing to his heart rate.
“Only time it should be peaking like that is overtaking Lewis Hamilton,” says another.
There is something going on.
Noah and Matt drive almost side by side for three bends.
“Matt, push,” says Noah’s race engineer. “You’ve got the spot. You’re slowing both of you.”
The radio crackles. “Let the kid drive,” Matt says.
And then to our astonishment, we watch him drop back, forcing Noah to pull in forward, ahead of him.
“Matt, strategy was clear,” I say over the radio.
“Oh, hi, Chloe.”
I swear, loudly, off-mic and the race engineer puts a hand on mine to calm me.
“He’s dropped another place,” says someone. “Back at eighteenth out of twenty.”
“He doesn’t listen to you,” the strategist says, turning to glare at me as though it’s not completely clear.
“He’s finished,” I mutter to myself, banging my forehead on the screen in front of me. “I’m finished. We’re finished.”
I walk through the emptying lot to wait for my ride back to the hotel, hiding twice behind parked trucks to evade the press. Jesus Christ, they never give up.
I slink round the back of the Rossini trailer and finally find a spot to wait. Then I get an email notification on my phone and open a long rant from Barry.
To: CHLOE
From: BARRY
Subject: You & Matt at the garage tomorrow morning, 10:00am. What the hell is going on? FYI I have a sponsor meeting with a company that builds water slides. Unsure about the powder pink of their logo.
Message: [blank]
I’m blithely wondering if I should encourage Barry to use a phone messaging service when I spot Rossini team principal Matteo Borelli standing across the lot with two of his team. Our eyes meet, and he stops mid-conversation, striding over to me, a pitying look on his face.
“Hi, Mr. Borelli,” I say, a small thrill coursing through me as he approaches. Despite it all, despite this legend of F1 holding the same position as me, I still feel like this small racing superfan who is lucky to be on the lot. “Congratulations on the podium.”
“Podiums,” he says, grinning, holding up his fingers in a V shape. “Two.” I smile as he smooths back his wiry salt-and-pepper hair. I suspect he didn’t come here to gloat at me.
“Matt’s still struggling,” he says after a moment.
“Your drivers didn’t need to lap him,” I say, attempting a joke, humiliating as it was.
“He’s in his own head since the crash.”
“He was driving badly before the crash,” I remind him.
Matteo tips his head sideways, scratching at the scruffy regrowth on his chin. “He was impatient before. Driving too fast, too recklessly. But since the crash, he doesn’t drive at all. He’s a lame horse.”
“What are you saying? I should shoot him?” I quip.
Despite my attempt to seem jovial, I must look stricken, because Matteo dips his head, lowers his voice, and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Cut him loose. He’s going to need too much time.”
“Well. Time is what I don’t have,” I mutter.
Something passes over Matteo’s face, and he nods as though he understands.
Because he probably knows the trouble Arden is in.
Jack was right. This team is on the brink of financial collapse, and everyone here knows it. I’m about to press Matteo, to see what he knows, when we are approached by a girl, can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen, her long blond hair back in a ponytail, stuffed under a cap.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she says shyly. I glance at the phone she’s clutching in her hands. “Can I have a selfie with you?”
Matteo smiles warmly, standing a little straighter, making room for her to stand next to him. “Oh,” she says, glancing between Matteo and me, flushing red. “I meant with Chloe Coleman.”
“Ahh. Of course,” he says, hands up good-naturedly. “I’ll leave you to it.”
She looks back to me and grins, and at once I feel a giddy sense of pride, misplaced though it may be right now.
“It’s just so cool having a woman at the top,” she says, giddy, as we lean in together and she takes several shots, moving her head into multiple positions as she does. “Thank you!” she squeals. “I’m at the academy. If things don’t work out, I hope I can go into management like you.”
I try to swallow a sort of embarrassed yelp.
“We’re all cheering for Arden. For you!” she calls out, and I watch as she skips back to a group of young women, all drivers, I suppose, from the FIA’s new woman-only racing academy, designed to help improve representation in the sport.
I watch as they crowd round her phone to look at the photo, hooting and giggling.
Christ. I’m clutched by a nightmare worse than fear of failure.
Collective responsibility.
Barry is right. Tomorrow, Matt and I need to figure this out one way or another, or we’re both finished.