Chapter 2
JACK
‘Best of luck, Mikey boy!’ I call after my teammate as we head to our respective cars.
I don’t consider myself a cruel guy, but the look Micah throws me over his shoulder feels sadistically good. It’s almost undetectable. A camera couldn’t catch it. If you’d just met him, it would pass you by. It’s all in the eyes – or rather, behind the eyes.
It’s still tickling me while I strap myself in.
Never was there a Micah who was less of a Mikey.
Zero sense of humour. More serious than an Old Bailey judge.
I’ve been teammates with him for three years and I don’t even think I know what he does for fun.
Pummel simulated me on his PlayStation? Make a Sims Jack and force him to do hard labour? I honestly wouldn’t put it past him.
The crew are clearing the grid. Time to focus. I concentrate on my breathing, trying to centre. My hands flex around the new steering wheel with its different dials and buttons that took me three straight evenings to memorise.
The season stretches in front of me like the Great North Road.
Nine months; five continents; twenty-four races one-to-two weeks apart with a summer break in the middle.
No wonder the second half’s such a pressure cooker; from jetlag to title contending, F1 demands the ultimate mental and physical sacrifice. But it’s worth it.
Man it feels good to be back. The familiar promise of speed, intensity and adrenaline hum through the car. Months of training and testing boil down to the next two hours. Racing in F1 isn’t like anything else on the planet – you’re piloting a fighter jet on wheels. I don’t know how to explain it.
Fuck me, it’s roasting in here. My balls are practically molten already.
It’s not enough that I’m in thermal underwear and an airtight race suit cooking under nuclear sunlight, there are also two radiators either side of me, hybrid batteries behind my arse, and hydraulic tubes either side of my legs.
When we get going, add burning rubber to the mix too.
I’m hoping all the pre-season weightlifting in saunas and running in Dubai wasn’t for nothing.
Come on, heat endurance. You can kick in any minute now.
My engineer pipes up over the team radio with coded strategy and set-up reminders – since everyone and their pet canary can tune in – and I ease on the throttle to begin the formation lap. I lead the pack leisurely around the first corner, weaving from side to side to warm up my tyres.
Beneath all the exhilaration – and I am happy to be back, course I am – I feel the tiniest bit…
meh. Not ungrateful, I know how many drivers would kill for my seat, but I can’t ignore the feeling niggling away at me.
It doesn’t mean anything; I’ll drive like hell all season, and I’m just as desperate to win the Championship as when I first made it to F1 six years ago. But…
There’s just a but.
Last season I didn’t exactly race hard. Pagari’s car was leagues ahead of any other – which is sick, obviously, but moseying along’s not what I’m paid eight figures to do.
Sometimes it makes me wonder if I’m still the driver I was.
I don’t know. Every time I feel like this, I remind myself if I was in a Leone, or god forbid a DFK, sitting in a Pagari on pole would sound pretty damn appealing.
Black and silver fills my mirror – which is where he’s going to stay.
Micah will try everything he possibly can to beat me this year.
The difference was clear in pre-season testing.
He’s hungrier, and I don’t blame him. I know he thinks last year’s Championship was too easy for me, and he’s not wrong.
But he can’t beat me on speed alone. He’s a thinker, and racing isn’t about thinking.
Humans can’t process things in three-tenths of a second, which are the margins F1 runs on.
Thinking also makes you question your instincts, and instincts are everything.
Visibility is so limited in the cockpit, sometimes it’s all you have to go on.
Yes, you’ve got to have a head for strategy, but there are about fifteen other key traits, the most important being something – fortunately for me – I was born with. Look at the billionaires’ sons at the back of the grid. You can’t buy talent, which suits this working-class Essex lad just fine.
Don’t get me wrong, Micah’s a sick driver – Pagari wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t – but can he beat me? He’ll certainly try. Bring it on, pal. I’ve never shied away from a challenge and I’m not about to start.
When I take the final corner and glance in my mirror, it pains me that I can’t spot an Ackland.
My grandad and I used to do our annual pilgrimage to Silverstone dressed head-to-toe in British Racing Green.
Ackland meant sophistication, heritage, and good old-fashioned English craftsmanship.
It produced World Champions like Herb Asquith, Antonio Mancini, and my hero, Sir Cliff Roberts.
Now? They’ll be lucky if they can go a whole race without power unit implosion.
I know they’re a competitor, but it hurts my soul to see them struggling through Bahrain’s qualifying after barely squeaking into the top five constructors last year.
I finish my burnouts and stop in my spot. What was it that fit presenter asked? Something about managing the first sector with Micah and étienne starting on my tail. There’s an old saying: you can’t win a race on the first corner, but you can lose it.
I need a strong, clean start to set me up for that beast of a first corner – a ninety-degree right-hander.
That’s where I’ll block Micah. He’s as fast as me on the straight so I want étienne to overtake him, buying me time.
From there, it’s all about traction where, if I play it right, I can lose étienne.
It’ll be less than fifteen seconds and can decide the outcome of the whole race.
‘Forza, mate,’ says my race engineer, and I let the word rush through me as I do at the start of every race. It’s so charged, with a hundred different meanings, but for now I let it fire me up. Every muscle, every nerve, every tendon.
The world softens into white noise as I look up at the lights. It’s the calmest moment of the whole weekend. No media, no photos, no crowds, no meetings. Just me and the car, the way it’s supposed to be.
It’s lights out and away we go.
I’m quick off the line, but I’m not the only one. Micah appears in my periphery. He’s on the dirty side of the track and lacks the traction and grip I have to power up the straight. étienne’s close behind me, ready to overtake when I commit to a racing line around Turn 1.
I edge to the right, squeezing Micah behind.
As predicted, étienne shoots to my outside and we head into Turn 1 side-by-side.
He’s young, it’s early in the season, he’s probably feeling rusty.
I’m banking on him losing his nerve and backing off.
My heart thunders in my chest as I wait.
We hit the apex and he chickens out, and I thank the racing gods.
He’ll be too shaken to try anything in Turns 2 and 3 – he’ll wait for the straight, forgetting Pagaris have supreme straight-line pace.
As the track flattens into the distance, unsurprisingly, he swerves on my inside.
I go full throttle and watch him recede in a cloud of exhaust fumes.
I’m grinning from ear to ear. There’s nothing like the power at my fingertips.
As much as it’ll gall him, étienne will have to switch focus and defend; Micah will beat his tyres to a pulp trying to overtake.
Meanwhile I’ll soar ahead, watching the gap widen and widen.
Fuck, I’ve missed this.