Chapter 16
Janet waved her over to the team’s timing tent—an elaborate makeshift setup behind the pit wall that housed multiple computer screens with real-time data measurements from Mack’s car and even Mack herself.
The data would most certainly show Mack’s heart racing as she headed toward Janet, who stood with her arms crossed and headphones hanging around her neck, frowning.
Whether her disappointment was still over Mack’s first day behavior or because she was on day three of horrifyingly slow practice, Mack had no idea.
“You got a sponsor yet?” Janet barked.
Without earplugs, Mack’s ears rang with the high-pitched whine of cars at speed and the deep gurgle of engines idling on pit lane. She shook her head. “No, ma’am.”
“You’re about to lose the one sponsor you have.
Hartley is not happy with your performance, or really anything about you.
They’re mumbling about keeping their money on Leo’s car only.
” Janet held up her hand to hold off any protest. “It’s premature, but it’s the way money goes in racing.
No magic, no money. In your case, no penis plus no magic equals you might as well turn tail and go home. ”
“I’m working on the pace,” Mack protested.
Janet slashed her hand through the air. “Sponsors and media don’t want to watch a woman struggle. You’ve got to give them a good story, or be sexy, or show them you’re five times better than anyone else. Right now, you’re none of those.”
“I’m trying my hardest out there!”
Mack knew she sounded like the same petulant child she swore she wasn’t, but dammit she was trying.
Doubt began to creep inside her heart and helmet.
What if she wasn’t good enough? She’d been told so often that she was talented, but what if her skills didn’t translate, or worse, she’d lost them in the years since she’d stopped racing?
She thought of Wes and Laurie, sitting in the stands and watching her.
They were the only people here who really knew what she could do in a car.
They’d seen her bring the magic to the track.
Were they watching her now, embarrassed for her, cringing as she grasped for something that maybe was no longer there?
A brisk wind hit her sweat-coated body and she began to shake.
Her hands spasmed and she badly wanted to flex her fingers, but she held still so Janet wouldn’t see her weakness.
“I’m trying everything. Staying in the turns longer, then shorter.
I’m using the tools, I’m trying new lines. ”
Janet yanked off her sunglasses. Dark circles bagged under her eyes and her thin face narrowed sharply under her cheekbones.
“The lone-wolf thing might work on the dirt track but here it takes two dozen people to qualify one car alone. Work with your team and figure out the fucking issue.” She dropped the sunglasses back over her eyes.
“In the meantime, you’ve got a sponsor lunch with Hartley tomorrow.
Bring the charm, make them like you. Don’t fuck it up. ”
With a flick of her wrist, Mack was dismissed.
Mack stood stupidly outside the timing tent, knowing there was no point arguing with Janet but not wanting the smothering comfort of her family either.
She wished she could talk to Leo. She could use an infusion of his laid-back optimism, but she knew they both needed distance to keep their relationship professional.
She was still standing in the same spot when Jimmy appeared at her side. “Let’s walk,” he said, before turning and heading the opposite direction down pit lane.
Mack glanced at Janet but she was now talking to Lucie. There was nothing to do but to follow Jimmy.
They walked past two dozen pit stalls until they reached the end of pit lane.
The first pit stall was empty and Jimmy sat on the white painted concrete and patted the spot next to him.
Once her butt hit the concrete, Mack realized how exhausted she was.
She wasn’t sleeping well and she spent dawn to dusk hunting down sponsorships, at the track, or manhandling the car to the point her joints went brittle and her back throbbed.
She wondered if the twenty-year-olds felt this many aches.
“This isn’t something you can be great at overnight,” Jimmy said.
Mack exhaled. Oh thank Saint Dolly Parton. He got it. “I need more time.”
Jimmy shook his head. “No, hear my words. You can’t be Scott Dixon overnight. But you can be a hell of a lot better than you are right now.”
“But I’m—”
“No. Listen. You’re talented, I can tell. But you’re trying to do everything all at once, and to do it alone. No matter what the fans think, racing is a team sport. Surely you know that?”
Mack frowned. “No one else is out there driving the car. The crew can’t help me find ten miles per hour.”
“That’s your problem right there. The team is exactly where you find extra speed.”
“But—”
“You a mechanic?”
“Uh, no.”
“You a tire specialist?”
“No.”
“You understand fuel map data?”
Mack’s body rebelled, nausea and sweat and soreness all mixing together. She grasped his point, but she still resisted. “No.”
“But I bet you’ve played around with setups—understeer, oversteer, more or less camber . . . right?”
“We have played around with setup! I’m still going so slow I might as well be driving down Sixteenth Street. I need to get back in the car and—”
Jimmy cut her off. “You ever heard of Willy T. Ribbs?”
Mack startled at the change in subject. “The first Black man to qualify for the 500?”
Jimmy’s smile lit up his lined face and he patted the wall where they sat.
“That’s him. I was right here in this spot when he made the field in ’91.
I remember looking up at the scoring pylon and seeing his number pop up there.
It wasn’t digital back then, you had to wait for the light bulbs to change.
I don’t think there was a person of color without tears in their eyes that day.
Hell, every decent person was on their feet cheering and hollering at what that man overcame that day.
” Jimmy’s grin faded when he turned to face her. “You know how he got there?”
“Hard work?”
“No one worked harder than Willy but even he couldn’t do it on his own.
His team never stopped, even when engine after engine blew.
They went through five damn engines to make the race.
And Willy, he was willing to listen to anyone he trusted.
” Jimmy gave her a pointed look and she understood that not everyone had a Black man’s interest at heart, then or now.
“He made the field because he worked with his team. He let other people in. He didn’t let his ego get in the way of the goal.
And let me tell you, that man has ego. But he wanted to make the race more than he wanted to say he did it all by himself. ”
Mack chewed her lip. She would do anything fair and legal to make the race.
She couldn’t live with herself if she left Indy knowing she’d given anything less than everything.
Being here was a gift, a slice of fortune dropped into her lap, and she hadn’t known until she arrived how much she’d needed the overhaul.
Her life in Haubstadt was safe and secure, but also heavy and stale.
She was holding on to this last chance with an iron grip; if she could make this work, make it good, then maybe she could go home and finally be okay with the way her life turned out.
Because if she didn’t qualify, if she lost her one shot at Indy, she was terrified she’d let out all the hurt and resentment and devastation that filled up her insides, and that her eruption would smother Shaw.
She didn’t regret Shaw, but by god, she mourned racing.
Driving at Indianapolis made her realize how deep her sorrows had tunneled in and become a bitter core.
Better to make this last chance work and hope it was enough to live on for the rest of her life.
“You aren’t the first person to have a hard time here,” Jimmy said.
“You think it was easy for Janet? Lyn St. James? Willy? People sent them death threats. I’ve been here a long, long time and they ain’t never made it easy on an outsider.
But you don’t have to make it harder on yourself by pushing away people who want to help you. ”
Something low and buried in Mack’s chest ached.
People who want to help you. The last ten years had been a slog of unending work and emotional upheaval.
Many nights she’d laid in bed and cried into the silence for help, then gotten up in the morning and did what she had to do.
She’d been making it work on her own for so long that she didn’t even know how to accept help when it stared her in the face.
Her mind flashed to Leo, at how she’d screamed at him on pit lane the first day of practice. She’d asked him to keep their relationship professional, and he’d done exactly that, and she’d thrown his help back in his face.
She shouted to be heard over the cars that streaked down pit lane mere feet from them. “So what do you want me to do?”
Jimmy stood and hooked his thumb in the direction of the team trailer.
“We’re going to sit down with the data folks and the tire folks, and you’re going to talk them through exactly what you’re feeling, and exactly when you feel it.
Every bump, every blip. We’re going to use that information to set up the car from scratch, because what we have sure as shit ain’t working.
You’ll answer every question, and you’ll really listen to what these folks tell you.
Most of these people have been doing this work longer than you’ve been alive.
They want to win as much as you do. Work with them and maybe we’ll all make the big show. ”
Mack watched the remaining cars on track whiz by in blurs of bright colors. If she had to set aside her pride, if she had to trust crew members she hardly knew, she’d do it to make the race. She’d do anything.
She looked at Jimmy’s weathered face and saw nothing but open assessment, as if he already knew what she’d say. She nodded.
“You know how I knew I picked one messed-up sport?” Jimmy asked as he slapped his knees and rose from the concrete wall. “When I saw that they drink milk to celebrate. Goddamn milk.”
He said it like a curse but Mack saw the twinkle in his eyes as he walked toward Gasoline Alley.